We arrived in Brasilia on Wednesday afternoon after 24 hours of travelling, and met our friend Jane at the airport. After a long night of sleep, we went the next day to the national university and checked out Jane’s father’s chemistry lab- my wife Bekah was in heaven (as a chemical engineering major). Later, we went to Jane’s friend Maria’s outside of Brasilia and spent a wonderful day in the outdoors and in their beautiful house. We had a great lunch and dinner there too, and the rest of the tessellation expo group will be enjoying a barbecue there and swimming! There are orchids, palm trees, wild monkeys, parrots, and all sorts of things. Maria is a very gifted artist and has magnificent mandala artwork everywhere.

Late last night we picked up our lost luggage from the airport (hooray for clothes) and this morning we visited the Jardim Botanico, where the tessellation expo will be taking place July 29th to August 6th. We picked up copies of the magazine (from the Jardim) and saw the final layout for the posters. We also met the wonderful lady who is helping us to make this a reality. They were all very, very nice people, and we really felt a great loss by not being able to speak Portuguese with all these new friends.

Our friend Joel will be flying down here tomorrow, and should arrive on Sunday. Not long afterwards our friend Christiane will also be flying, and the group will be complete!

The exhibition space is quite beautiful, and it should really be a great event. We will make sure that there are tons of pictures! I’ll be updating with many photos once I get them transferred from the camera later on this weekend.

To all our friends- we’re having a great time, and the coffee is wonderful (and strong!)

-Eric