In just under fourteen hours, I will be boarding US Airways flight 1580 to a place many of you have likely only heard stories about, and that you have never even dreamed of going to – Charlotte, North Carolina. It is there I will sit for two hours, waiting to be delivered from the land of once respectable college basketball to the other side of the equator – where toilets flush clockwise and New Year's Eve is in the middle of the summer.
According to 90% of the people I have spoken to regarding Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, specifically), it is an extremely dangerous place with beautiful women – and we are pretty sure they speak Portuguese there (Brazilian and Spanish are close seconds). Unfortunately, I have also been told that the danger and the women are mutually exclusive so the ideal scenario of being robbed by a beautiful woman will fail to come to fruition.
However, despite this information coming from the most reliable of sources (the American public and cable news networks), I still have my reservations. Rest assured that the record will be set straight and you, the reader, will one day in the near(ish) future, be able to carry on a well-informed conversation about the River of January and its surrounding areas.
It is difficult for me to say goodbye to all the most important things in my life: democracy, Disneyland, pedestrian right-of-way, peanut butter, but I can hope that I will discover equally awesome things in my new home. I invite you all (well, most of you), to join me on this epic adventure.
May the force be with us.