Location, Location, Location

Less than a week until I head down to Brazil and I still haven't found housing.

I booked a hostel for one week so I could look around for housing, but I was hoping to find something before hand. A few months ago I tried to find anyone I could who knew someone in Brazil and might be able to offer housing: I recommend this to anyone who wants to travel.

For starters I asked all of my friends, which gave me few results. One friend had a brother who traveled to Argentina and stopped into Brazil for a short stay. Another friend had a friend whose brother stayed in Brazil to study Samba for awhile. And that's about as far as that got me. I did receive some good information (Spirit Air is great for cheap flights to Peru), through these two friends I e-mailed a few more people, but nothing came out of it.

Next I joined a meet up group in Philadelphia, this was pretty neat, yet a little over whelming. If I stuck with it , it could have been advantageous, but the hours never seemed to work for me and then the group ended a month later.

I also contacted my Portuguese professor from RIT, my Capoeira Instructor, and all the colleges in my area with a Portuguese class (I was hoping to sit in on the class for free - no luck though). My professor wasn't much help, but she was nice about it. My Capoeira Instructor (http://www.comexpressao.com/) sent me some e-mail addresses from his friends in Brazil, sadly they never responded to me, but I probably could have sent more than one e-mail. Lastly, the colleges: UPenn and Temple. UPenn's professor was strictly by the books and told me to go through admission. Temple's professor, Dr. Marco Silva, is amazing.

When I first contacted him he told me he was no longer going to be the professor because his contract had run out, yet he offered to meet with me and talk about Brazil. When I met with him we just talked about what I wanted to do and he had some great stories about Brazil. He also mentioned he was moving back to Rio de Janeiro in a few weeks. Since we met he has moved back and I've kept in touch with him. One of the reasons I decided to travel to Rio is because he lives there and it can't hurt to have a friend in a strange new place. He's given me tons of advice on where I should look for housing and the places I should avoid. In fact, Marco even looked for a few places and sent the e-mails along to me. And so far I might end up staying in one of those places (Casa Convivio). Or I might not, and this is why I booked a hostel for a week.

In that week, I plan on finalizing my housing arrangements and checking out more places if need be. I'm hesitant to give anyone money without seeing the place first and so it's hard to secure housing on my words alone. Maybe I'm being to cautious, but I recently heard about someone from California who paid $1,800 for a place in Philadelphia, when she got here the address didn't even exist. So, I'll err on the side of caution.


Some other things I looked into were Couch surfing and WWOOF. Couch surfing seems great for short trips (Maybe a week or so), but I was hesitant to ask for anything over that because I felt it might be a burden on someone. I don't think I would want anyone staying on my couch for a few months and if I didn't like them then I'd need to find a way to kick them out, but knowing me I'd be too nice. WWOOF is a farming exchange program. The family gives you housing and (possibly) food for 20 - 30 hours of work a week. This sounds like a great program, but I've found positive and negative reviews online and I wanted something with a little more positive assurance. I'm also going in the rainy season when not as much farm work needs to be done and so my options would have been greatly limited.

All in all, I'm excited and terrified. And it's a great thing to be. 6 days, I can't wait.