Adventures in Bureaucracy

Promising title, right? But really, it's all been a bit of a mess. Last weekend I travelled to Três de Maio (another small town about 2 hours drive away) for my 'Survival Orientation", and stayed at the house of another exchange student from Italy. The actual orientation part was fine- it was mostly just chatting about Brazil and cultural differences and whatnot. In English. I feel somewhat guilty about being so happy to speak english- i'm supposed to be learning Portuguese, right? But at the moment it is just such a relief to be able to speak and be understood, and understand what is happening around me. I don't much like things that I'm not good at, and speaking Portuguese falls firmly into that category. This is a bit of a problem.
But then the AFS people left, and I was left in a house full of strangers, which wold be bad enough at the best of times, but made 100 times worse by not really being able to communicate with them. For the whole of Sunday. Which was incredibly boring, and boring at the moment translates to homesick. I begin to wonder if perhaps I was just not cut out for this exchange thing, but it's a bit late now.
Then on Monday we drove to Santo Angelo, to register with the Polícia Federal. Apparently this is a thing you have to when you arrive in Brazil. It mostly involved sitting around while people glared at my passport and talked very fast in Portuguese. Then they tok my fingerprints and I signed a thing, and off I happily went, little did I know... Blah blah blah, long drive back to Frederico. The next day we got a phone call saying that something was wrong, and I'd have to go back. So I was all worried that they'd decided I was far too dangerous to be allowed in the country or something, but it turns out no, they just took my fingerprints wrong. It wasn't even my fault! Brazil... Anyway, I got home on Wednesday evening, tired and stressed already, to be tols that I needed to pack and I was getting a bus to Cruz Alta in 10 minutes, to then be driven to Santo Angelo with some other AFS people, to redo the whole thing. Which prompted a bit of a meltdown at the bus station. Catching a bus, by myself, at night, to somewhere I've never been before, to be met by a complete stranger is not my idea of fun. I realised at some point during this trip that before leaving for Brazil, the furthest I had travelled on my own was Lower Hutt. And I managed to get on the wrong train. An encouraging thought that... But I pulled myself together on the bus, and have decided that I rather like buses at night after all. There's something nice about staring out at the moon and getting lost in my own thoughts for a couple of hours. I arrived and was met by the local AFS president, and slept at her house, and that was all fine, if a little weird. I seem to spend far too much time awkwardly hanging around other peoples houses.
In the morning I was driven along with two other exchange students to Santo Angelo. Meeting Sydnie and Madaleana was perhaps one of my highlights so far. People who I can chat with! In English! I've never been all that chatty with strangers, and I'm still not, but it was so nice just to be able to.
Blah blah blah, back to the police, took my fingerprints, it took 2 minutes and felt like a waste of my time. Afterwards we visited a cathedral, which was pretty, so as a reward for managing to read this far, have some photos.

Also lemon meringue pie :) As beautiful as it may have been, there is something sad in not having my favourite people there to share it with. Not being able to turn to my sisters and sigh. Not being able to make a stupid face at a friend, or laugh at pink cathedrals.

Then there was lots more hanging around, and a long bus ride home. Somehow, to tell the story makes it sound like nothing, but at the time it was the most stressful thing that could possibly happen and I just wanted to go home. Whether that meant Brazil home or New Zealand home I didn't really know, but somewhere where I didn't have to navigate strange cities and talk to strange people.

There you go Mum, that's the longer story. Congratulations to anyone who made it to the end.

Love Sophie