Feriado

Remember this day?

Today was Saint George's day, for those of you that were celebrating the life and death of this (improbably historical) martyr. Being a state holiday as he is apparently the patron saint of Rio, everything was closed. Except for the second floor of the Faculdade de Letras at the Federal University, where about 60 foreigners were straggling in to take a Portuguese test. It's called the CELPE-Bras and is the only formal recognition of proficiency in Portuguese.

I manage to arrive without incident even though almost no buses are running (some random university staff member in a VW van took pity on us and dropped us off at the door). And would you believe that my Federal Police friends are ALL there, with the exception of cult girl?!?

So that was fun. The test was not particularly long, but I had a lot of scribbled out words on the page...it's harder to write in a foreign language in pen without a dictionary than I thought! Anyhow, tomorrow's the oral part, and we won't receive the results until July...

Kind of glad it is over. Now I can study French if I want to and not feel guilty!