Duck and I arrived on Monday and took a cab to the hotel (Uber is about half the cost but we couldn’t get it to work for us). At Duck’s encouragement, I introduced myself to other obvious Fulbrighters also checking in. We went out into the drizzly mid-afternoon for some food where it started downpouring so hard at our open-sided restaurant that the waiter thought we ordered beer instead of more Guaraná soda. By the time we were done eating, the rain had turned back into drizzle and we made our way back to the hotel. A very enterprising soul, Juan, had gathered most of us into a Facebook group that then migrated into a Whatsapp group text and a bunch of us wandered out to another restaurant to get to know each other a bit.
L-R: Christina, Jess, Maca, me, David, Candice, Cory, Kennedy, Alicia, Juan
Tuesday was the first of our three days of orientation, which included health and security advice which basically just scared the bejeezus out of me) plus a field trip to the Museu da Imigração. Spontaneous group excursions included walking to the nearby mall to look into getting sim cards for our phones. It turns out you need something called a CPF number in order to get an actual phone plan, so most of us ended up with a temporary pay-as-you-go card. Also plans generally work for calls within your city, so there’s yet another reason to wait until we’re in BH (but we wanted to access wifi and maps and things while out and about). Duck went back to the hotel afterwards but I stayed out with the group and had dinner (cheeseburger and a beer for $10!).
Wednesday’s orientation was in the hotel all day, with a huge group dinner out (~30 of us, plus a few scattered spouses, and Fulbright staff). The daytime sessions included a quiz about Brazil (my team came in second place after much trash talking with the first-place team) but I think they should have used my trivia questions 🙂 (Speaking of which, the answer to the last trivia question will be at the bottom of this post.) A bunch of us stayed in the conference room at lunch to work together to fill out the Federal Police registration form (you have to register within 90 days of arriving in the country and apparently the bureaucracy is pretty steep). There was also a panel of former Fulbrighters with advice for us about challenges we may face doing fieldwork and a really dull (or horribly offensive, depending on whether or not you were able to understand/pay attention and had any sort of background) economics lecture.
The whole group outside one of the museums 
Me and Duck outside the Museu Afro Brasil 
A free museum in the park, shaped like an indigenous Oca (home)
Thursday we went to another museum, the Museu Afro Brasil, which was cool but again I didn’t really have the background to understand it. We walked through the nearby park, Parque Ibirapuera, which features lots of Oscar Niemeyer architecture (man do they love that guy here) plus some cool art. There was also a good panel on advice about living in Brazil from the same former Fulbrighters as the day before, plus a really fantastic mental health presentation. After we finished, a big group of us utilized the Whatsapp group text to organize ourselves for dinner and then we went back to the hotel and hung out on the rooftop, watching planes nearly land on top of us (and helicopters actually land on us – there’s a helipad up there). It was a great sendoff as we all trickled out over the next 24ish hours.
Friday morning Duck and I checked out of the hotel and left our bags at the front desk and went on an adventure! We took the bus up to a small branch library of the city library and I gathered my courage to talk to the librarian, Anjelica. We ended up talking for nearly an hour! (More info in another post, this one is already long!) She is very nice and showed me all around the library. Then we went back to the hotel to meet one of my fellow Fulbrighters, Rakan, for lunch so he and Duck could talk about their overlapping research interests in the Syrian and Lebanese immigrant communities in Brazil. Finally we collected our things from the hotel and took an Uber to our overnight Airbnb (where we promptly ran into another Fulbrighter, Darlene, who is staying in the same apartment building for the first few months!). We met with Duck’s colleague (his advisor’s third cousin’s friend, if you can follow that – Duck also happens to be reviewing a book this colleague has a chapter in) and his wife for dinner, which was lovely. We did ask to meet them at 7pm, which is fine because they’re retired and eat on the early side, but no one really eats dinner that early so the restaurant was deserted until 8 and even then there was only one other table of people before we left around 8:30! We had a lovely moment of connection where Isabel started to describe Carlos’ latest subject and he butted in to take over, and we all had a good laugh as she explained that she knows the subject almost as well as he does – we find ourselves in the same boat.
Previous trivia question: Which of the following is NOT a national animal of Brazil? a) Jaguar b) Macaw c) Rufous-Bellied Thrush d) Coati
Previous trivia answer: Coati! Though they are pretty cute.
New trivia question: How many stars are on the Brazilian flag?
a. Zero
b. 12
c. 21
d. 27
Horntoes in Brazil 
Nice to see pictures! Big group of Fulbright fellows (the official term, I believe, meant to include men and women and others).
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