Sample Portuguese Conversation

Here's a sample conversation with a Brazil speaking normal-speed Portuguese at me:


*************

Brazilian: Hey, what's up? Do you ---- -- --- now? ------ --- ---- last night at 8:00. It was really awesome. Where was ----?

Me: ...

Brazilian: Did you understand?

Me: Not everything. Could you please speak slower?

Brazilian: Sure, no problem. It's ------ ----. --- -- ---! Right?

Me: Fuck.

*************


It can be really frustrating to not understand Portuguese. I'm definitely getting better, but with only 3 months of practice on my own before arriving, it's not very easy to start speaking well. Sometimes I feel like my Portuguese is really good (like when people I meet tell me it is), and sometimes it seems awful. If someone's asking me questions I've heard a million times before (where I'm from, what I'm doing in Brazil, how old I am) it's pretty easy to pass for conversational. But when I'm listening to a group of Brazilians talk amongst themselves I don't understand shit.

The worst part about not speaking well is not being able to understand jokes. If you're with a group of people and you're not really following the conversation, what do you do when everyone else starts guffawing? Your options are pretty much either a) pretend to laugh even though you don't get the joke (though this can be very dangerous if called on it), or b) not laughing, in which case you look like an ignorant baffoon. I generally opt for the broad, good natured smile, which is pretty easy to pull off when everyone else is belly laughing. That way I might have gotten the joke, but if I didn't at least I'm a happy guy, right?

There really is no good answer. Ain't easy bein' gringo.

Video Tour of the House

So far the pictures on this blog have been a hit. Everyone knows the old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words." Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million.

Since my camera can take high quality video, I figure I might as well turn this into a quasi video blog by putting my videos up on YouTube. That way you can you guys can get the true insider's view -- you'll have so much rich media it's coming out your ears.

Without further ado, a video tour of my house:

Brazilian Secret

Oh my sweet Lord almighty, this is awesome:





















Brazilian Secret

If there's a woman in your life who needs a little help in the butt region, I'm taking orders.

Walk to the Lake

This was a 3 day weekend thanks to some guy named Tiradentes. I was sick (I have bronchitis but I'm getting over it) so I spent my time studying Portuguese, taking antibiotics, and walking around the area. On Monday I walked to a nearby lake and took pictures. Here they are.

Road next to the lake. Whoo!



The lake.



The path around the lake.



Stretching/warmup area for runners and power walkers.



Brazilians take recycling more seriously than we do.



Ducklings in the lake.



Some bird I don't know. Maybe... heron? Perhaps an astute reader can tell me.




View across the lake.



Curve in the path.



Pretty flowering tree.



Weird tree shaped like an old Coke bottle.



Trees over the path.



Tree with orange flowers.



Walking back on the other side.



Brazilian couple finishing the loop around the lake. I should sell this picture to Hallmark.

So, that's the lake. Very pretty spot, I'll probably go back some time. Good day.

What I Love About Brazil

• Climate. The climate is very nice. Right now it's fall (the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere). It's generally pretty hot and muggy, 'round 85° F, but it's sunny almost every day. On those hot days a late afternoon shower rolls in quickly, rains for a while, and then leaves and takes the heat with it. Since it's a tropical climate, the plant life is spectacular; strange, beautiful plants and flowers grow everywhere.
  
• Women. Brazilian girls are hot. Really hot. Most all of them are brunettes with some in-between racial tone that doesn't exist in the U.S. They also have big, awesome asses. Not overflowing, lumpy, I-could-put-my-drink-on-that-shelf-you-call-an-ass asses, but certainly larger and rounder than the average American ass. Tan and round, A+. For those who are curious, their boobs are about the same size I would guess, if somewhat smaller.

Here's Miss Brazil. You're welcome.

• Hospitality. I've written about this before, but Brazilian hospitality is incredible. People always go out of their way to help me, and I'm constantly being invited places.
  
• Gringo Love. I think some of the Brazilian hospitality might stem from gringophilia, which is cool with me. Hopefully this will help me with said hot Brazilian women (Brazilians tell me it will).
  
• Food. If you've spent time with me recently, you probably know about my crazy food alergies (gluten & dairy). Brazil is awesome for people with these alergies because I can eat the Brazilian staples: beans, rice, meat, vegetables, and fruits. I can actually eat out in Brazil, something that's nearly impossible for me in the U.S.

I can eat all this!

• Language. Of course the language is huge for me -- I get off big time on speaking a foreign language every day. It's easier for me this time around with Portuguese instead of French despite the fact that I had studied French for a lot longer when I went to France. I've got the Romance language conceptual framework set up, so I pick things up much easier and faster, though I'm still struggling with the pronunciation. Speaking of which, I love the way the language sounds. It's a very pretty, sing-songy, open-mouthed kind of language. Like Brazil, it is strange and beautiful.

Lay of the Land - Part II, UNICAMP

These pictures are me making my way out of Barão Geraldo and towards UNICAMP.

Rounding a turn towards the UNICAMP traffic circle.

Traffic circle. They like these in Brazil as much as they do in Europe.

Central clearing/park thing in UNICAMP.

Pretty, though kind of untended. You get this feeling in lots of public places in Brazil.

Big overgrown fountain that don't got no water.

Cute stray pup that I came across. He was very mild mannered and very skinny. I didn't have any food to give him but I gave him a good pet.

Pupper.

Weird Brazilian graffitti on campus [EDIT: my roommate told me this is the mark of a very good illegal local radio station].

Weird UNICAMP academic building.

I'm done uploading pictures. Will do more later. Internet connection too slow. Goodnight.

Lay of the Land - Part I, Barão Geraldo

I went on a walk around my neighborhood today to get a feel for the lay of the land. I live in a neighborhood called Barão Geraldo. It's almost exclusively student housing, but strangely the houses are really nice.

My house from the outside. I live with 6 other people, and as you can see lots of them have cars. This is great because they're always offering to drive me places.

This is Guilerme in the living room playing video games as he often does.

Street view of Barão Geraldo, my neighborhood.


A typical, nice house in Barão Geraldo


House number and mailbox on the side of a house in Barão Geraldo.


Note the well manicured shrubbery in front of a random house.


Nice street to live on, eh?


Shit loves to grow in Brazil.

In part II, I'll post pictures of UNICAMP, the biggest university in Brazil which is located in Campinas.

Boa noite

Mad Southern Hospitality

Brazilians are the most warm, friendly people I have ever met. I am in awe of their hospitality. After getting picked up at the airport by a bunch of friendly Brazilians I thought maybe it was just because this is part of the AIESEC duties for them to go out of their way for me. But every person I meet is consistently EXTREMELY nice to me. A few examples:

• I was invited to 3 parties yesterday within 5 hours of arriving in Brazil.
• My roommates are very, very cool and nice. Every one of them has been nothing but funny and refreshing. They frequently remind me to take whatever I want in the house. They are very patient with my lack of Portuguese and are thrilled when I say little things correctly. I have so far borrowed a laptop and an alarm clock from them. I have been offered food too.
  
• My roommate Leo took me to a party at UNICAMP last night. Of course he gave me the option of where to go, and we went to the party of my choosing. At the party, he introduced me to tons of hot girls as well as his guy friends. We then stopped off at a second party where we met more people and more hot girls. I spoke alternately in broken Portuguese, English, and even French with this French girl I met. He broke down the party and girl scene in Campinas for me all the while.
• This morning I went to work for the first time. An AIESECer, Renan, took me to the bus stop this morning at 7:15 (the bus comes early); the dude got up that early just to walk me to the damn bus stop. WTF.
  
• The head of a department at Ci&T (I forget which one) took me out to lunch at a churrascaria with a bunch of other people for work and PAID. The same guy gave me his business card and told me to call him on his cell any time, even on the weekend.
• One of my coworkers I met today takes the same bus as me. He walked me home in the opposite direction from my house because I wasn't sure of my address (I would've gotten there just fine for the record).
  

I think this sort of hospitality comes from a combination of me being an English-speaking American gringo and Brazilians just being extremely nice people. It's nuts -- they just seem to love helping people. Moreover, BRAZIL is nuts: beautiful weather, sweet job, great people, beautiful language, beautiful house. What more could I want?

I'm in Brazil

So I arrived in Brazil today.

....Ho-ly SHIT!

In French they have a word called "dépaysant" which means literally "de-country-ifying." Something that is dépaysant makes you feel like a fish out of water.. Brazil is dépaysant like a motherfucker.

The flight itself was uneventful -- everything went smooth as silk. We got to the airport with lots of time to spare, the airplane was half full, and the airline (Continental) took very good care of me. After going through customs and getting my baggage, I was greeted by 4 enthusiastic AIESECers. I really didn't know what to make of that. They made me take pictures and I wasn't really feeling that. Still, they were very nice and silly and whatnot so I warmed up to them pretty quickly. They led me to the parking lot to take me back in the one kid's car. Walking to the car it was pretty hot, 'round 85 degrees. They warned me that we were about to drive through the "ugliest part of São Paulo."

All I could think when we started driving was, "Man, Brazil is LUSH." Everything was green. The place seemed to be overbrimming with life thanks to the warm and very humid climate. The buildings were also extremely colorful, favoring loud bright colors. The mishmash of colors and the intense greenery made the landscape supremely beautiful and very exotic looking. I don't think I'd ever felt so strongly the feeling of being "elsewhere" except possibly Morocco, but Brazil was dépaysant in a totally different way. I was not in Kansas anymore.

We passed some slums which were still brightly colored despite their poverty. We also went through an area with a stinky river that they apologized profusely for. There was some weird white foamy stuff floating on top of the water and after a minute or two of explanation in English and in Portuguese I gathered that it was some kind of industrial soap to clean the pollution in the river. Further on down the road there were giant colorful plastic bottles about 30 feet long and 10 feet wide placed on the banks of the river to remind would-be polluters to think twice before throwing littering.

The rest of the ride was devoted mostly to Portuguese: regional accents, curse words, and the like. I'm sure I steered the conversation in that direction. We also discussed partying and the city of Campinas and tried to figure out what they were supposed to do with me next.

When we arrived in Campinas, they took me to my house (one of the Brazilian girls had been on the phone with a higher up AIESEC person who told them to take me there; my head was still spinning at this point). I got shown around the place by Leo (the only roommate I'd talked to prior to leaving for Brazil), dropped my stuff off, brushed my teeth, put in my contacts and we were off again.

Let me tell you, the house owns. It's a beautiful villa housing for college students. There's a big handsome dark green iron wrought gate outside. There is a lawn with plants growing in the front yard. The house itself is brick painted a soft clay color. There is a big living room with a TV, many computers, a fish tank, and lots of open space. The living room floor is gray slate and the rest of the house has wood flooring. There are three blue tinted windows that look out onto the lawn and let a breeze in. There are two bathrooms and 4(?) bedrooms, and they are nice. The house is so, so sweet.

The AIESEC people then took me around to eat and go to the supermarket. Carolina Dorte was driving and Renan had joined us. Only one of the original AIESECers had stuck around (the cute one), so we were 4. After the food run they dropped me back off and told me they were picking me up at 7:15 am tomorrow to take me to work (I think; much of what was said today was at least semi-confusing since it was in Portuguese or English broken to some degree).

I will definitely take pictures and post them -- this place begs for it. My neighborhood is just as beautiful as the house. It's incredible. I would take some now but the daily afternoon rainshower just rolled through and it's overcast, not quite as pretty as it was earlier. Apparently that's how the weather is this season: hot and sticky during the day with a late afternoon shower that whisks the heat away.

I am positive that I'm forgetting to write about tons of things that I saw/learned/found interesting, but I at least wanted to get something down given the magnitude of this day. I really did get the royal treatment, but it was overwhelming to say the least. I could either roll out a perfectly acceptable statement or I'd just stand there with my mouth agape whenever I tried to speak Portuguese. Forget about understanding people when they spoke at me, that wasn't happening today. Tomorrow I will speak Portuguese.

Até amanhã

And Off I Go

This is it, last post in this hemisphere. I leave at 10:00 pm tomorrow, April 9th.

In a fortuitous twist of fate, I was able to get my visa yesterday. There were problems getting it (there have been many thus far) but I was able to get it same day whereas normally it takes 2 days. Now that I have my visa I have everything I need to go to Brazil. I'm mostly packed, have all the documentation, and my housing is all lined up. After so much preparatory bullshit it's coming as a shock to me that I'll actually be in Brazil on Thursday.

Not much else to say really. I should be in São Paulo by 8:50 am on April 10 and in Campinas by noon.

Bye!

Bureaucracy, Preparation, Reflection

Man. I have been at home for the past week and a half now getting ready for Brazil. And it is at the very least a part time job -- hunting down the necessary documents, tying up loose ends, playing email and phone tag with Ci&T and the Brazilian consulate... It's that necessary bullshit you have to go through whenever you move to another country. Oh, it's definitely worth it in the end, but a bigity bitch nonetheless.

Since preparing for Brazil is but a part time job I spend the rest of my time relaxing from that devil of a trimester I finished, playing with my mom's dog (my favorite dog of all time), and most importantly studying Portuguese. I do this hardcore for at least an hour or two per day, and I love it. Brazilian Portuguese is a strange and beautiful language that reminds me of French. Ain't nothin' better than learning a foreign language, and it's much easier this time around with French under my belt.

I had a semi-interesting revelation recently: I like myself better when I'm abroad. It's not really anything to do with avoiding my troubles at home or not liking myself in the U.S. It's just that when I'm living in another country I'm learning another language, an activity that fills me with immense joy. Every day I study the language and then get to practice what I learn; the instant feedback I get by learning something and then directly applying my knowledge provides me with incredible incentive to learn more. I love everything about that process.

I also am much more outgoing; whereas normally I would avoid making tedious small talk with Joe Bagadonuts on the subway, when I'm abroad every social interaction is a chance to practice the language so I revel in it. The fact that I'm generally psyched to be where I am makes me more adventurous too. Plus, I can always play my foreigner card -- I love the role of the young, daring, multilingual American who is at home in a foreign land. Foreigners respect the fact that I speak their language well and am interested in their culture. Because I am foreign and speak the language I am immediately interesting. I always have my go to talking point: "Yeah, I'm foreign. Philadelphia, United States. Yes, Bush is an asshat and Family Guy is sweet. Sure, I'll come to your party!" Socially everything's easier: girls like me more, cool people think I'm cool, and a lack of tact is easily forgiven as a harmless blunder committed by a well meaning foreigner.

When I'm in the U.S., I can't play the daring foreigner role. At home, there's nothing about me that's outwardly special. It just ain't the same. It's not that it's bad here, it's just so awesome there.

On the bright side, I'll be in Brazil next week...