(This story is a continuation of a bureaucratic miracle whose history started months ago. Part 1 started last week.) As instructed, I called the Federal Police back in April. My vacation-loving contact told me that my paperwork had been submitted to an office in Belo Horizonte with so many initials in its acronym that he […]
Comedic
Stories with humor, finding the light in the little things in life.
Bureaucrazy and Bank Accounts
July 27, 2013 by 3 Comments
Today a miracle happened. A miracle of monumental proportions, the kind you write home to mom about, the kind that changes lives. To understand the miracle this story has to go back a ways. But don’t all the best stories? We were married in March of last year. At my Federal Police residency interview a kind […]
Fotocrônica: Lost in Translation
July 24, 2013 by 2 Comments
My husband once quipped that he’s yet to see a t-shirt in Brazil that has decorative words in Portuguese on it. Everything is in English. Y’know what? I spend a lot of time people-watching as I work the market every Saturday and he’s right. There’s church t-shirts and marketing for local businesses–those are all in Portuguese–but […]
4 Lessons from Tuning into the Other Side of the World
July 13, 2013 by 1 Comment
We are without satellite TV. This is a big deal because in this small town there’s really there’s not much else to do most nights. We used to have a pirated satellite box which decoded over 100 channels for us. When we got it the guy explained that some day, he couldn’t predict when, the […]
Fotocrônica: Oh the Shame
July 3, 2013 by 2 Comments
Lots of larger Brazilian supermarkets have started the policy of not providing plastic shopping bags. The customer is expected to bring their own reusable bag. The populace is still adjusting, especially since it varies from store to store. I occasionally shop at a large supermarket in larger Theófilo Otoni to buy the items we crave […]
Fotocrônica: Pattern Mixing
May 15, 2013 by 2 Comments
I don’t know about you, but I love me the occasional fashion blog. It’s the girly-girl in me. I like them even more than fashion magazines because they’re the voices of normal women, not style editors. In any case, they’ve all–fashion blogs and magazines–been in a tizzy for the last year or two about the […]
5 Sweet Little Brazilian Lies
April 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
An important thing to know is that Brazilians have a flexible definition of the truth. White lies are social necessities; everyone knows that’s not true, everyone says it anyhow. This extends from the street corner all the way up to the highest levels of government. So it’s got all sorts of implications, both good and […]
Traitorous
April 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
See this lovely flower? Her name is Cansanção. Her name is lyrical—like canção (song) or cansaço (weariness). She lives right next to and her flowers look just like those of the delicious-smelling marsh plant (shown in the forefront of the above picture). Trust her not. There is no end to the number of stinging plants […]
