Trials of a an extranjeiro

I spent all yesterday morning on a scavenger hunt to gather all the items necessary to register with the federal police department here in Brazil. I needed two color 3x4 photos, notarized copies of my passport and visa, home and business addresses in Vitoria, two tax forms filled out and then paid at a federal bank, and another completed form. It was pretty funny getting the pictures, I went to some place that was for people getting headshots to launch their acting careers or something similar. The dressed me up in a black shirt to match my hair and then put makeup on me, I was like come on I'm just doing this for the visa form.

Next stop was the police station itself, which is a good thirty minute drive from the Nucleo. The passport office was packed, but luckily I was the only foreigner there to register. I got stuck with some incredibly rude, arrogant jerk who 'assisted' me in processing all the forms. Then I got fingerprinted seventeen times like a common criminal before finally getting out of there an hour or so later. It wasn't pretty, but I'm glad to have all that stuff done. Had I not finished all those steps yesterday, they would have begun charging me 80 reais per day, craziness.

So that was yesterday in a nutshell. I've also been talking to people around here about new schemes for identifying mycobacteria species, especially about getting some computer software to assist in this endeavor. The problem is that most of the programs out there are quite expensive, and this lab operates under very limited resources. I'm also going to help one of the guys here with a paper he's writing in English, so we'll see how that turns out. Next week the tentative plans are to work a little in the Leshmania lab. We're about to start a meeting now, must be off.

Happy Birthday Mom!