In Brazil, the law states that if you have lived here for over 6 months and you drive a car, you are required to get a Brazilian driver’s license.  We bought a car a few months ago and since we’ve already gotten our first speeding ticket (oops!), Michael figured he’d better go ahead and get his license here too.

He got all of the paper work processed, so a couple of weeks ago Michael had his secretary call the “DMV” office to see if he needed an appointment to go in.  She called and their response was, “Nope – no appointment needed.  He can just show up and come on in!”  Great!  So, he drove an hour to the office, showed up, and went in.  When he got inside and asked about taking the test, the woman told him that she was sorry but they were “sem sistema” — their operating system wasn’t working.  He asked how long they had been sem sistema and she said that it had been off all day.  Michael told her that his secretary had just called an hour ago and the woman replied, “Oh yeah, I spoke to her.  She just asked if you needed an appointment.  She didn’t ask if our system was functioning.”  

Seriously?  Yes.  And this is so TYPICAL here!  It must be some breakdown in the education system that doesn’t encourage outside-the-box thinking or even just logical, rational common sense.  It is very common to find people here – from waiters to lawyers – who seem like they are only capable of responding to the EXACT question you ask, but not thinking one second outside or beyond that to other things that you might want to know.

Anyway, the story doesn’t end there.  The office remained sem sistema all week, so last week, after confirming that everything was indeed up and running, Michael went back to take the test.  Now, there is a driving portion required for new drivers, but since Michael had a license in the US, all he needed to do was take the psychiatric test which is required of everyone getting a license.  This test included things such as matching shapes on a page and drawing small vertical lines to fill an entire piece of paper, interrupted only when the worker would call out “dash” for a small horizontal line.  Yes.  Seriously.  Apparently it’s supposed to check if you’re crazy…?  Thankfully Michael has lots of patience and is great at drawing small little lines, because now he has an official Brazilian driver’s license!  I think I’ll hold off on getting mine for a while…

Maybe everyone else knows this, but until I moved to Brazil, I had no idea about the fierce rivalry that exists between Brazil and Argentina.  Now, I think it’s mostly all in good fun, fueled by competitiveness on the soccer field (who was better: Pelé or Maradona?), but it exists nonetheless.   So I really shouldn’t have been so surprised by my Brazilian friends’ reactions to the new Pope…

On the days leading up to the naming of the new Pope, Michael and I were glued to the coverage.  So much pomp & circumstance, secrecy & ritual.  It’s amazing.  And we were extra excited since one of São Paulo’s cardinals was said to be a top contendor for the spot.  Although in the end it wasn’t a Brazilian who was named the new Pope, it was still very exciting to have someone from the Americas – especially Latin America!  As the country that houses the world’s largest Catholic population (about 75% of Brazilians are Catholic), I thought that Brazil would be thrilled.  And I think that by now they are more excited about our Argentine Pope, but that was not the initial reaction.

Michael and I spoke to around 10 Brazilians about the new Pope on the day that the announcement was made, and every single Brazilian male made some comment about how this would just fuel Argentina’s pride and make them think that they were divinely inspired to win the World Cup.  Ha!

Thankfully, Brazilians have warmed up to Pope Francis, as his first international trip will be to Brazil for World Youth Day!  At the end of the day, no matter where he’s from, even the Pope knows that Brazil is the place to be.