We just got word that our new paperwork is en route from Brazil. As soon as we get it via FedEx–hopefully next week–we can finally send everything to the consulate for our visas.

A week ago, Lorraine posted that the paperwork we needed to apply for our visas was on its way. It arrived here on Friday, and on Saturday we were all ready to drop our applications into the mail. Then we saw that San Francisco doesn’t accept applications by mail. So, we and NICS did some work yesterday, and today I was all ready to drop it into the mail to a visa courier service. Then I got a call that one of the key documents sent from Brasilia had been put together wrong, so we needed to wait until we could get a new one put together, legalized and FedExed back to us.

On the upside, if we had ended up mailing out the application on Saturday, we would have had a whole new heap of problems. As it is, we just get to wait and pray–and we hope you’ll be doing the latter, with us.

On another note, if you ever need a passport or visa photo, I highly suggest making use of ePassportPhoto.com, which will cost a fraction of what photographers will charge you.

When we were first looking to teach overseas, I was hoping to go to a Spanish speaking country. I took 5 years of Spanish in High School and even managed to eke a few college credits out of my AP Spanish class. Then during college I spent a couple weeks in the Dominican Republic, and found that by the end of the first week, I was pretty fluent.

So when we decided to go to Brazil, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I hoped my Spanish would be a blessing, but I’ve heard that it could be otherwise. After doing some cursory studying of the language, it looks like speaking Spanish will make pronouncing things quite accurately a little difficult–the language sounds like Spanish, but it looks to me like the pronunciation has more in common with French & Italian.

However, I’m very confident that it will help immensely in reading. I’ve barely spent two hours studying Portugese over the last couple months, and just took the basic language test at Gringoes.com. I scored 18 out of 20. That’s better than I almost ever scored in Spanish class…

We found out yesterday that our visa paperwork is headed to Brasilia for approval, then on to us. After it gets here, we’ll need to gather all our documents, sign the forms, get passport photos taken, and mail it to the consulate in San Francisco.

I’ve added some links in the sidebar which you can use to learn more about Brazil, our school, and interesting things to do in Rio.