Movie Mondays

July 22nd
Today in our Portuguese class we found out, yet again, that there had been a communication failure between our program and PUC when our professor informed us that we would be starting our final 10 min presentations since there were three days left in class. Now, we knew about the presentation days, but we had been counting from a different day than the professors (our Tulane syllabus said that the final lunch would be on Friday, while the Portuguese professors had it scheduled for Thursday). Needless to say we were a bit surprised…but the presentations were very informal (no power point or standing up in front of the class) and four brave souls volunteered to go yesterday, Jenike, Roxanne, Andrew, and Elliott each talking about their research interests. After the presentations we worked on our understanding of the Future Subjunctive (a grammatical beast in my opinion) and then went to lunch. At lunch I learned about more of the potential hassles to get our paperwork with the federal police straightened out…Naomi had done hers last week and was charged an extra fine of 8.00 reais a day that she was over her 30 day limit (the registration grace period) even though her appointment for that day (made by PUC) was set several weeks ago.  However, Angelika was not charged the fine; apparently it is completely up to the interviewer’s mood to decide if they charge the fine or not. A fun Brazilian bureaucratic experience to look forward to on Wednesday when the rest of our group descends on the federal police.
After lunch our afternoon cultural class met up in the small library auditorium room to watch a 2006 Brazilian movie, nominated for best foreign film, called “O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias” or “The Year my Parents Went on Vacation.” Under the military dictatorship in Brazil ‘going on vacation’ was a euphemism for members of the left or anti-military movements who were forced underground. In the story, the parents who are anti-government organizers, are forced underground, but first they drop their eight year old son off at his grandfather’s building in São Paulo. However, the parents do not know that just that day the grandfather has had a heart attack and died, so their son is left to be cared for by the grandfather’s Jewish immigrant community until his parents return. I will not say anymore and spoil the story, but it is really good and not just a depressing (but usually rightfully so) Latin American dictatorship movie.
After the movie ended, Allison and I rushed right next door to get to the bank before it closed at 4:00 so that we could get our money orders for our federal police visit on Wednesday. We were lucky and made it in just before the bank doors were closed to new customers. It was a somewhat complicated effort to get into the bank as you are not allowed to carry in bags of any kind and must stow them in a locker outside the bank (you even have to put your electronics and papers or keys into a little clear double sided box in the wall before you can go into the revolving security door. However, there was only one locker left and I was actually able to successfully negotiate with the security guards to let me bring my bag through the revolving security doors and leave it in a corner while I went to the clerk. Luckily, since it was so late in the day, there was no line, and I was able to get my money orders quickly and pleasantly I was even able to make bank small-talk with the teller! (literally the ‘money order’ was the clerk taking my money and printing some numbers on the paper for my request for the police and returning it to me). To celebrate our Brazilian banking success, Allison and I stopped by our acai/vitamina place on the way home, for one last cold treat before the cold front moved in later on in the evening.