Day three: (the worst) of the arctic chill. Today was our last day of classes. We spent our Portuguese class talking about different types of regional food in Brazil that we would be trying later that night as a part of our final PUC dinner at a restaurant called Minas, a Brazilian buffet that specialized in foods from the interior of Minas Gerais. After we were sufficiently hungry we broke early for lunch. Allison and I had decided that we would go back to the federal police today to pay our fines so that we would not have any future problems when we tried to come back into Brazil. So, during our long lunch break we went back to the bank in PUC to pay our fines. It was another quick trip (with unnecessary restrictions of space and security) to pay more money to the federal police, and in the bank we ran into Molly and Justin doing the same thing and we made plans to return together after our final culture class. For lunch we decided to do something different and went to a por quilo place that was on the same block as the campus which was very good, but like most buildings in São Paulo, does not have a strict division between the indoors and the outdoors (no insulation, windows that you do not close) so it was absolutely freezing in there…
In our final afternoon culture class we had a concluding discussion which wrapped up all of the things we had seen and discussed in the past six weeks. It was bitter sweet to be in the last class. It was really nice to have a last opportunity to talk with everyone and with Jeff, but it was also sad to think that I will not see most of these people in the future since we all live in different parts of the US.
After our final class Allison, Justin, Molly and I all got back on the bus and took another 30 min ride to the Federal Police headquarters to turn in our paperwork and have our fines removed from our passports. We were able to go directly up to the fourth floor after we checked in with the front desk. This time when we arrived in the little fines room it was packed with people who had been there for hours (the length of the process varies a lot depending on the day of the week). One of those trapped in the little bureaucratic torture room was Daniel. Yesterday Daniel had forgotten his original passport but went home to get it and then met back up with us at the police station. However, after he finally got into the interview he realized that he had lost his original form that the consulate in the US gave him to give to the federal police, and they do not accept copies, so he had to go home and come back the next day. When we ran in to him today he had been at the federal police for five hours…The immigration officer (king of the holding pen) remembered us and our dancing antics from the day before and seemed genuinely happy to help us. Since we were just paying the fine and not waiting to get anything processed we only had to wait 15 min and then we were able to leave. Unfortunately, we had to leave Daniel there to wait.
We took the same route back as we had yesterday, bus to metro to metro, and we tried to minimize the time we spent outside as it was cold and rainy, it was a triple layer day. To reward/cheer ourselves up after our second federal police visit Allison and I stopped by our local bakery and got éclairs then went home to bundle up more and take a nap before meeting our Portuguese professors for dinner at the restaurant Minas in Jardims.
Dinner was a really fun experience. The restaurant was really nice and had a wide variety of foods from different parts of Brazil. I attempted to try as many foods as possible so I only took a bite of each item. That was definitely the way to go since the foods were all delicious and so different from one another. The restaurant also had a selection of cachaças made in Minas for us to try, and really great deserts (dark chocolate fondue with Brazilian fruits!). At the end of the dinner the professors gave us certificates for completing our Portuguese classes and wished us well with our future studies. The dinner was a really nice send off, but the only downside was that we were not all sitting together so we you could not really talk to everyone before people began to split up and head home. Most of our group was leaving the next day to go back to the US, although a few of us would be staying longer and traveling (yay Salvador!).
As part of our last night out in São Paulo a group of us decided to go forro dancing again. We checked the website and it said that they would open at 10 and have the live band on at 11, so a group of us decided to go; Isaiah, Allison, Elliott, Molly, Roxanne and her boyfriend, Christa, Simon, Daniel, and I. It turns out that we do not have good luck with this place, last time we were late, and this time we were early. We got there about 10:30 and we were part of the first wave of entrants. We also found out once we were inside that the band would probably not go on till 12:30 or 1:00, but we decided to make the best of it and we got some tables and vinho quente and chatted. After some couples started to fill the floor we began to work on our dance skills. I have decided that in forro there is no standard or regularized dance steps, everyone has their own style, and once you think you have got a handle on the steps and rhythm you change partners and the next one dances with different steps. However, I think that overall our group improved in their dancing skills, and it was also fun to watch the really good dancers float around the floor. The band came on about 1:00 and we stayed for another 40 min before sharing a taxi home.
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