I was finally able to register with the federal police yesterday. I went through a similar bureaucratic process when I lived in Austria for a year. However, the Austrian process pales in comparison to the Brazilian process.
First, about a week ago, I had to pay around $115 in taxes to the Brazilian police. I couldn't just take the money directly to the police, though. That would be too simple. Instead, I had to fill out and print two forms from the website of the federal police and then take the completed forms and cash to the bank. At the bank, I had to explain what I needed to the official at the front desk, who then gave me a number, and sent me through a metal detector. Only after I passed through the metal detector, was I allowed to speak with a teller. Once I got to the teller, the process took fewer than five minutes. I gave her the two forms and the cash and she gave me two large receipts in return.
Once I paid the taxes, I went to a photo booth to get two 3 cm x 4 cm photos for the temporary ID. I still had several 2 x 2 passport photos from the U.S., but the Brazilian ID requires a different size. Once I had the photos, I had to make copies of four specific pages of my passport and have the copies notarized. This step proved to be quite the challenge. First, given the anti-counterfeit security features of the passport pages, my passport wouldn't copy clearly on a regular copier. I had to go to a Xerox copy store and have them copy the passport using a high-quality laser copier. I then took these copies to a notary, whose address I had found online. The official at the notary told me that he couldn't notarize the copies without a translation of the entire passport, which would cost me around $4 per page. (For reference, there are 24 pages in a U.S. passport.) I had heard of other students in my language class who had gotten their passport copies notarized without translations, so I asked them where they went. It turns out that they went to a different notary, one that offered basically the same services, just employed different people. This notary notarized the copies of my passport in about 15 minutes and charged me about $14.
By this point, I had paid the taxes, had two official photos, and had the notarized copies of my passport. Yesterday, I took all of these documents, plus my original visa application and my passport to the federal police. Two students from the language class learned that they could register with the federal police in Niterói between 8am and 4pm instead of having to take a taxi all the way out to the international airport at 5am, which is when the line begins forming for the registration process at the airport. So I thought I'd take my chances and go to Niterói instead of the airport. I think it was the better option. At least I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn.
Niterói is across the river from Rio. I thought there was a bus from Gávea (where I'm living), over the bridge, and into Niterói, but after waiting 40 minutes for the bus (remember there are no schedules), I concluded that there must not be a direct bus to Niterói, at least not from Gávea. What to do next? I went back to the house to look up other options online. That's when I learned that there was also a ferry from Centro, which is where I had taken the language class, to the center of Niterói. (I knew this before, actually, but had promptly forgotten once I heard about the mythical bus from Gávea. Okay, perhaps the bus does exist, but it just wasn't coming yesterday!)
Armed with this new information, I ventured out into the 95-degree heat again. By this time, it was 11am and there was not a cloud in the sky. After waiting 20 minutes, I boarded the bus to Centro and rode about an hour into the city. When I got off the bus in Centro, I walked two blocks down to the dock. (In the two weeks of the language program in Centro, I never realized the center of the city was so close to the water!) After paying $1.65 for a ticket, I took a seat on the second floor of the ferry and had a nice view out the back window. Unfortunately, Rio doesn't have any open-air ferries like the ones in the U.S. Considering how crowded the ferries can get, though, this might be a good thing.
When I arrived in Niterói 20 minutes later, I began asking people for directions to the federal police since my directions were from the bus stop of the bus that never arrived. (The students who went before me told me ahead of time that everyone knew where the station was, so I didn't bother looking up new directions, especially since Google Map's coverage of Niterói is sketchy at best.) It turned out to be about a 20-minute walk from the ferry to the station -- not too bad, considering the size of the city. What I hadn't counted on, though, was that there were actually two police stations: one for the military police and the other for the federal police. I went to the military police station first because I saw it first. It was immediately apparent I was in the wrong place, particularly when a fully armed soldier came to the iron gate to greet me. However, I figured both stations were police stations -- the military police must know where the federal police are located. I was correct, and as it turns out, the federal police station was just two blocks down the street and around the corner. I thanked the soldier and made my way quickly to the federal police station. By this point, it was 2:30 pm and the office would close for the day at 4pm.
Once I arrived at the federal police station, I was relieved to see how small the station was and how clearly everything was labeled. This should be a piece of cake. I took a number and five minutes later was called to report to an official. The official took a look at my documents and handed me another form. I filled out the new form (luckily, I brought my dictionary) and gave it back to the official, who then sent me into a backroom to be fingerprinted. After being fingerprinted and washing the black ink off my fingers--do you know how hard it is to get black ink off your fingers without any sort of scrubbing implement?!--I returned to the original official. He took another long look at my documents, filled out the spaces designated for "official use only", instructed me to sign on two more lines, and finally, with the flourish of his pen, approved my application for "temporary foreigner" status in the country of Brazil. He glued my photo to my temporary ID slip--it's not even a card--added a barcode sticker, a stamp, and a raised seal, and finally gave it back to me. In that moment, I became an officially registered estrangeira from the EUA. Finally.
A former participant of my exchange program described this registration process as our "initiation". It certainly is; I'm just glad it's done. I hope to return to Niterói on a much less stressful day to visit the famous Museum of Contemporary Art designed by the Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. When I do, I'll write all about it here.
Banda de Ipanema
February 13, 2011
The pre-Carnival season has officially begun. Yes, Rio's people "Cariocas" are so cool that they have a pre-Carnival season (now until March 3), official Carnival season (March 4-8), and post-Carnival rejuvenation period (March 9-11, for example, at my university UFRJ).
On Saturday, I watched the rehearsal of the samba band "Banda de Ipanema". (I was originally supposed to tour a portion of Rio's coast by car, but one of the people going was sick, so we are going to reschedule for another day.) I'm really glad I had the chance to see this band practice. Even the practice itself turned into a street party afterwards.
Here are a few photographic impressions from the day. If you want to know more about any photo in particular, leave me a comment and I'll try to answer your question. You can also check out my Picasa Web album for more photos of the Banda de Ipanema and other events around Rio.
Learning Portuguese through Immersion
February 12, 2011
It's been a week since I've written here -- mainly because I've been "in class" all day at BridgeBrazil. BridgeBrazil is an immersion-based Portuguese-language school. The classes emphasize conversation as opposed to reading and writing, though the latter are also included. This is a challenge for me. While I can read and write reasonably well, it takes me a lot longer to learn to speak with any degree of spontaneity. For many people, the situation is reversed: they can pick up speaking right away, but have trouble with the finer points of grammar or reading comprehension. (Case in point: we had an hour-and-a-half question and answer session yesterday on various forms of present and past tense. People who are normally fabulous at speaking just couldn't comprehend which tense to use in which time scenario. I was ready to tune out after the first five minutes -- just follow the rules! [Yes, I know it's more difficult than that.] And I digress ...)
So this week I've had four hours of Portuguese each day, sometimes lunch with friends afterwards, and an hour commute each way, from Gávea to Centro (where BridgeBrazil is located) and back again. This is approximately the same length of a typical school day in Pittsburgh, but the heat, coupled with insane busdrivers who occasionally race one another on pothole-ridden roads, and of course the energy it takes to learn a new language, make most days completely exhausting. If my Portuguese improves considerably, though, it's all worth it. Next week is my final week at BridgeBrazil and then I am on my own to pick up the language through daily interactions and from the textbooks I brought with me. The race is on!
So this week I've had four hours of Portuguese each day, sometimes lunch with friends afterwards, and an hour commute each way, from Gávea to Centro (where BridgeBrazil is located) and back again. This is approximately the same length of a typical school day in Pittsburgh, but the heat, coupled with insane busdrivers who occasionally race one another on pothole-ridden roads, and of course the energy it takes to learn a new language, make most days completely exhausting. If my Portuguese improves considerably, though, it's all worth it. Next week is my final week at BridgeBrazil and then I am on my own to pick up the language through daily interactions and from the textbooks I brought with me. The race is on!
20 things I learned this week & other snippets
February 6, 2011
In no particular order:
1. Traffic in Rio is insane. There's no gentler way to describe it. Just this week, I saw a car hit a motorcyclist. The motorcycle bounced off the side of the car, but stayed in the lane. The drivers exchanged harsh words, but neither one of them stopped. They both kept driving.
2. Buses do not have schedules. Nor do they stop for people to get on. You just have to watch for your bus and flag it down when you see it. On the positive side, fare is relatively cheap. Depending on the distance traveled and the exchange rate, fare ranges between $1.43 and $1.80 each way.
3. One of my first impressions of Gávea, the neighborhood where I'm staying, was the prevalence of relatively unskilled labor here. On every street, there are [clearly poor] men working on the houses of the rich[er], by hand. I saw some men pounding cement with literally nothing but hammers and screwdrivers. I saw another group of men watch one of their fellow workers spackle the outside wall of a house. In the second case, I couldn't tell if the person doing the work was teaching the others how to do it or if they were just watching for fun. Someone told me later that the latter is often the case. The flipside to the lack of construction equipment we take for granted in the U.S. is that there is also a strong tradition of skilled craftsmanship here. The details on some of the houses here are quite elaborate and beautiful.
4. People are apparently worried about the amount of chlorine in the tap water in Gávea. In the house where I'm staying, there is a drinking water filtration system attached to the kitchen faucet, which is great because it means that I don't have to constantly buy bottled water. After showing me the filtration system, however, my landlady then instructed me to always leave the bathroom window open (near the ceiling) when I take a shower so that the chlorine gas can escape. Should I start worrying now?
5. On a different note, Cristo Redentor lights up at night! I can see it from my bedroom window.
6. Brazilian refrigerators (or at least the one here) do not have lights inside. This is a minor point, but my split-second reaction to the lack of light was: "Oh no, when did we lose power?"
7. I learned two new fruits this week: jaqueira (jackfruit) and maracujá (passionfruit). I saw the jaqueira at the Botanical Garden and I had maracujá juice later in the week. (I had had maracujá before--in Austria of all places--but not fresh.) I also had peach nectar (pêssego), which was absolutely delicious. There are juice stands nearly on every corner, and since I know the names of only a few tropical fruits (even in English), I plan to try all the different juices I see :-)
8. Almost all the stores I've been in have mirrors for back walls. It's very disconcerting. I assume the mirrors function as a low-tech security system. Clothing stores are the exception, which have salespeople that follow you around the store instead.
9. When Brazilian cashiers scan a credit card, they use the 3-digit security code on the back side of the card, in addition to the full account number. Perhaps I never noticed before, but I don't think U.S. stores do this.
10. It appears that I am extremely allergic to whatever is blooming in Rio right now. On top of sneezing and itchy eyes, my throat, ears, and sinuses are all sore. My landlady joked, "You're just allergic to the sun," and then promptly offered me an "herbal remedy".
11. olho = eye. ouvido = ear. ouvir = to listen. I've been using these vocabulary words frequently in the past few days. I knew them before, but for whatever reason, I've been mixing them up and creating new combinations thereof. (The olhido is the organ between the eye and the ear that can both see and hear, of course.)
12. Despite my limited vocabulary, according to the online placement test for my Portuguese course that starts this week, on a scale of 1-5, 1 being total beginner and 5 being advanced, I scored a 4 - advanced intermediate. All that this means is that I know how to take multiple choice tests well!
13. I learned this week that I actually like mate, pronounced "matcha". It's definitely better cold than hot and the real, everyday Brazilian variety is so much better than the yerba-maté you can get in the States.
Actually, I should qualify that statement: mate made by your landlady's grandmother, who insists you sit down for a cup before going into the city for the day, is much better than yerba-maté from the States. (I'll probably bring some back.)
14. Football, i.e. soccer, is serious business in Brazil. Okay, I already knew this, but isn't celebrating in the streets until 3:30 in the morning taking things a bit far? Apparently not. There was a celebration in the streets on one of the nights that I was really tired and not feeling so well, but that said, I would love to see a live game or two while I'm here.
15. Trash is collected ... at night? This can't possibly be right, but every night around 10pm (on non-football-celebrating nights), there has been a noise down the street that sounds exactly like a trash truck. One night I'll walk down the street and see what it actually is.
16. When I first arrived, one of the Portuguese engineering students told me, in English, that this neighborhood (Gávea) is home to many artists. I think he may have meant musicians. There's been music every night, and since most of the houses are open-plan in that they're not as enclosed as U.S. American houses, sound travels quite easily. (On more than one occasion, I've thought that we had a visitor downstairs and it actually turned out to be people talking next door.) So far I've heard a piano, guitar, drums, maybe panpipes, and something that sounds like a vibraslap, just not all at the same time ... yet.
17. I discovered a new method for food shopping: when in the produce section, choose the cheapest fruits and vegetables because they are likely the local ones. I know what foods are in-season in the Eastern U.S., but on the other side of the Equator in Brazil, the growing season and availability of produce are completely different. Tropical fruits are an obvious choice, but vegetables make for a much harder decision. Bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant were all super expensive, but vegetables that I think of as fall/winter vegetables in the U.S., e.g. squash, yams, and various gourds, were quite cheap. It also depends on where you shop, of course. I've been disappointed in the ridiculous prices at the Zona Sul chain grocery stores around here, but for a while, those groceries were the only stores I could find. Yesterday, I discovered a tiny shop down the street that has a decent selection for its size and much more reasonable prices. I'm looking forward to finally getting to an open-air market, where I can buy fruits, vegetables, and other products directly from the people who produce them.
18. On Friday, I met an Austrian engineering student who is a post-doc at the local university. As a graduate student from Salzburg, he spent two 4-month periods at the Brazilian university (PUC-Rio) and now he is here for another 4 months or so to collaborate on some scientific journal articles. It was nice to talk with another expat and to hear some of his stories of traveling in Brazil. Interestingly, he was very reluctant to speak German with me. We spoke English for the majority of our conversation and he kept asking how my Portuguese was. (His English is lightyears better than my Portuguese.) If I need someone later to encourage me in learning Portuguese, he may be a good person to do so, as he is already fluent in the language.
19. I've started to look for a used bike. There is a used bike shop nearby, but it has been closed both times I visited, so I think it may be permanently closed. Some people had suggested particular newspapers and online listings when I was looking for an apartment, so I am going to return to those sites and look there for bike listings. I'm sure it will become easier to find bikes and/or listings for them once the universities open after Carnival and all the students return from summer vacation.
20. The final lesson from this week: Never make unfounded assumptions, especially in a new country! Everything is a learning experience.
1. Traffic in Rio is insane. There's no gentler way to describe it. Just this week, I saw a car hit a motorcyclist. The motorcycle bounced off the side of the car, but stayed in the lane. The drivers exchanged harsh words, but neither one of them stopped. They both kept driving.
2. Buses do not have schedules. Nor do they stop for people to get on. You just have to watch for your bus and flag it down when you see it. On the positive side, fare is relatively cheap. Depending on the distance traveled and the exchange rate, fare ranges between $1.43 and $1.80 each way.
3. One of my first impressions of Gávea, the neighborhood where I'm staying, was the prevalence of relatively unskilled labor here. On every street, there are [clearly poor] men working on the houses of the rich[er], by hand. I saw some men pounding cement with literally nothing but hammers and screwdrivers. I saw another group of men watch one of their fellow workers spackle the outside wall of a house. In the second case, I couldn't tell if the person doing the work was teaching the others how to do it or if they were just watching for fun. Someone told me later that the latter is often the case. The flipside to the lack of construction equipment we take for granted in the U.S. is that there is also a strong tradition of skilled craftsmanship here. The details on some of the houses here are quite elaborate and beautiful.
4. People are apparently worried about the amount of chlorine in the tap water in Gávea. In the house where I'm staying, there is a drinking water filtration system attached to the kitchen faucet, which is great because it means that I don't have to constantly buy bottled water. After showing me the filtration system, however, my landlady then instructed me to always leave the bathroom window open (near the ceiling) when I take a shower so that the chlorine gas can escape. Should I start worrying now?
5. On a different note, Cristo Redentor lights up at night! I can see it from my bedroom window.
6. Brazilian refrigerators (or at least the one here) do not have lights inside. This is a minor point, but my split-second reaction to the lack of light was: "Oh no, when did we lose power?"
7. I learned two new fruits this week: jaqueira (jackfruit) and maracujá (passionfruit). I saw the jaqueira at the Botanical Garden and I had maracujá juice later in the week. (I had had maracujá before--in Austria of all places--but not fresh.) I also had peach nectar (pêssego), which was absolutely delicious. There are juice stands nearly on every corner, and since I know the names of only a few tropical fruits (even in English), I plan to try all the different juices I see :-)
8. Almost all the stores I've been in have mirrors for back walls. It's very disconcerting. I assume the mirrors function as a low-tech security system. Clothing stores are the exception, which have salespeople that follow you around the store instead.
9. When Brazilian cashiers scan a credit card, they use the 3-digit security code on the back side of the card, in addition to the full account number. Perhaps I never noticed before, but I don't think U.S. stores do this.
10. It appears that I am extremely allergic to whatever is blooming in Rio right now. On top of sneezing and itchy eyes, my throat, ears, and sinuses are all sore. My landlady joked, "You're just allergic to the sun," and then promptly offered me an "herbal remedy".
11. olho = eye. ouvido = ear. ouvir = to listen. I've been using these vocabulary words frequently in the past few days. I knew them before, but for whatever reason, I've been mixing them up and creating new combinations thereof. (The olhido is the organ between the eye and the ear that can both see and hear, of course.)
12. Despite my limited vocabulary, according to the online placement test for my Portuguese course that starts this week, on a scale of 1-5, 1 being total beginner and 5 being advanced, I scored a 4 - advanced intermediate. All that this means is that I know how to take multiple choice tests well!
13. I learned this week that I actually like mate, pronounced "matcha". It's definitely better cold than hot and the real, everyday Brazilian variety is so much better than the yerba-maté you can get in the States.
Actually, I should qualify that statement: mate made by your landlady's grandmother, who insists you sit down for a cup before going into the city for the day, is much better than yerba-maté from the States. (I'll probably bring some back.)
14. Football, i.e. soccer, is serious business in Brazil. Okay, I already knew this, but isn't celebrating in the streets until 3:30 in the morning taking things a bit far? Apparently not. There was a celebration in the streets on one of the nights that I was really tired and not feeling so well, but that said, I would love to see a live game or two while I'm here.
15. Trash is collected ... at night? This can't possibly be right, but every night around 10pm (on non-football-celebrating nights), there has been a noise down the street that sounds exactly like a trash truck. One night I'll walk down the street and see what it actually is.
16. When I first arrived, one of the Portuguese engineering students told me, in English, that this neighborhood (Gávea) is home to many artists. I think he may have meant musicians. There's been music every night, and since most of the houses are open-plan in that they're not as enclosed as U.S. American houses, sound travels quite easily. (On more than one occasion, I've thought that we had a visitor downstairs and it actually turned out to be people talking next door.) So far I've heard a piano, guitar, drums, maybe panpipes, and something that sounds like a vibraslap, just not all at the same time ... yet.
17. I discovered a new method for food shopping: when in the produce section, choose the cheapest fruits and vegetables because they are likely the local ones. I know what foods are in-season in the Eastern U.S., but on the other side of the Equator in Brazil, the growing season and availability of produce are completely different. Tropical fruits are an obvious choice, but vegetables make for a much harder decision. Bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant were all super expensive, but vegetables that I think of as fall/winter vegetables in the U.S., e.g. squash, yams, and various gourds, were quite cheap. It also depends on where you shop, of course. I've been disappointed in the ridiculous prices at the Zona Sul chain grocery stores around here, but for a while, those groceries were the only stores I could find. Yesterday, I discovered a tiny shop down the street that has a decent selection for its size and much more reasonable prices. I'm looking forward to finally getting to an open-air market, where I can buy fruits, vegetables, and other products directly from the people who produce them.
18. On Friday, I met an Austrian engineering student who is a post-doc at the local university. As a graduate student from Salzburg, he spent two 4-month periods at the Brazilian university (PUC-Rio) and now he is here for another 4 months or so to collaborate on some scientific journal articles. It was nice to talk with another expat and to hear some of his stories of traveling in Brazil. Interestingly, he was very reluctant to speak German with me. We spoke English for the majority of our conversation and he kept asking how my Portuguese was. (His English is lightyears better than my Portuguese.) If I need someone later to encourage me in learning Portuguese, he may be a good person to do so, as he is already fluent in the language.
19. I've started to look for a used bike. There is a used bike shop nearby, but it has been closed both times I visited, so I think it may be permanently closed. Some people had suggested particular newspapers and online listings when I was looking for an apartment, so I am going to return to those sites and look there for bike listings. I'm sure it will become easier to find bikes and/or listings for them once the universities open after Carnival and all the students return from summer vacation.
20. The final lesson from this week: Never make unfounded assumptions, especially in a new country! Everything is a learning experience.
Street Art
February 5, 2011
I love street art, especially in the form of murals and creative graffiti. Here are a few photos from the past few days around Rio. The majority are from a wall across the street from the Botanical Gardens. The last one is from a street corner in Ipanema.
And just in case there was any doubt, here is a geographical reminder. This could be the Las Vegas counterpart to the "Rio-Amsterdam Connection" pictured at the top of this entry.
So Rio apparently has some artists! The next time I visit the Botanical Garden, I plan to take more pictures of the wall. I'll post them here when I do.
I have no idea what the "Rio Amsterdam Connection" is, but the colors are great.
Along the same wall, there is also a yoga/Hindu/mind-body theme.
Leaving the Botanical Garden wall and traveling east, we find the ...
... one-eyed peaceful Martian of Ipanema?
So Rio apparently has some artists! The next time I visit the Botanical Garden, I plan to take more pictures of the wall. I'll post them here when I do.
Jardim Botánico = Botanical Garden
February 3, 2011
John VI of Portugual founded the Botanical Garden in 1808 (Fun fact: In typical Portuguese fashion, John VI's full name is "João Maria José Francisco Xavier de Paula Luís António Domingos Rafael de Braganças.") He originally wanted to cultivate various trees and plants for spices, but 14 years into the project, the garden grew so large that it was opened to the public. Today the park covers about 140 hectares (~0.5 sq. mile) and is home to more than 6,000 species. Half a square mile doesn't look so impressive on paper, but when you're surrounded by half a square mile of trees for as far as you can see, you begin to change your perspective. I saw a small portion of the garden and hope to return soon to see more.
I started with this trail:
and came upon a tree with an interesting fruit:
A prickly guava? An oblong, unripened lychee?
What I do know is that I was hit in the arm by a falling lychee later that day and it hurt! Tropical cities should have tourist courtesy signs: "Caution: Watch for falling fruit!"
The two photos below are from the water / hydroponic section of the garden.
Anybody need some bamboo? I've seen more bamboo in Brazil in the short time I've been here than I've seen in my entire life. (And yes, the background image to this blog is bamboo, not sugarcane.)
Those steps (below) look so inviting. The little gazebo at the top almost looks like the beginning to a Japanese garden. It's not, but I do hope to visit the actual Japanese garden next time.
Day 1
February 1, 2011
It's actually Day 3 now, but I'm just catching up. I arrived on Sunday after two basically uneventful flights. (We'll ignore the guy across the aisle from me who kept pacing between our two seats and the guy in front of me who kept leaning his seat back so far that his head was nearly in my lap.) Otherwise, the flights were fine.
I took a taxi from the airport to the house in Gávea where I'll be staying for the next six months. The half-hour ride cost 90 Brazilian Reais (R$), which is about $54. That's about what it would cost in Pittsburgh, too. I'm still adjusting to the exchange rate here. There are currently 1.66 R$ to the U.S. Dollar, but inflation is so high in Brazil (6.04%) that things are actually expensive, even though the exchange rate is in favor of the Dollar. It's a weird and somewhat disappointing combination.
When I arrived at the house in Gávea, Mari (the aunt of my Portuguese professor and the landlady of the house) and her mother, Cely or "Sally", were both waiting for me. There are also three other students in the house, but they will be moving out in the next few days and another student will be replacing them. The house is also home to two cats: one friendly mixed-breed and one rather aloof Persian.
The layout of the house is very interesting. One of my favorite features is the front door, which instead of opening into a foyer or livingroom, opens instead into a garden and patio. Another door past the garden opens into the actual house. The livingroom, diningroom, and kitchen are all on the first floor of the house. The bedrooms are on the second floor. My bedroom (below) has an attached bathroom.
The best feature of this room is the view:
The best view from the house, however, is from the rooftop:
And that's all for today's house tour! I hope you enjoyed the pictures. Come back soon for a tour of the Botanical Gardens.