News
This letter was written over the course of the last week or so.

Hello Friends and Family,



I am writing this letter at 11pm on a Monday night. Liz is washing her face and getting ready for bed. It is very much past our usual bedtime, as she has gotten in the habit of waking up at 5am to be ready in time to teach her 7:30 am class. She is teaching at the Cultura Inglesa, one of Brasil’s most highly respected language schools, or if you want to read it in portuguese, “escola de idiomas”. It is a nice building on rua Açu, in Petrópolis. I am not exactly sure what Petrópolis means, but it is entirely possible that it is named after a famous neigboorhood in Rio de Janeiro of the same name. Then again, Natal is just about as old as Rio. I will have to look up the word in a portuguese language dictionary. It sounds like it derives from greek, and so it probably won’t require research in the Tupi-Guarani dictionary.
I am teaching at Wizard, one of the largest franchises in the language school franchising business. Things are fairly crazy this semester the language schools in Natal, and for that matter Brazil, have seen a bit of what we would call “restructuring.” Wisdom was one of Wizards leading competitors. I use the past tense perhaps prematurely, but the Brazilian justice department has ordered all of the Wisdom schools to close down. As everything here takes a couple of extra months, Wisdom is for the moment still in business, but their bells have begun to toll. The issue revolves around a small matter of plagiarism, something that Professor Lentz severly warned us about in the opening days of freshman orientation. One of Wizards founding members saw more money in starting his own school with the same method and a similar name. Not only does the name have a similar meaning as Wizard, but it also sounds similar to the untrained ears of a brazilian. Some other predatory practices engaged in by Wisdom, include opening up schools in the same locations as failed Wizards. It will take a little more time however for the justice department to catch up to its decision to close Wisdom. As a result of this legal wrangling in courtrooms in Brasilia for the last 8 years, we see a certain restructuring. All of the Wizard schools that were operating in Natal closed and in there place a number of different small franchises opened. Wizard Brasil (the company that holds the franchise) deemed that they were not running the business well and had a bad influence on the Franchises’good name. The Wizard schools then opened up in the same spaces as the closing Wisdom schools. This is were I am now working. While the method is the same, the didactic material is new, and even the Coordenadora Pedagogica does not know exactly how to use them, beyond reading the instructions they come with and following them. To a T. To add to this confusion, Wizard Brasil has sent their “Consultant” Milton (read Quality Control Agent) to ensure that the new Wizard (old Wisdom) schools start on the right path. I suppose if you want a place to start on the right foot, you cut off any chance for the formation of bad habits.
Friday… Liz added a member to our apartment last night. Her name is Christmas (we are pretty sure that she is a she), because she is white as snow, and we found her in Natal (which is Portuguese for Christmas). One of her eyes is blue, and the other is green. She does not look large enough to have celebrated her first birthday (in human years), but we pretty much agree that the size of her tummy betrays the fact that Christmas just might be bringing presents. She is one of the friendliest cats I have ever met. She was most probably abandoned less than a week ago on Romualdo Galvão, one of Natal’s larger avenues where our buses go by. Liz had seen her for three days straight, in the morning when she left for work, again when she came home for lunch, a third time when she went to her afternoon classes, and a fourth time when she came home for the night. Every time, the cat was in the same 20 meters worth of sidewalk, and often times hung out under the covered bustop, rubbing against peoples legs. At one point, Liz saw the kitty placidly sitting right in front of a gate, the dog on the other side barking loudly. Kitty was lonely, needed a new home and a name. Yesterday, Liz and I left for work at the same time, and I saw kitty for the first time. She looked hungry, tired and dirty. I said that we should sleep on it, that she would still be there tomorrow morning. But on the way home I kept on thinking about the “what if’s”: what if kitty was not there in the morning, what if she got hit by a car, what if one of the neighbors decided to feed her rat poison. Liz had many of the same thoughts. When I got off at the bus stop, kitty was not there. I figured she had her own hiding place for the nights that was not the middle of the sidewalk, but was secretly afraid something terrible had happened to her. As I walked up to the gate of the apartment building Liz was waiting for me. Kitty had just jumped out of her arms, and run under a car. I coaxed her out, and kitty took an elevator ride up to the 9th floor. So Christmas it is. I gave her a bath and she is much cleaner and smelling better. I also went out to the supermarket before it closed and picked up kitty litter and catfood. Christmas was still somewhat desperate for attention last night, which made sleeping hard. She is also going to have to learn that when she sleeps on the bed, her place is at the foot, by our feet, not with her tail swishing in our faces. She also has a habit of rubbing her cheek on our cheeks. Probably she is just claiming us as her new pets. She is stetched very glamourously on the sofa at the moment.
We have heard some horror stories recently about delinquent employers. There is no bi-weekly pay in Brazil, and so you only get paid after a full month of work. Fabricio, one of the teachers that works with Liz, came to Natal in July with his partner. He is dividing his time between teaching at cultura inglesa and working on his mastes degree (it might be a doctorate, but I am not sure). For their first month in Natal, they worked at a bar in Ponta Negra, while pursuing other jobs on the side. At the end of the month, they did not get their paycheck. The manager said something about the bar needing the money to do some construction work and that it was going to be a couple of weeks late. They called again 2 weeks later, and got put off again. The third time they called, the manager asked them to come in for a meeting. They went in and he informed them that they were not going to get paid, that they could tell the police or sue the bar if they wanted. I have not heard the next part of the story, but I do hope they sue. The legal system in brazil can be chaotic at times, but my friend Sergio indicated that when it came to work issues, there was a special court and judge that resolved these cases quickly. The good news is that we know that both Cultura Inglesa, and the franchise owner of Wizard have a history of paying on time.
If you are considering a trip to Brazil, know that we have room for hosting guests ;)

- Daniel