Introduction

Welcome to the Gringoes.com email newsletter!
This newsletter pulls together some of the articles, photos, polls and other information that has been published on the Gringoes.com web site over the last week or so. Don't forget to visit the Gringoes.com site to checkout our article archive, useful information pages, classified adverts, services, forum and other pages. So read on and we hope you enjoy the newsletter. As always if you have any comments, such as what you'd like to see more or less of on the site or newsletter, don't hesitate to contact us at gringoes@gringoes.com.
Please note that although we are based in São Paulo, the site and newsletter are for the whole of Brazil. We are particularly interested in hearing from people outside of São Paulo city, specifically Rio de Janeiro and the Northeast, so if you would like to write about your experiences or any topic related to Brazil see our request for "Article Writers" below.
If you're interested to know the origin behind the site name, then read the "Dear Gringo" article here by Dr. G.


Happy New Year!

Gringoes.com wishes a Happy New Year to all its readers!


Permanent Visas in Brazil

By Jose Santiago
Immigration visas to Brazil will be granted only to applicants who satisfy special requirements established by the Brazilian National Immigration Council or the Ministry of Labor. In principle, there are seven cases in which a foreigner can obtain a permanent residence visa in Brazil:
1. The administrator, manager or director of a professional or business corporation
This category is designed to cover inter-company transfers. Thus, the applicant must already be employed outside of Brazil by the parent company or by an affiliate or subsidiary of the company that proposes to employ him inside Brazil. However, there is no minimum time for that previous employment. Necessary documents for the first step will include:

Earn your Executive MBA degree with the University of Pittsburgh in São Paulo Ranked 17th among US-programs and 35th in the world by the Financial Times, the University of Pittsburgh offers an Executive MBA Worldwide Program in Brazil. With 10 modules of study in São Paulo, one in Europe and one in the U.S., the program helps professionals advance their careers, enhance their network of important high-level contacts, and develop their managerial competencies. For more information, please email BrazilMBA@katz.pitt.edu or call (011) 5180-3639. Website: www.emba.pitt.edu

Weekly Quiz

Last week's quiz question, from Jacques Allain is: what happened on Christmas Day in 1591 in Santos, involving an English explorer-adventurer? Congratulations to Colin Joyce who was the first to answer with Sir Thomas Cavendish, an English explorer-adventurer, sacked the town on Christmas Day in 1591, before the Portuguese consolidated their control in the 18th century.
This week's quiz question from David Long (thanks David!) is: which Ruler was Brazil's first environmentalist and what was his major project? Don't forget both answers! Send your answers to mark@gringoes.com with ‘Weekly Quiz’ in the subject line.
We've run out of quiz questions so a special request to readers to send in some more. Do you think you can stump the Gringoes.com readers, then please send them to mark@gringoes.com with ‘Weekly Quiz Ideas’ in the subject line. Don't forget to send the answer to the question also! Remember it needs to be relatively difficult, and not something that can be found from a simple Internet search.


Photo of the Week

The photo of the week is Are We There Yet? and was taken by Martyn Wells on BR116 between São Paulo and Curitiba. Click here to see the photo.
Thanks to all those who've sent in photos based on our request, but we can always do with more. So if you have a funny or unusual photo depicting life in Brazil please send it to gringoes@gringoes.com with ‘Photo of the Week’ in the subject line. Ideally we are after photos that are of something a little different, not traditional shots of beaches and sunsets. Please send relatively high resolution images (0.5 Megapixel / 640 x 480 or bigger), and let us know where you took the photo and if you have a title for it.


Tip of the Week

This week's tip comes from the Gringoes.com staff. For those unfamiliar with Brazil, it's worth knowing to avoid travel, if possible, during public holidays. Brazilians, particularly those living near the beach, will tend to travel on mass at the start of the holiday, then return at the end causing long traffic jams. If the public holiday occurs during midweek they often take holiday/vacation for the remainder of the week.
We've run out of tips, so a special request to Gringoes.com readers for more! Is there something you wish you had known while travelling, or something that makes life easier while living here in Brazil? Then share it, and let our readers know. Don't worry about the subject, it can be either a big or small piece of useful information. Send your tips to mark@gringoes.com with ‘Tip of the Week’ in the subject line.


Around Brazil: Rio de Janeiro to Porto Seguro

By Ricky Skelton
My first long-distance bus journey in Brazil, and the worst one by far. It had to get better after this one. And to think we were running through the streets of Ipanema with huge bags because we were afraid of missing it.
A late booking meant we had aisle seats near each other. As we sat in our seats, we played Bussian Roulette (Onibussian Roulete in Portuguese). Three of us in our seats watching the front for the people getting on, wondering who you were going to spend the next twenty hours sitting next to. The boys were hoping for a beautiful tanned brasileira wearing little more than a bikini. You sit, you wait, you watch. The couple? No, not them. They‘re looking further back. The sweaty obese man? He sensibly booked the first row. Nobody else getting on? The bus set off. We all had double seats. Result! We didn‘t know about the stop over the bridge at Niteroi. Then I saw her. I knew immediately that she was mine, my bus partner. Her and her tiny baby. I could feel it. They walked up to my seat, and sure enough, twas her. As I stood up to let her past, I could hear the laughter of the others. Twenty hours of dribbling, crying, screaming, gurgling, burping, farting, and other nasty smells. Poor them, how were they going to put up with me? We‘d all lost the roulette.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Brazil: The Sun Also Rises on Luis Sun

By Sol Biderman
Luis Sun has suffered a great deal in life but adversity has given his art a refined quality. He has inherited a two thousand year old tradition of Chinese esthetics but neither does he paint storks, waterfalls, symbolic mountains nor does he indulge in calligraphy.
After his family escaped the Communists in the 1940s he moved to Taiwan and on to Brazil more than 35 years ago. Despite all the adversities of moving under severe hardships he has never once given in to worrying about his own fate - he just paints. At first he painted landscapes, especially landscapes around the city of São Paulo.
Then, like Manabu Mabe, he moved to abstract art, which he controls with deft skill. But unlike traditional Chinese painting the luminous light of Brazil has affected his art in a positive ways. His oranges and reds are bold but not garish like a tropical sunset. His blues are not an untarnished blue of a cloudless Capricorn sky. All is muted, controlled transformed by his inner eye, and his inner eye has been educated by his Chinese way of seeing and feeling form and shape and color and control, control, control. His art is not a "colírio para os olhos--eye drops for the eyes," but a remarkable optic experience where lines and forms and textures interact, intersect and explode.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Two Brazilian Charmers Part 10

By Joe Lopes Here is part 10 of Joe's article about two famous personalities from Brazil, Bidu Sayão and Carmen Miranda. To read the previous parts click the relevant links at the end of the article.
The Nightingale Flies Away
Carmen Miranda‘s shocking end and tumultuous Rio de Janeiro funeral procession produced a staggering outpouring of grief in the country - a vivid example of pent-up guilt feelings for the way the nation had treated the dearly departed movie icon when she was alive.
It also struck a foreboding chord with Bidu Sayão, Brazil‘s other international musical exponent, and a fervent follower of the once energetic entertainer. Only a month before Bidu had suffered the loss of her first husband, the late Walter Mocchi, recently interred in a Rio cemetery. And, in a manner of speaking, she had witnessed the slow passing of her own Metropolitan Opera career, what with her having to contend with a regime change at the company she had so long been associated with.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Brazil Through Foreign Eyes

Meet David Barnes (pictured on the right), from the USA, who has moved to and is working in Brazil. Read the following interview where he tells us about some of his most memorable experiences from Brazil and gives some useful advice to newcomers.
1. Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from, what do you do etc.?
My name is David, I‘m a 22 year old student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It has always been a primary goal of mine to travel, although by the time I was 20 I had never traveled outside of the states (except a short day-trip to Mexico). I‘ve been to every major tourist attraction within the US but I realized that I no longer wanted things like Big Ben or the Venetian canals to be just an movie induced romance. I needed to see these things for myself. I decided to start with a four month course in London through my college. I signed up, got my passport, worked hard, and took a sizable student loan. Eventually the day arrived when I was in London.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Brazil: Weekly News Roundup

2006 Best Tourism Year
This year is already the best year for tourism in respect of the amount of money spent by tourists in the country. Banco Central stated on Tuesday that between January and November the country received US$3.91bn. This is a 1.42% increase compared with the whole of 2005 (US$3.86bn). Brazilians have spent US$481m on travel abroad during November, which represents an increase of 9.57% over November 2005. Comparing January to November for 2005 and 2006, there‘s an even greater increase of 21.44% which is believed to be due to the favourable exchange rate with the US dollar.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Brazil Blog: Visas and Marriage Part 3

By Gringo Blogger Here is part 3 of the Gringo Blogger's blog about visas and getting married in Brazil. To read the previous parts click the relevant link at the bottom of the article.
By way of introduction I‘m a foreigner who‘s lived in São Paulo city for a few years. I came here for romantic reasons with the hopes of finding a job, like many gringos (only to find out that getting work in Brazil is a near impossible task). So I‘m not your typical wealthy gringo. Thankfully I am now working part time in a great job, but am still on the Holy Grail-like quest of finding full time work. I married my girlfriend early last year, so have some idea of the highs and lows of a multicultural relationship.
In my blog I‘m just documenting some of the day-to-day events that happen to me, amusing or not, to give an impression of what it‘s like for a gringo living in the bustling metropolis of São Paulo, and Brazil in general. It‘s at times also meant as a tongue in cheek look at gringo life, so shouldn‘t be taken too seriously.
Getting Married As Christmas approached my parents suggested they would like to come and visit in January, and the flights were booked. Then a few days later on a long car trip back from my girlfriend's cousins in the countryside the question was raised again of getting married, this time not so much prompted by the visa but by the simple desire to get married, and to do it while my parents were visiting. We discussed what we both felt like having in terms of ceremony, and neither of us fancied the rather traditional and typical middle and upper class Paulista approach of hiring one of the generic establishments that caters for weddings, the civil side at least. So we thought about whether to get married in a park or an unusual restaurant. After a few days of investigation we found a suitable restaurant. There was also the issue of whether to have a church wedding, as it's fairly typical in Brazil to have both a civil and church ceremony, although only the civil ceremony has a legal basis but can be combined with the ceremony in the church itself. My girlfriend's family originate from the countryside within the state of São Paulo, and I remembered a beautiful small church situated on a hillside, so her family were set in motion in terms of seeing whether it would be possible to get married there for that part of the ceremony.
…click here to read the rest of the article>>


Discussion Forum

If you've not had a chance yet then pop over to our web forum, register, and start joining in the discussion about Brazil. There are many forum areas such as Living in Brazil, Teaching English, Visas and Documentation, and even a place to Vent Your Frustrations! There's also a forum which allows you to comment on Gringoes.com, either with your views about past articles, areas of the site, or to make suggestions for future articles and content.
Each week in the newsletter we will choose a Post of the Week to give you some idea of what's happening in the forum, and a good thread to visit and read. This week we recommend the post "Cost of Goods" started by the user Robert13212 in our "Moving to Brazil" forum. The post is discussing the cost of living in Brazil.
If you have a recommendation for Post of the Week then send an email to mark@gringoes.com with "Post of the Week" in the subject.
Note that foul language and abusive posts in the forum will not be tolerated. The forum is intended to be a constructive and lighthearted place for discussion about Brazil.

Forex

Over the last couple of weeks the US dollar has remained relatively static, and has only dropped slightly to R$2.14, compared with R$2.15 two weeks ago. The Euro has shown the same trend and has also dropped slightly, currently at R$2.82, versus R$2.84 two weeks ago. There's been a similar trend with the British Pound which is also down, currently R$4.17, against R$4.24 two weeks ago.