Brynn Barineau

Tag: Working in Brazil

  • 5 Tips for Authors Writing During a Breakdown of Law & Order

    5 Tips for Authors Writing During a Breakdown of Law & Order

    This is the exact opposite of what I looked like reviewing pages to send off.

    A month ago, my completed YA novel was selected for the annual Sun versus Snow writing contest, and I got the chance to work with a published author to polish my pitch materials and have them read by 21 agents.

    Four days after the winners were announced, the police in my state went on strike.

    On the day of the agent round, we boarded a plane on an emergency trip to find working law enforcement.

    It was not the first-contest-win experience I’d imagined. I had envisioned sitting in front of my computer during the agent round, compulsively eating Kit Kat and obsessively refreshing the website to see if I got requests. Instead we booked an afternoon flight to a state with police, threw clothes in suitcases, stuffed passports in shoes, and took a taxi to the airport.

    While I might not have been able to follow #sunversussnow as frequently as I would have liked, I was able to learn some valuable lesson about how to get the most out of a writing contest while law and order breaks down around you. Here are 5 tips for writing during a security emergency.

    1. Don’t procrastinate.  When you find out your manuscript was selected to participate, you will be thrilled and checking your email every two minutes for that first contact from your mentor. An actual published author is sending you an email! Keep that enthusiasm. You’re going to need it in order to get everything done ahead of time. From the time the police go on strike until a significant surge in assaults, you have about 48 hours. You’re going to want to send off final revisions before the shit really hits the fan.

    2. Take the opportunity to work on mental discipline. This is really for parent writers. With schools being closed due to security concerns, you’re going to have to write between pouring grape juice and explaining (again) why there are not second helpings of dessert. Think of it as an afternoon of ten minute writing sprints. Interval training for your creative muscles. How much can you get in before the next “Mommy!”?

    3. Use it as a distraction. While your fellow participants are wearing out their fingers refreshing the website hoping to see agent requests, you can use the last minute decision to fly to Rio as a reason to step away from the computer. As you puzzle over how much to pack considering you bought an open ended ticket, you might even briefly forget it is the agent round. When you do remember, it’s going to be at a super inconvenient time like in the middle of airport security, and you’ll be forced to practice patience.

    4. Back up everything! You will be faced with a choice when packing for your last minute trip: bring your computer or don’t bring your computer. Your husband will advise against it given the 400% rise in carjackings. But what if you get an agent request? How will send off pages without your computer? You have to send them while the contest is fresh in the agent’s mind. Obviously you can’t wait three whole days!!! But what if your computer is stolen?!! Don’t stress. The answer is to put everything in iCloud, Google drive, a flash drive which you hide in the pencil jar, and in emails to yourself. You should be covered in the event of a carjacking.

    5. Embrace the idea: Done and sent is better than “Almost perfect, just fifteen more minutes. For real this time.” Look, having to frantically reread your first fifty pages (because you actually got your first agent request for pages! Ahh!) while your family is crammed together in the hotel with the sound of PJ Masks in the background is not an ideal writing environment. You’re not going to turn out ideal work. It’s ok. Do what you can. Remember you’ve already read through those pages fifteen times. Acknowledge your mentor was awesome and helped you write a hell of a query letter that works! Then send the pages. There will be more requests in the future.

    It was an honor to be selected for Snow versus Snow! Thanks to the judges and contest coordinators Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood. I do wish I’d been able to focus on the contest, interact more with fellow participants on Twitter, and celebrate the agent requests I did get, but these are minor complaints. My mentor Max Wirestone gave spot on feedback. His book The Unfortunate Decision of Dahlia Moss came out in February, but he still volunteered to be a mentor for the contest! Thanks to him, I have hugely improved pitch materials.

    The contest also inspired me not to give up on Pangea. After no requests for pages from agents last year, I was ready to set it aside and focus exclusively on my new historical fiction, but now I’m tweaking the manuscript and sending it back out there.

    As my daughter’s favorite book, Rosie Revere Engineer says “Life might have its failures, but this was not it. The only true failure can come if you quit.”

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  • Getting a Driver’s License in Brazil

    Getting a Driver’s License in Brazil

    Traffic in Brazil is not helped by all the unlicensed drivers.

    To put my family at ease, I tend to downplay the more dangerous aspects of life in Brazil, but the truth is you’re much more likely to die a violent death in Brazil than in Canada or Japan or even gun-crazy United States.  Oh, you’re not going to get shot.  No, you’re going to die in a flaming car crash long before you get mixed up in drug-related violence.

    It didn’t take me very long in Brazil to understand that cars were the real danger.  After my first months in Rio, I assumed that traffic in Brazil was governed only by the laws of physics.  I was wrong.  It’s governed by plenty of people laws too.  It is Brazil after all.

    Licenses require medical exams, eye exams, and psychological exams.  Driver’s ed is mandatory and its content federally regulated down to the number of hours for theory and practice.  Thus, the only reasonable explanation for the number of traffic-related deaths here is that no bureaucrat in Brasilia has ever actually driven a car, and they have no idea what skills to include on the test.

    A student of mine recently turned 18 and has been taking his mandatory driver’s ed class.  He brought me several of his practice exams.  He knows I love to laugh.

    Driver’s education courses in Brazil are divided into two parts: 45 hours and 25 hours.  That’s 45 hours in the classroom and 25 hours on the road.  Some people might be thinking, “Gee, wouldn’t it be better is these kids learning to drive a car spent the majority of their class time in a car?”  These people don’t appreciate the teaching power of multiple choice exams and visualizing your goal.  “I can see myself successfully merging in rush hour traffic.”  (Actually, visualizing is the only way to practice highway driving.  Driver’s ed cars aren’t allowed on highways.)

    So if not safe merging practices, what are these up and coming driver’s expected to know?  For one, the best attitude man can have in relation to the environment.  (The answer is “preservation”.)  It’s also necessary to know how the government of Brazil is trying to reduce emissions.  Humans have basic rights and there are a variety of ways we can observe the importance of family and friends to society.  Know that pointing out to a fellow driver that one of her tires is low encourages solidarity and courtesy in society more so than it demonstrates a concern for traffic. Don’t worry about knowing the effects of alcohol on reflexes.  That’s only a leading cause of traffic deaths in Brazil.  It won’t be on the test.

    Now, a 35 question multiple choice test isn’t the only requirement. The non-drivers in Brasilia didn’t want just anybody who can read getting a license.  They also wanted to weed out the crazies, which is why a psychological exam is required.  Again, I think this shows a complete lack of understanding of driving and a prejudice against crazy people.  There’s no reason a person can’t be a sociopath and an excellent driver.  My life experience has shown me no correlation between sanity and a willingness to use the blinker.

    The greatest irony is that all these required (and expensive) exams and driver’s ed courses intended to make the roads safer actually result in a huge market for fake licenses.  People need to drive and they don’t have 70 hours to spend learning about the parts of an engine.

    In the end who ends up driving on Brazil’s roads? A bunch of unlicensed drivers who have no idea how rain affects a car’s ability to stop, a bunch of licensed drivers who can label all the parts of an engine but have never driven on a highway, and not a single person who knows anything about alcohol’s affects on the body.

    So, if you’re coming to Brazil be sure to wear your seat belt.  Or just stay on the beach the whole time.  Cancer kills fewer people here than cars.

  • A First Test as a Writer

    A First Test as a Writer

    Keep the espresso coming!
    Keep the espresso coming!

    Recently, I decided to become a writer.  I’ve actually been diligently writing a novel for a couple years, but a few months ago I quit my job teaching and left myself with no other answer to the question “What do you do?” So now people actually know.

    Today I’m facing my first great test as a “writer”.

    The only piece of advice every writer in history seems to agree on is that a writer writes everyday. So I have been. But today, I’m alone in my apartment, lacking inspiration, with access to Netflix.  And it’s raining.

    I don’t think Shakespeare would have been so prolific if he’d been able to binge watch old seasons of Mad Men, Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, or almost any other show worth watching.  (Except West Wing! Seriously, Netflix, where the hell is West Wing?)  James Joyce would probably have been more straightforward if he’d been sucked into the Twitterverse daily while building his author’s platform.  Without a doubt Twain would have spent his afternoons watching the Daily Show.

    And the rain! What is it about grey skies and a light drizzle?  I’ve had three espressos, but it feels like I’ve been hit by a tranquilizer.  Why can’t sleep be this persistent after my daughter has gone to bed and my teeth are brushed?  I could just go take a nap. I’m completely alone.  No one would know, and my bed is so conveniently located in the same apartment where I keep my computer.

    No. I will remain doggedly at my desk. Why? Because I’m a writer.  More specifically, I’m a 32 year-old writer who hasn’t ever published anything, and that makes for some awkward conversations.  Oh, I’ve read lots of  inspirational, bucking-up articles to new writers. “If you’re writing, you’re a writer.”  Own it.  Be proud.  Hashtag amwriting.  Whatever. Let’s be honest.  Telling people you’re “working on a graphic novel” is only impressive if you’re sitting in a high school cafeteria and still legally required to be there. To the rest of the world, you’re just unemployed and probably going to have to explain what graphic novel is.

    My situation is complicated by the fact my husband is a genius with a PhD and two full-time jobs.  To be clear, my husband is incredibly supportive and respectful of new career.  It’s not his fault he’s so damn impressive.  Well, it kind of is his fault he’s a workaholic, but he’s not the one who makes things awkward for me.  It’s other people.  Non-writers.  I had this conversation the other day.

    Not-a-writer: “What have you been up to?”

    Me:  “Well, I’ve spent the last two days on this synopsis and I have FINALLY, FINALLY gotten it down to a single page.”

    Not-a-writer: “How about [the hubby]?”

    Me:  “Well, this year he’s applying to the Ministry of Education to get approval for his master’s program.  He’s been organizing all the lines of research, hiring professors, and specifically recruiting professors with PhDs to publish in those areas. He published three or four articles last year and has two or three pending approval.”

    Not-a-writer: “Well, if he needs someone to sum it all up in a single page, I know a gal he can call.” chuckle

    Ouch. And that is a mild dose of the unintended condescension given to the yet unpublished.

    So I won’t be napping because it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at work.  I’m writing.  And drinking more coffee.  And giving my emails a final check before getting back down…hey, there’s a new episode of Mad Men!

  • The Super-Awesome, Amazingly-Exotic Expat Life

    The Super-Awesome, Amazingly-Exotic Expat Life

    The daily rainbow in Brazil.
    The daily rainbow in Brazil.

    When I’m back home in Atlanta, I try not to mention that I live in Brazil.  The opportunity presents itself with surprising frequency, usually when a sales associate asks if I’d like to sign up for a rewards card.  I decline saying “I’m just visiting for the holidays.”   Nine times out of ten, at least in the state of Georgia where people still practice things like small talk and friendliness, the person will ask “Oh, where do you live?”  Then I’m stuck.  “In Brazil,” I answer, and I’m at the counter another five minutes as I tell my story and confess that I have not in fact learned to speak Spanish.  Though I have learned the local Portuguese.

    I can’t blame people for their wide-eyed excitement and curiosity about my life.  Americans are under the impression that life south of Texas or north of Idaho or on the other side of an ocean is more…something.  More exciting.  More dangerous.  More romantic.  More barbaric.  More luxurious.  They’ve seen movies set in these “foreign” countries and read articles like “3 Things Dating Foreign Women (And Marrying One) Taught Me” which tell people what a romantic adventure life can be if they only find a spouse with a different passport.

    As someone who did manage to land a coveted foreign spouse and move abroad, I can state that it’s all true.  My life is more exciting than everyone else’s.  It’s more romantic and luxurious yet still a rewarding, character-building challenge.

    Take my very first meal in Brazil.  I got to eat in the food court of the nearby mall.  My future husband took me and it was incredibly romantic.  The din of the other customers drowned out our voices, so we could only stare into each other’s eyes.  Because I arrived in the midst of remodeling the apartment, I had the opportunity to tour all the best hardware stores in Rio de Janeiro.  The thrill of shopping for toilet seats abroad really gets downplayed in expat blogs.  The only thing in Brazil that rivals shopping for toilets is getting finger printed for a visa at the federal police.  The ink smells like jasmine.

    Living in Brazil has also given me the opportunity to learn a new language.  It’s a fact that everything is sexier in a foreign language. Doesn’t matter which language.  They’re all sexier than English.  Here are some of the local Portuguese phrases I learned in my first months here.  Encanador.  Plumber.  Conta corrente conjunta.  Joint checking account.  Seguro de saúde.  Health insurance.  Absorvente interno.  Tampon.

    If you are ever lucky enough to visit Rio, I recommend driving from downtown to the suburbs at 5:30pm.  It will give you an authentic local experience.  Turn the air-conditioning off and roll the windows down to really go native.  Be sure to have the GoPros charged because friends back home will want to watch this trek. All three hours of it.

    Anyone leaving the US should do their family and friends the favor of recording every second of their time abroad.  They’ll thank you for allowing them to live vicariously through you.  After all, life outside the United States is one long perpetual vacation.  Nobody goes to the grocery store or a “job” in foreign countries.  The people serving coconuts on the beach here in Brazil? Robots.  All of them.  Where do you think Walt Disney got the idea for the Hall of Presidents?  He stayed at the Copacabana Palace in Rio.  Actual Brazilian citizens don’t work and if you’re fortunate enough to get residency neither will you.  People who live here just go to the beach and gym everyday.  I haven’t had to run an errand since I arrived in September of 2006.

    Having a child abroad with a foreign spouse (Yes, even in Brazil my Brazilian husband is the foreigner.  I can’t be a foreigner because I’m American), it only adds to the drama and glamor of the expat life.  I’m writing a screenplay based on my experience of visiting the US consulate to prove the maternity of my child.  I’m hoping Ridley Scott will direct and it will star Angelina Jolie (as me), Antonio Banderas (as my husband), and Jack Black as the unwieldy and misunderstood stack of paperwork that ultimately saves the day and gets us the US birth certificate.

    Those of us living in far-off, exotic lands know that “living” abroad is exactly the same thing as “vacationing” abroad.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that most people in the world are busy going about the tediousness of living day to day, with the jobs and childcare and home repairs and laundry that human existence demands.  No, no.  Life outside the US is romantic and electrifying all the time.  In fact, I have another Brazilian adventure planned for this morning.  I’m going on an excursion for light bulbs.

  • Lessons For Toddlers and Expats

    Lessons For Toddlers and Expats

    bureaucracyMy 3 year old daughter is currently struggling to accept some of the physical limitations of our three dimensional world.  “That tunnel is not tall enough for the train.”  “It was made for one Littlest Pet not eight.”  “Sweetheart, your teddy bear is never going to fit in that play dough pot.”   She will ignore me, keep trying, and eventually hurl whatever it is against the wall in a frustrated fury. I hope it’s just a phase.

    What is remarkable is her flat out refusal to accept an obvious reality.  She will continue to struggle long after it’s clear that it’s not going to fit.  Her tenacity is impressive.  It’s also the source of many a nighttime tantrum.  While I don’t want her to ever give up easily, I’d like to spare her the frustration and save her the energy spent fighting against a fact about her world.

    As an expat, I should apply this lesson myself.

    I’ve lived in Brazil eight and a half years, and I still struggle to accept some facts about life here.  One thing that still makes my face burn is the out of control and invasive bureaucracy.

    There is no question too personal for a form and no transaction that does not require one.  The eyeglass store wants your social security number.  The hotel wants your profession.  The dentist wants your race.  Your employer wants to know your blood pressure.

    I get around some forms by pretending I’m here temporarily or don’t speak a word of Portuguese, but I couldn’t do this at my former job.

    When I began teaching the school asked me to have a medical exam.  When I came back from maternity leave there was another exam and another a year later for every employee at the school.  When I gave notice at the end of last year, human resources asked me to sign several letters saying that I was leaving of my own accord and have another medical exam.

    I refused.  As American, an employer requiring a medical exam and making note of the fact you use contraceptives is deeply offensive.  I had done the previous exams because I liked the job, and hey when in Rome…but now I was quitting.  What could they do? Fire me?

    There were several meetings with HR during which I nicely refused to accommodate and the HR lady just as nicely said it was mandatory by law.  After checking with a lawyer, I explained sweetly there’s no law requiring a person to submit to a medical exam.  She politely insisted there is.

    Eventually I was told it was the union that required the exam.  And speaking of the union, I had to meet with them and have a rep sign off on my paperwork.  Please come back next Tuesday afternoon.

    I showed up at the union rep’s office in my school and met a man very disgruntled by my lateness.  The meeting was at 2pm.  It was 2:02 pm.  As he grumbled, he grabbed his keys, my work card, and my paperwork. Below is as faithful a transcription of our conversation as my memory allows.

    Me: “Excuse me, are you leaving?”

    Man I Have Only Just Met:  “He’s going to wait for us.”

    Me: “Who?”

    MIHOJM:  “The union Kahuna. (That’s my word because I don’t remember what title the guy really had.)  You were supposed to meet with him at 2pm.”

    Me: “Aren’t you the man I’m meeting?”

    MIHOJM: “No, the Kahuna has to sign off on your papers, and he’s at the union’s headquarters.”

    Me: “Wait. Do we have to drive somewhere?”

    MIHOJM: “Yes. We’re going to the union office.”

    Me: “Stop.  I’m not leaving.  Give me my work card and documents.  I am not going.”

    At that point I had been quitting my job for almost two months.  I was done.  I was out of patience and polite Portuguese.  I unleashed the full force of my direct, low-context American culture on him and I wrapped things up then and there.

    I am not going to the union office.  I am not having the medical exam.  I want to quit today.  You are a union officer?  Do you have authority to sign these papers?  Great.  Please, sign them all now.

    While I did manage to officially quit, within a Brazilian context, I was a complete asshole to a guy who was just doing his job.  He was acting according to standard practice and then comes this woman who freaks out on him, is blunt to the point of being rude, and very angry.

    And I stayed angry.  I complained about the whole process to everyone I met for days.  Hurling my complaints about meaningless bureaucracy against every wall in a frustrated fury.  What did that anger get me?  Well, it used up a lot of my energy, a very precious commodity.  It would have taken a lot less energy to shrug my shoulders.

    Somethings you have to accept.  Don’t waste energy being angry about something you can’t change.   Lessons we expats have to learn.  Expats and toddlers.

  • One Day as a Teacher

    One Day as a Teacher

    Here’s what I do in my new role as teacher.  I read the chapters of Great Expectations we’ll be covering, marking all difficult vocab that will probably need to be defined and difficult passages that will need to summarized as a class.  Plan class on introducing Charles Dickens and Great Expectations. Find fun youtube clip on the life of Charles Dickens.  Make adjustments to the supply and demand game that didn’t go well in class the day before.  Make new material for tweaked supply and demand game. Correct and grade 15 essays on a personal response Aesop fables.  Teach class for 3 hours.

    That was this past Wednesday.

    I realized two things after logging in to write a new post: 1) People link to my blog from pretty bizarre search terms and 2) I only wrote two posts for the entire month of April.  Last November, I cranked out more than two posts a week.  Still not anything close to the commitment of blogging all-stars, but it was still a big chunk of content for one month.  Now, I have a job and a condition called pregnancy which robs me of the energy to do anything productive past 9pm. Unless your definition of productive is eating Belgian chocolate ice-cream and streaming the previous night’s Daily Show, in which case, I make my greatest contributions to society after 9pm.

    Clearly, I’m going to have make a conscious commitment to maintaining Coconut Water.  I don’t want it sitting out languishing in the Brazilian sun developing a film of bacteria and mosquito eggs.  (Can mosquitoes lay eggs on coconut water? Probably, they’re basically invincible.)  The end result of this pregnancy is a baby, which I’m told, will devour whatever remaining free time I have and possibly my will to shower and tolerate other human beings.  The chances I’ll be getting back up to two posts a week are small.

    Or maybe not.  I will be on maternity leave for four months, and while breast feeding is supposed to beautiful, I haven’t heard anyone call it intellectually stimulating.  I might desperately cranking out posts.  In the long term though, next school year should be easier.  I won’t be new to the material and spending hours planning every class.  I’ll already have my youtube clip of Fozzy Bear reciting Robert Frost.

    The really amazing about my daily schedule right now is that I only teach part-time.  I’m in front of a class teaching 16 hours  yet find myself working all day, every day.  I think what I really need is one of those cushy full-time teaching jobs those pundits keep talking.

  • New job, new blog

    New job, new blog

    Almost two months since my last post.  I know.  Bad blogger, but I have an excuse.  I got a job.  A hard job.  And the blogging had to be put aside until I found my footing.  Let me explain.

    The last time I was required to show up for work five days a week was September, 2006.  As a result, I have been blind sided, chewed up, spit out, wrung out, and manhandled by a regular work schedule.  And I’m so much happier.

    When hired as a teacher at a private school here in Vitoria, the moment called for champagne, but I have to make a rather embarrassing confession.  While I believed teaching was a better job than no job at all, I deep down thought it was beneath my potential.  I truly believed teaching was a profession people joined who didn’t think they could make it in more competitive fields.  I had a truly brilliant roommate in college who was passionate about teaching and education, but I didn’t base my assessment of the field on her.  Rather, in my facebook colored perception of reality, I based my assessment on all the mediocre students I had gone to high school with who are now, according to their profiles, teachers.  If someone who barely passed biology could go on to be a science teacher how hard can the job be?

    When I get home at night my feet are throbbing. My voice is worn out.  My patience is gone.  I don’t have energy to care about what’s for dinner let alone remain standing long enough to make it.  I drift listlessly around my apartment from 9:30 to 10 because I just can’t go to bed before 10 but I can’t think hard enough to give myself any direction.  I’m asleep by 10:30.

    It’s pretty hard.

    I now know the people in the US currently complaining about cushy teacher salaries have never really considered what teaching entails.  There’s pretty much a consensus among people who have kids that raising them is hard.  Kids don’t pay attention. They don’t think.  They lack knowledge, motor skills, and basic hygiene often into adulthood.  Ideally parents come as a two person team but often one parent ends up in charge of the kids.  Again, we agree that one parent with two or three kids, “that’s a tough job.”  Teachers have 20 kids, all to themselves, for 180 days a year.

    Think about handling a herd of those adorable, self-involved, cognitively underdeveloped munchkins.  Now think about having them all day, every day.  Did I mention you have to do more than just keep them from gluing their hair together or cracking their head open as they lean back in their chair? No, preventing physical injury is not enough.  You must also keep their attention and help them learn something they didn’t know before coming to you.  You must stimulate their creativity and logical reasoning.  You are not allowed to send the slow ones, or the obnoxious ones, or the slightly smelly ones off into a corner.  You must work with all of them.

    To sum up, a teacher must take a group of kids, keep them safe, awake, focused and then improve them.  A teacher must send the kids home as better, more knowledgeable human beings every day or she is not doing her job.  Teaching requires creativity, improvisation, patience, public speaking, stamina, organization, diplomacy, all in addition to knowledge of the subject being taught.

    Any teacher making less than a six figure salary is underpaid.

    I am underpaid. But happy.  I was wrong about teaching.  It is an immensely rewarding challenge.  One I’m thoroughly enjoying.  Not that I would say no to a six figure salary.

  • Teaching Teachers Day 1

    Today was my very first day of teacher training as well as my first day of totally on the books employment in Brazil. It was also the first time I’ve had to be in a classroom at 8am since undergrad. (Yup, it still sucks.) 

    Thankfully, Brazilians are generous with the coffee and the snacks. The caffeine was needed because it was a full day of sitting and watching mock classes on American Literature. Remember American Literature? Probably not because you didn’t have Brazilian coffee to get through class.

    I left at 5pm with Ben Franklin’s aphorisms in my head and a song in my heart. I’m so excited to have a regular job working with some brilliant expats and Brazilians. (Will I make my first real Brazilian friend? Only time will tell.) Here are some of the lessons I took away from the first day.

    – Puritan writing is awesome, particularly “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” which I will be teaching to my future children at an early age but replacing God with Mommy.

    – Benjamin Franklin, the genius behind “A penny saved is a penny earned,” also invented the lightning rod which patriotic Americans hung flags on. The rod came before the flag.

    – If you want to laugh a lot gather a group of teachers. I’m pretty sure a sense of humor is the only thing keeping them sane.

    – I’m not a transcendentalist.

    – Every piece of literature taught in high school was originally written for adults. What would Poe think about his work being taught to 15 year-olds? And why didn’t I realize this while in the class as a student?

  • Getting the Brazilian Work Card: Gateway to Legal Employment

    Getting the Brazilian Work Card: Gateway to Legal Employment

    Well, it’s official. As of today, I’m legally employable.You might be thinking, didn’t that happen when you applied for residency? Well, not totally. A residency card alone is not enough for legal employment in Brazil. For that, you need a Work Card, or a Carteira de Trabalho.

    I’ve been eligible for a work card since I became a resident of Brazil but haven’t bothered to apply for one because I never signed an employment contract. (I was, uh, doing a lot of volunteer work in Rio.) Now that I’ve been hired as a regular teacher, it’s time to join the Brazilian labor force. As a responsible worker, I’ve been learning about the work card and all the rights it guarantees.

    The work card is issued to all people employed via contract in Brazil, which I’ve learned is not everyone. For example, my husband doesn’t have a work card because his job with the government is regulated by statutes. If you were the owner of a business you wouldn’t need a card but your employees would. The purpose of the work card is to prevent exploitation, particularly of low income and domestic workers. It’s something that happens all too frequently in Brazil.

    To be clear, the work card should not be confused with the Brazilian equivalent of a Social Security Number. That’s called a CPF and I already have one of those as well. (I’m just a driver’s license shy of collecting the whole Brazilian Bureaucracy series!)

    So, what rights am I entitled to with my carteira?

    I am guaranteed one month paid vacation, an additional “13 month” salary, and in the event of pregnancy 4 months of paid maternity leave. Oh, and the company is legally required to take me back after the maternity leave. Woohoo!

    Hand me a red shirt and tell me where the parade is because I’m all about the workers right here. Sure, these policies are crippling to small businesses. It’s certainly possible that requiring four months maternity leave might prevent businesses from ever a 20 something person with a functioning uterus. And why the hell is anyone guaranteed a right to something that doesn’t even exist, like a 13th month? I don’t know. And as the beneficiary of all these rights, I’m not going to start a debate on them.

    I’m just going to plan where I’ll spend my month paid vacation and my 13th month’s paycheck. Maybe I’ll fly to Brasilia and ask for an 8th day of the week I can get paid for.

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