I can't exactly believe how much my living situation and life in general has changed in a day and a half. Or how lucky I am.

First of all, one of the nurses at the health post where I worked last week had Frances (my travel buddy) and I over at her house to spend the night in anticipation of our bus trip in the morning. (She lives super close to the bus station.) So she and her family had us over, fed us breakfast, let us use a super comfy bed, and sent us on our way at the crack of seven in the morning. Which is really awesome.

I spent the first half of yesterday watching the Brazilian countryside fly by. There were a lot of donkeys, red flowering trees, okra plants!, guys on bicycles ambling down the highway, houses made of plastic and branches and huge farms. And a lot more variety of landscape than I expected moving from one coastal region to another. There were high hills and lush forests and plateau land. And some enormous tree farms that reminded me of I-84 heading out east. Just staring out the window, sleeping and sharing some great tunes made the bus ride fly by.

We got off the bus, all ready to head out to this house we were going to stay at when our advisor told us it was extremely far from the city center. So we got in the car with our advisor and the driver just got on the phone with some friends at a pousada (hostelly/hotelly thing) and got us an amazing price with a sweet breakfast included. And right in the middle of everything. You just have to know people to get things done here. And I guess we know people which is pretty swell.

Our advisor (a really warm woman in her 40s who coordinates the AIDS programs for the area and works with the secretary of health) is awesome and hooked us up with the roving CTA van which is a travelling STD/AIDS clinic which helped take us around town and show us what the lay of the land is in terms of health care. The crew of the van is a jolly driver who isn't a health professional but knows a TON and is really excited about sharing it. One of the nurses (Vinizio) that we have been hanging out with is a very driven guy and an awesome people person. He jokes and talks with everyone about everything and really puts people at ease even when he's talking about STDs which is pretty impressive.

Everyone comes here for vacation so the town is built to hide the fact that there are thousands of poor people who come just to serve the tourist industry. And that is where we have been going to the health clinics. It is two worlds completely. Today we drove past houses that cost 4-20 million EUROS, yeah, euros in order to reach two health clinics and the urgent care clinic (which I am pretty certain did not cost 4 million euros to build.)

That being said, it is a very impressive melding of two completely different lifestyles. While tourists don't necessarily see the places where the poor live, everyone goes to the beach together and hangs out side by side. Basically I am really excited about the next month of my life and I think it will fly by kinda like our bus ride yesterday.