Curitiba Pilgrimage 2 (11/16-17 Departure and Arrival)

Departure: Kate, Amber, John and Nancy at SFO

Arrival: The Cathedral in Curitiba

With our hosts: Cesár, John, Bispo Naudal, Nancy, and Melissa

Rosi with “Catheral-made” pizza

Nobody called this time to tell us not to come, and we are now on our way south (flying over the Gulf of Mexico, which is too dark to see) as I begin typing. Actually, someone did call on Nancy’s cell as we headed toward SFO in a Supershuttle. It was American Airlines, just calling to let us know that our flight had been delayed about an hour and a half (equipment problem we were told later). I think it’s been about 30 years since I got a call like that from an airline, and a lot of good it did at that point. But I appreciated the thought.

So we all got to the airport nice and early like we’re supposed to.  And we were all acting goofy right off the bat – maybe it was excitement and lack of sufficient sleep the night before, although we’re kind of old for that sort of thing.  Sam, who is already back in the Bay Area, came down to SFO to join us.  His inability to go through security with us narrowed our fine dining options, but we found a Peets™ on the upper level of the north terminal.  We practiced some Brazilian Portuguese phrases and pronunciation – a little late for that – and talked about what we forgot to pack – definitely too late for that.  Between Sam and the latest e-mails from Melissa, we were convinced that we’re headed for the tropics in the dead of summer; too hot for blue jeans, so just why did anyone wear them?  Sam then said something about the scorpions coming inside at night, but assured us that was only at his mother’s house and not where we’re going.

Now we are flying over Cancun (Episcopalians Gone Wild!) and have just finished dinner, which we didn’t have to pay extra for, and the chicken pasta was good enough, although, as Nancy noted, it didn’t require teeth.  It is now 8 p.m. in San Francisco, 10 p.m. where we are, and 2 a.m. in Sao Paolo, and, as any long distance international traveler knows, the time when we’ll be really rummy is when we arrive in Sao Paolo in another seven and half hours or so.  Our solo traveler Deborah already expressed concern in a flurry of e-mails over the weekend that we would fail to meet up at the airport in Sao Paolo (the language thing) or that the rest of us might even sneak into Curitiba a day early (the time zone and confusing itinerary thing).  Spending months in anticipation and then traveling a long ways to somewhere completely new can be like awaiting the birth of a child or going to meet a newborn or new family for the first time.  You wait, and it seems like the day will never come; and then the day comes, but then there’s a lot more waiting, and you don’t know when the new experience will start or what it really will be like until it is there.  And then it comes, and it changes your life completely.  And then maybe you remember or think about the fact that you’re exhausted. And with an exchange like this, you realize that there has been as much anticipation and uncertainty on the other side.

We had varying success with sleep on our very full flight from Texas to Sao Paolo.  Amber and Kate watched “Up,” the Pixar feature about an old man (voiced by Ed Asner) who ties a bunch of balloons to his house and flies to Brazil – very apropos for this trip; I wished I’d watched it instead of trying and failing to get much sleep.  We arrived pretty much on time in Sao Paolo, but it took all of our two-and-half-hour layover to get checked in for our next flight to Curitiba.  I finally caught up with Deborah in the waiting area just before we were ready to board; she wasn’t fooled at all when I approached her from the side and asked in Portuguese if she knew how to speak English.  All the people in the endless check-in line must have been going somewhere else, because the plane to Curitiba was less than a quarter full.  Even though the flight was less than an hour, they served us a little ham and cheese sandwich along with the beverage service.  I guess cheaping out on in-flight amenities is a U.S. domestic flight thing.

We flew over Curitiba heading toward the airport south of town. (At least I think it was south. This is my first time in the southern hemisphere, and I’m still completely disoriented.)  The airport is fairly small, with five gates that I could count.  We were laughing with each other as we headed to baggage claim. Another American commented to me that he’d looked at us and we all seemed to be having a really good time.  I admitted that we were a church group. 

After collecting our bags, we passed through to the waiting area where we saw Melissa, the chair of Curitiba’s Companion Diocese Committee Carmen Etel (in a San Francisco t-shirt), Michael Tedrick, and maybe 8 to 10 others, there to greet us and deliver us to the homes where we will be staying.   Excitement and joy all around as our visit finally begins.

Nancy and I were driven by Cesar to his home, where he lives with his wife Veronica and son Marcel (who was also at airport).   Cesar and Marcel are both English speakers, having each spent several years in the U.S.  Marcel teaches English and is also the committed Episcopalian in the family; his parents still have ties to Roman Catholicism but have also become involved with their son’s church community.  It was Cesar, a retired firefighter and police officer, who took us to our first gathering Tuesday evening after we had a chance to nap and freshen up.  We didn’t meet Veronica until after, as both she and Marcel had to work; but they have all been the most gracious and generous of hosts.  They have also supplied the one element of the trip that I thought would go missing, a cute dog.

At the Catedral de São Tiago downtown, we met up with everyone again this evening and were joined by Bishop Naudal (a surprise, since we were last told that he would be away the first several days of our visit), his wife Carmen Regina, the Cathedral’s Dean Flavio and his wife Rosi (pronounced, of course, “Ho-zee”), who turned out at least three courses of local style pizza, concluding with banana cinnamon.  There were also a few kids rounding out the gathering.  We took a lot of pictures, talked, laughed, shared pictures on cell phones, prayed and sang, and sat down to eat, with the Brazilians trying to speak mostly in English, and the Americans doing a much poorer job of trying sometimes to communicate in Portuguese, except that is for Michael Tedrick.  Michael, by the way, confirmed for me that the first installment of this series had gone up on the diocesan website; and he offered the first correction.  He has only been here about six months thus far, and while he’s thinking now of staying here for two years (up from the original estimate of one), it will be however long it should be.  Well, we’re all tired folks.  Tomorrow (Wednesday) we’ll be taking a city tour with members of the Missão São Pedro, Apóstolo – that’s Portuguese for St. Peter and a chance for a shout out to my home parish of St. Peter’s, San Francisco.  Boa noite.  More to come manhá.