Tchau Checha

I may or may not have mentioned Joice’s Visa situation. On the 7th of January Joice and I went to the American Embassy located in the Morambi neighborhood of Sao Paulo. I sat in the café across the street cleverly titled “Café Consulado” I witnessed more than a handful of disappointed Brazilians emerge who had had their Visa’s denied. When Joice emerged hours later she had a somber look on her face. She buried her face in my shoulder and began to cry. I tried to comfort her until she began laughing like a mental patient and told me that she had in fact been approved for her Visa.
We assumed the Visa would take a maximum of Six days to receive because my spot is located in the greater Sao Paulo region. But, the day of the 15th arrived and still no Visa so we cancelled the flight and thus continued the saga of Joice’s Visa. I had met a guy at the Café who owned an English school in the countryside of Sao Paulo. I had been staying in touch with him and he told me that his sister’s visa, of whom he was waiting on at the café had been postponed due to technical problems that occurred across the days of the 8th to the 10th of January. Everyone before and after was off the hook. Days and then weeks passed and the staff members of the school got to know Joice intimately. During this time Joice was calling and e-mailing the consulate and post office daily but the automated response was no help. I e-mailed my friend Nick whose father is a longtime employee of the state department to see if he could find out what was going on. Like magic within two days the Visa was ready for departure. So one day Joice was doing her normal inquisition as to the whereabouts of her visa when she saw that the deliveryman had in fact come to the school to drop of the visa. Joice asked the office members if a deliveryman had come by and in fact they had turned him away because they didn’t know of any Joice Furtado Ribero da Silva who would have anything to do with Oxbridge Customized Courses. The one secretary who was out pregnant didn’t know Joice’s situation and she turned him away. Puxa Vida. She ran to the post office to see if the deliveryman was still in the vicinity however the post office told her that if the delivery man had in fact been rejected, than in most likelihood the package would be sent all the way back to Sao Paulo. I wasn’t going to allow the package to come all the way to the same building after all we had been through only to have it get sent back to a dusty office in the basement of the well-fortified American consulate.
Brazilians have a term called Jeitinho Brasiliero which roughly translates to when there is a will there’s a way, I think I’ve picked up this more than anything since I’ve arrived and I pulled a Jeitinho Americano.
So we took a cab to the Jundiai central post office and waited for the guy to come. We stopped every truck, motorcycle and man woman and child on foot entering the post office. The delivery company is called Sed-Ex and their motto should be What Can’t Blue and Yellow Do for You? Amazingly we tracked the guy down and he produced the package with no further problems. It was like Joice had just won the lottery.
We booked the next flight out of Sao Paulo that left the next afternoon. My co-worker/buddy Zhe gave us a ride to the airport and we left early the next morning. The three of us had a farewell lunch that would be a nostalgic culinary reminder to Joice during her time in the United States; McDonald’s.
However Joice’s troubles didn’t end quite there. Joice didn’t know that she couldn’t bring liquids onto the plane and they made her go through check in again and she almost missed her flight. However she made it back to the states she got a student visa that will allow her to come back to Brasil as much as she likes during the duration. It’s an awesome opportunity that I know she will make the most out of. I think we fought more in one month than we fought in the combined two years we’ve been together. I guess this is what spending more than a month together day in and day out 24-7 can do to people. It was difficult to say goodbye. We had an emotional goodbye that even for Brazilian standards of public displays of affection had people telling us to get a room. It was emotional, and I miss her a lot already. Meeting her family and seeing where she comes from was priceless. Despite the fact I cursed her apartment for being too hot or cursed my self for feeling incompetent around her family, it was unforgettable traveling around Brasil with Joice.