thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
set in the middle and two covered dishes. After first I thought that we were going to drink from the same cup, but the little glasses were for the servers, a man and a woman. (In FBC Oxford the deacons--men-- serve communion.) The visiting pastor gave a nice devotion from 1 Corinthians about the significance of the Lords Supper and then the man and woman started distributing the grape juice and little pieces of bread as is traditional in the Baptist church.But, the man and women refused to serve the little Forrest Gump character (see Sixth Posting), who was sitting in front of me. The little guy was not to be deterred and went up to the communion table to ask the visiting pastor to be served. The visiting pastor did not know what to do and looked to the pastor for guidance; the pastor of the church shook his head. One of the servers lead the guy back to his seat and the guy complained loudly that he wanted to participate. I almost gave him my little cup of grape juice and piece of bread, but decided against it to avoid a scene. When communion was over and the pastor was making announcements, the little guy went back up and stood in front asking the pastor to let him participate (He kept saying "quero participar"--I want to participate). When the service ended, the pastor was explaining to him that he was not a baptized member of the church and could not receive communion. This is a first for me in almost 60 years of attending the Baptist church: refusal to serve someone communion. But, as a good Baptist, I respect the authority of the pastor to decide these matters.
Independence Day in Brazil. Today (September 7) is Independence Day in Brazil. In 1882, Dom Pedro I, the King of Brazil, declared independence from Portugal. Corumba had a very nice ceremony in the city park where various military and civilian bands played. We all sang the National Anthem (Hino Nacional) while a big Brazilian flag was raised.All the military units in the area participated in a parade to the main military headquarters near the port. The parade stretched for several miles and all the soldiers looked very hot in their uniforms and gear.Boat people. A group of 15 Americans from Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, and Minnesota arrived in Corumba at 6AM on Saturday morning, August 20 for a mission trip on the Paraguay River. I was supposed to meet them and take them to eat breakfast and then on to the Panta Vida, the boat that Carl King had built here several years ago. But as I went to enter the garage, my door opener would not work. No one was up at that hour on Saturday and I began to panic; I dreaded calling Carl King and telling him that I could not come because the truck was stuck in the garage. I calmed down, went back to apartment, got a knife, opened the controller, took out the battery, licked it, and put it back in. IT WORKED and has ever since. I was only a few minutes late and no one said anything. The group had a great week and you can see the pictures on Facebook under GEM, INC.National ID Card. Below is my new Carteira de Identidade which came after I returned from the States in early August. With this, I now have an official ID and can now get my Brazilian driver's license (Carteira Nacional de Habilitacao). I have already contracted with a despachante to do this rather than wait in line to be told I need another document; it is definitely worth the money because of the heat. I have had my picture taken and now only have to have an eye and mental exam; I am not worried about the eye exam, but am studying for the mental exam.Teaching. I am teaching a full load of classes this semester and am going to add a beginner and a conversation class in a few weeks. Here is my weekly schedule:ClassHours Per WeekEnglish Pronunciation3Beginner 12Beginner 25Intermediate 26Intermediate 42.5Advanced 12Total20.5 One of the reasons I came to Brazil was to get teaching experience and I am getting plenty of it. My students range in range from 12 to 50 with the majority young adults. I just love the students and their willingness to learn English. At times, it is a challenge to motivate the younger students but the adults and college students make up for it. Junior and Renata have added more technology ("e-boards") to the classrooms and I am definitely taking full advantage of it.I spend most mornings preparing for class and am teaching Monday through Saturday. With all the bureaucratic things behind me, I am focusing on
teaching and working on our project here. I may even be brave enough to teach a Sunday School class in Portuguese and a Bible study in English.More later.PS I did not put any pictures of or stories about the snakes I recently encountered after the extremely negative reactions I got on Facebook. As they say here, calma gente (calm down people).
Final thoughts on wrapping up the school year.Students.I am almost to the end of the school year and want to share some school experiences. The students have been great, but at times it has been difficult to motivate them to study, especially the teenagers. I realize that this is a worldwide problem, but I have been seeking all types of solutions ranging from ice cream to erasers. (Erasers are a big deal here and the students are constantly borrowing each others' erasers in class.) One of my projects for my break in the US is to research methods to get the students more engaged.Parents.On the other hand, some of the parents have been unbelievable. Here are two examples. The school had an end of year party on the Friday night after Thanksgiving. Of course, as is typical in Brazil, the program started almost an hour late. A drama group from First Baptist Church, Corumba opened the program. Several of the students performed skits, sang, and even acted in a drama; these students volunteered and were not forced to perform. At the end the students' names were called and those students who were passing before the final exams were given little certificates.My ColleaguesDuring the party one mother objected to the Christian theme of the first drama and said that she did could come to go to church. (From her later actions she definitely needed to hear the message in the drama.) She also complained that her son did not participate in the performances and insisted that the school should have "forced" him to participate. The next morning she came to the school with her son and husband in tow to cancel next semester. The poor teenager who is a great student looked mortified at the conduct of his mother; he is not one of my students but I taught his class one time. The mother finally left and the student went to class, but later came to apologize at the break. He said he hoped we were not mad at him. I wanted to say that you cannot help the fact that your mother is acting louca (crazy). We just said it was fine and wished him good luck in his studies. Maybe the mother will change her mind over the long break.On Monday another mother and father came to complain that their daughter's name was not read. Apparently her name was on the list and the person reading the names just skipped her by mistake. She is one of my best students and works very hard. But her parents were furious and I got to talk to them although I had nothing to do with it and had left by the time it happened. Her parents own a small business and I am sure it is a sacrifice for them to pay for her to study at the school. As I listened to the mother carry on in gory detail and repeat everything three times, I thought of my days when I was in IT at Ole Miss and had to listen
to professors complaining. As at Ole Miss, I waited for her to have her say and "spin down." (In Portuguese it takes a long time to have your say.) I then said that I was very sorry and asked what we could we do to right this regrettable situation. At this point Renata offered to provide her books free next semester, which was a big and generous gesture. (I was thinking more along the lines of a letter from the school.) I could see that the mother and father understood the value of the gesture. But the mother said that it would be completely up to her daughter if she wanted to continue. The girl was in class that day and I am sure will continue next semester.Final Observations. Living and teaching English in Brazil has been a wonderful experience. I have certainly improved my teaching techniques and my Portuguese. I am no longer nervous about teaching a class and can understand my students most of the time when they ask me something in Portuguese. I can even watch Brazilian television without being completely lost and frustrated. More importantly I can understand my pastor in church and can even participate in the Sunday School lessons. So I feel a great sense of accomplishment. Who knows what the new year of 2012 holds for me? Other opportunities may arise that were not planned. If I have learned anything during my 60 years on this earth, it is that we are not in control of our lives. New challenges and opportunities arise to make life very interesting.Thanks for following my blog this year. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Getting a Driver's License. The next time you complain about getting or renewing your driver's license in the States, I want you to think about what you have to do to get and/or renew your license here. My international driver's permit from AAA was only good for 6 months and then I had to get a Brazilian driver's license. But I had to wait to start the process until my national ID card arrived. So when the ID card arrived in early August, I officially started the process; I had already had my Mississippi driver's license translated by an official interpreter in Campo Grande. DETRAN, the Mississippi Highway Patrol station equivalent, is almost 5 miles from the center of town and is only open in the mornings. So most people here hire a despachante to handle the process; despachantes are authorized to act before government agencies.So I made copies of all my documents and delivered them to the despachante, whose office is right down the street from the school. Nothing happened for several weeks until one day he called and said to come to his office at 8AM the next day to go to DETRAN to get my picture made. After waiting for almost an hour for him to arrive, we went out to DETRAN to have our pictures made. It was a nice, air-conditioned building, but I am not sure that I could get back out there. When it was my turn, the girl asked for my passport which I had not brought. I said that I only had the ID card. She called her boss who got on the phone with someone in Campo Grande who said that the ID card would serve (do). Then the girl asked me whether I wanted to look in a mirror on the wall before she took the picture; I said no that it was just a driver's license. After the she took the picture, she showed me my picture on the computer screen and again asked me whether it was alright. Apparently Brazilians are very particular about their pictures; I didn't even put on my glasses to look.Several weeks go by and one Friday morning I get a frantic call at 8:15 from the despachante saying that I needed to be in his office agora agora (right now). I had been preparing for class and quickly got dressed to drive to his office. When I got there, he took me to a psychologist's office to have a psychological exam; the appointment was for 8 and I was almost an hour late. The woman was very nice and gave me a series of psychological tests (I am not making this up). I had to draw a tree on a piece of paper and then answer 10 questions about my tree such as was my tree dead or alive. Next I had to write a paragraph about my life. I also had to take a pattern matching test in which I was given three symbols and had to find them in a page full of
symbols. I had to take a timed test to draw bars as fast as I could and then draw a dash when she said pause. Finally, I had to take a test with 40 questions with figures to test my reasoning; by the end of the test I was cross eyed with all the figures and just guessed at the last three. After almost an hour of all these tests, the psychologist asked me a few questions about how long I had been driving and then said I passed. Thank goodness! One of the fellow teachers said that he failed one part and had to take it again; he did not concentrate enough on one of the tests!The following Tuesday I get another frantic call at 9:15 from the despachante saying that I had an eye exam at 8:10AM; he said he tried to call me earlier but the phone went directly to voice mail. Anyway the doctor was in a "eye hospital" about a block from my apartment. Even though I was over an hour late, they took me and I was in and out in about 20 minutes. Before I saw the young ophthalmologist, I had my blood pressure taken (normal), had a standard eye exam (I still don't need glasses to drive), a strength test in my hands, and had to stand on one foot and then the other. When the girl told me that I would have to bend my knees, go down to the floor, and then back up, I told her I would fall over. And I did. She just laughed and said nobody can do it. After this, I saw the doctor who just shook my hand and asked me what I did in Corumba. I told him and he said I passed. "APTO" means I passed.Four weeks later my license arrived, almost three months after I started the process. Now I have all my Brazilian documents after almost six months in the country.
Things bureaucratic. I have become so accustomed to things taking a long time in Brazil that I almost forgot how wonderful the USA is. First, when I got to Miami on Sunday morning, I heard my name on the loudspeaker to come to the gate for the Memphis flight. I went to the gate and the young gate agent asked if I had a coupon, which, of course, I didn't since I had an electronic ticket. He said that without a coupon I could not get on the flight. I looked at him square in the eye and told him that the boarding pass had been issued in Brazil and that I had flown all night and intended to go home. He mumbled something about his supervisor and the bottom line is that after a lot of Spanish (most of which I understood) I got on the flight without doing or saying anything else.Second, I decided to change my cell service in the US for a variety of reasons, but I wanted to keep my cell number. I had researched this on the internet and thought it would be a fairly long process. But it was very simple. First thing on Monday morning, I went to the new cell company and within 10 minutes I had a new provider and even arranged for a bank draft. I did not need to go to the old company. The cell phone worked immediately without any problems. This country is wonderful.Campaigning. While I was in Brazil, my younger brother Steve announced that he was running for the Mississippi Senate. Steve is a former mayor of Senatobia and has been involved in local and state politics for most of his adult life. (Our father was a county supervisor for over 30 years and politics runs in our blood.) Since I had not been able to campaign for him, I agreed to go to one of the polling places in Batesville and hold a sign on Election Day, August 2. Of course, it was the hottest day of the year with a temperature in excess of 100 degrees. But, I had plenty of water, a lunch, and a tent. I stayed the full twelve hours from 7AM to 7PM and thoroughly enjoyed it; the nice ladies at the Panola County Health Department next door even let me use their facilities. I kept thinking that all the heat in Brazil had prepared me well for this day. And, most importantly, my brother won the Democratic primary and will face a Republican in the November general election. I wish I could be home for that.Returning to Corumba. I left for Brazil on Monday, August 8. The return was pretty uneventful other than leaving Atlanta two hours late due to thunderstorms. But due to tail winds, we were only about an hour late arriving in Sao Paulo. My bags arrived with me and I was drinking coffee about an hour after landing. I had plenty of time to catch my connecting flight to Campo Grande and even had a McChicken
at McDonalds for lunch. Junior and Renata met me at the airport in Campo Grande to drive to Corumba.While I was in the US, I watched a video clip from the local TV station in Corumba about a group of women who raise orchids for extra income. The place is on the highway from Campo Grande. Junior readily agreed to stop and did not give up until we (more truthfully he) had asked at least 9 people for directions; the last three said they had seen the piece on the television. When we finally found the place, the ladies were very impressed that I had watched the piece about them from the US. I bought a little orchid and am going to try to raise it. I got a mini-course in raising orchids and promised to take good care of it.More on all my classes later.
Here is the latest drawing of the house on the farm. We have gone through several iterations and here is the final version. I still laugh every time I think about Roberto pretending to sit on the throne in the architect's office and explaining to her the need to increase the size of the bathrooms to accommodate more than one person at a time.This picture shows how Brazilians cut down trees. It may be hard to see, but there is a small Brazilian up in the tree taking swings at big limbs. He is standing on two limbs and swinging at another. I left soon after the picture was taken for fear that I would be witness to a death on our farm and have to testify in court. He survived.Bank. The bank situation is resolved. I went to the bank on Monday morning and politely gave the girl a water bill to prove that I have a fixed place of residence (comprovante de residencia). She was very apologetic and we blamed it on Junior at the school, who came into the bank at the end of the application process and started talking to everyone. In all the confusion (confusao), she forgot to scan the document. I told her that Junior acts like a politician (politico) and shakes hands with everyone.Bolivian Consulate in Corumba. I also had a bureaucratic encounter with another country, Bolivia, which was actually positive. Since 2007, Americans have been required to have a visa to enter Bolivia. However, on the border here in Corumba, no one checks passports on the Bolivian or Brazilian side; the Brazilians do check for purchases made in Bolivia upon reentry into Brazil. But you need to show your passport with a visa to travel on a plane, train, or bus in Bolivia. In addition, the airport in Puerto Suarez is about 20 minutes from the border and I did not want to have any problem with the Bolivian police if I got stopped. So I went to the little Bolivian Consulate a few blocks from my apartment to ask for a visa. The consular official was very courteous. After looking through my passport and asking me some questions about my job here, he agreed to give me a tourist visa good for 90 days. He gave me an application form to make a copy to fill out and told me to make a copy of my Brazilian documents. After only one trip around the corner to make a copy of my yellow fever vaccination card, I paid the fee at a lottery place across the street and returned in the afternoon to pickup my passport. Everyone was very nice and helpful and no one mentioned Osama Bin Laden, Evo Morales (President of Bolivia), or President Obama (including me).Brazilian Police. During my most recent trip to Bolivia (with my new visa), I got stopped by the Brazilian police (Policia Militar) at the toll booth leaving Brazil. I have been expecting this and always carry the documents for the truck and my personal documents. A
young policeman signaled for me to pull over and two heavily-armed policeman (two pistols and a bullet proof vest) approached the vehicle with their hands on their pistols; I think that he stopped me because I was wearing an Ole Miss baseball cap. The younger policeman asked me for the truck's documents and my driver's license; I noticed he was smoking a cigaret and I blew the smoke away when I lowered the window. He took the documents and then got on the radio in his jeep across the road. He returned in a few minutes and asked me for more identification. All this time he was very serious and still smoking the cigaret. I gave him my temporary identification card and he returned a few minutes later. He was no longer smoking and addressed me as Senhor ("Mister"). I do not know what caused the change of attitude but he politely told me that I could go. The truck and I passed our first encounter with the police on the streets!Dengue and Yellow Fever. I also had to show my yellow fever vaccination card for the first time in nearly 20 years of coming to Brazil, actually twice in one week. The first time was at the Bolivian Consulate; the guy just looked at the cover and did not even look at the date of the last vaccination (2004good for 10 years); he just wanted me to make a copy of the front page. The second time was at my apartment.When I first moved in, I noticed a piece of paper in the laundry area that was used for dengue inspections. A few weeks later, I noticed that someone had filled in a line of the sheet and I had passed; dengue is a big problem here (my maid's husband had it recently) and they are looking for standing water where the dengue mosquitoes lay their eggs. This week a girl from the Health Department came by and said she was the dengue inspector. I showed her the piece of paper and she filled out another line and then asked me something in Portuguese. I wasnt really paying attention because I thought she'd sign the paper and leave. I asked her to repeat the question and she was asking about my yellow fever vaccination (I found out later that yellow fever--always fatal-- is a big problem in Bolivia and recently there have been cases of it in Corumba.) I showed my card to her with my vaccination at the Ole Miss Health Service (thanks Barbara Collier for implementing this program at UM) and then she asked me whether I was Brazilian. I laughed and said I was an American English teacher. Then we had a discussion about which language is more difficult to learn. Of course, Brazilians always think English is the most difficult language! Not!!More on my adventures later.