I’m in Brazil and my head is exploding. “Que?”, “Não compreendi”, and “Meus Portuguese é muito basico” have become my phrases of choice. I have discovered, yet again, just how difficult it is to traverse a world where every sound and syllable imparts confusion—where every moment offers a tinge of awkwardness, and a raised eyebrow from the person I’m talking to. Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself, it being my first day and all, but God would I love to communicate right about now!
The trip down was long; so long in fact that I came awfully close to losing it mentally. Oklahoma City to Dallas was no problem, just a two hour wait and hour and a half ride. I met some great “single serving friends”, drank some apple juice, and hoped for (but never received) my complimentary in flight peanuts.
With each connecting flight, I brought myself one step closer to the universe that is Brazil. I went from no Portuguese, to some Portuguese, to “I’m the only gringo here who can’t speak a damn bit Portuguese”, as I moved along. With each flight, the Brazilian crowd grew larger, until the cultural parlance completely saturated the air-recycled environment. When everything leaped, full speed, “way over my head”, I simply ducked for cover, staring at points of the plane, trying all the while to reason through the clatter.
When I finally reached the Aeroporto Internacional de Sao Paulo I was elated but scared. Everything was new and unpredictable, and simple tasks required an untold amount of concentration.
When I went to recheck my luggage, after running through customs, I was told by the desk attendant that I had to hold onto my bags until three hours before my flight. This presented some complications, especially considering that my departure to Salvador was not for another twelve hours. So there I found myself, meandering through the airport, carrying 80 lbs of unappreciated, yet invaluable junk. In a place where people eye your stuff, fastidiously, one must be cautious and mentally present. This was tiring, to say the least, and I was awfully close to handing my bags to the nearest person with a “you take care of it!” Communist tendencies aside, I instead kept a watchful eye on my stuff, dealing with such difficulties as, “My bag won’t fit in the bathroom stall, so tough, just don’t go!”
Eventually, I found myself sitting across from the embarque corridor of the airport, just spaces away from the Banco do Brazil and the Black Coffee restaurante; also known as the sixth circle of hell. I’m not sure how it happened—how I slipped, like a farmer’s hand impregnating a cow, through a temporal vortex—but time moved far slower there than any where I’ve ever been. I would move, with my bag cart in tow, from my off-brown airport seat, to standing outside, watching the Volkswagen cars and busses roll by.
My only consolation, during this rather aggravated displacement, was the gorgeous brasileiras that would walk by me as I sat in my chair. I’m not really sure how it happened, how an indefinable number of features could meld together in such perfection, but Brazilian women “have it going on” as a more colloquial gent would say. Generally speaking, men enjoy curvaceous figures that inspire thoughts of Aphrodite and the finer things in life. I swear, every three seconds, my eyes would swagger—an abrupt left to right—and under my breath I’d mutter a que beleza, wondering how a person could be so fine. And another thing I’ve noticed; it seems that Brazilian girls tend to ‘take care’ of themselves more than Americans, at least in regards to fashion and the strict necessities of well sculpted nails and hair. Call me bias, or a chauvinistic pig, but I’ve always enjoyed the sight of a well manicured women.
Adolescent thoughts not withstanding, I preceded to sit, stand, sit, stand, and sit some more. After working up enough courage, I eventually found myself at a food/vendor counter, trying politely to order a cafézihno, and some pão de queijo. The girls taking my order would laugh at my expressions, and I’d cheerfully return with a gringo smile, hoping they would take pity.
Now, lest I fail to mention, I was in all honesty very happy to be in Brazil. Over the past year, I had invested a great deal of thoughts and hopes into this trip. Seeing the dance and sway of the palm trees, and the cultural nuances of a motorbike passing, I felt rather dizzy, like I was falling into a dream. It was good, even in these first few hours, to feel like I had ownership of something in my life—that I made this trip happen, and this reality was all but my own.
Eventually, after more physical and mental turmoil, I came upon the Leo Robideu sign, horribly misspelled, by the folks from Idioama. It was, at that point, two in the morning, and I was very happy that someone from the language school had even come to pick me up. Even at that hour, the ride into downtown Salvador was absolutely stunning. Concrete apartment buildings, tree lined avenues, and all forms of businesses stretched for miles. The barzinhos blared Baianas musicas, and huge crowds filled the entryway of each intoxicating club. Large mega structures filled the sky, and industrial sculptures accentuated the flora of the praças. Eventually, to my benefit, our car peaked over a hill, and we came upon a vision of the Bahia dos Todos os Santos—the bay of all saints. Huge waves crashed upon its shore, and I was utterly amazed.
When I reached my host family apartment, in the graça neighborhood, I was completely wiped out. I tried to offer some formal greetings to my hosts, but nothing really legible came out. Dreary eyed themselves, they showed me to a quant little room with a window that overlooked the street. There was a glass table in one corner, a tv and bed in the middle of the room, and a white cabinet on the far wall. I dropped my head into a pillow and crashed to oblivion.
The next day, with the rise of the Bahian sun, was muito movimentada (very busy). I awoke to the sound of my host mothers voice, talking on the phone in the living room, and I slowly, with but six hours of sleep, rose from my bed to greet her. Silvia, an affable women in her early forties, welcomed me to Bahia. She seated me down to the largest breakfast I had ever seen, offering me eggs, cheese, freshly squeezed juice, coffee, five plates full of different types of fruit, three loaves of bread, and a whole assortment of other goodie’s. I think she was gauging my likes and dislikes with this meal, serving me everything in an attempt to ascertain what I was and was not in favor of. Either way, I came away from the meal adequately stuffed, and well engaged in conversation. She didn’t speak any English, but my chicken Portuguese got us by.
After breakfast, I tried to make my way over to an ATM, a few minutes walk from meus casa, but failed miserably in figuring out the machine. The door to the bank proved equally unfamiliar. There were these dark metal doorknob looking things in the center of two glass panes, that, as I came to find, had no real function. A guard standing inside the bank laughed at my futile attempts to sac the fortress, eventually pointing out a button on the side door that needed to be pressed to enter. So having figured that out, I tried to surmount my next challenge, the confounded caixa electronico, and failing miserably in that regard, had to return later with my host mother to pull out some cash.
Now, interestingly enough, as the day progressed, more and more women came to invade Silvia’s apartmento. Maria, Siliva’s dark and beautiful twenty four year old maid showed up, and began doing my breakfast dishes. I was happy to meet someone my own age, but laughed at the fact that there was a maid for a rather poor Brazilian family. The apartment off Rua da Paz is very modest, with a small living room/dining room, kitchen, and side bedrooms. There are few adornments in the house, and few luxuries that most Americans would take as domestic ‘givens’. For there to be poor amidst the poor is a great irony only possible in a third world country.
Well, Maria gave way to Emilie, Jackie, Maria, Alicia, and more—all friends and family of the Liborio tree. Jackie, I should not fail to mention, is a spunky twenty-one year old, with a rear end that can upset a man’s conscious logic for a good time to come. Together, Jackie, Emilie, Maria and I, spent the day at the beach, swallowing great deals of salt water at the bequest of the sea. The colors and senses of Salvador are as lively as the people that inhabit it, and the trip to the beach was imbued with such accents that I could hardly contain myself. Hundreds of loud boisterous black and tanned Brazilians occupied beach space, sipping on cold bear and great amounts of suco (juice). The waves off the bay were incredible, knocking me into the surf sand at multiple intervals. I spent the time, traveling from beach to beach, eating queijo on a stick, and flirting with Maria and Jackie in my broken Portuguese. We visited the light house, a major travel point in Salvador, and eventually made our way back home up a large cobblestone hill.
Unfortunately, the good feelings and good vibes did not last through the night. I really wanted to go out and hit the club scene, but Maria and Jackie didn’t want go. What was new to me was same old, same old, to them, and they lacked the abuse yourself after hours commitment I was ready for. Maria left, and I was stuck, dicionario in hand, trying painfully to have a conversation with Jackie, who did not know or want to know a single word of English. Eventually I got sick of my confusion, and my inability to communicate clearly, and I went outside to go buy some beer.
When I got back, I tried to continue the conversation, but failed miserably. We were clearly both uncomfortable with the situation, with the long drawn out silences, and the “your weird gringo” vibes that I probably gave off. At one point, we did have this great conversation, where I just talked in English, and she just talked in Portuguese, and we completely couldn’t understand each other. Nonetheless, we both seemed to appreciate the awkwardness of the moment, and for the first time I felt the infinitesimal spark of a connection, so taken for granted in conversations back home.
When I gave up, beer in hand, with a boa noite, I could see the relief in her eyes. Trying to talk when you can’t talk is just miserable, and she was glad to be out of there. I too, feeling a bit tired, retired to my quarters, hoping for some strangeness relief in my o computador.
…Thus completes my first journal entry. It’s twelve o’clock midnight and I have two and a half beers in my belly. I don’t usually write so much, so fast, but I don’t think that I adequately got my conversation fill throughout the day.
The trip down was long; so long in fact that I came awfully close to losing it mentally. Oklahoma City to Dallas was no problem, just a two hour wait and hour and a half ride. I met some great “single serving friends”, drank some apple juice, and hoped for (but never received) my complimentary in flight peanuts.
With each connecting flight, I brought myself one step closer to the universe that is Brazil. I went from no Portuguese, to some Portuguese, to “I’m the only gringo here who can’t speak a damn bit Portuguese”, as I moved along. With each flight, the Brazilian crowd grew larger, until the cultural parlance completely saturated the air-recycled environment. When everything leaped, full speed, “way over my head”, I simply ducked for cover, staring at points of the plane, trying all the while to reason through the clatter.
When I finally reached the Aeroporto Internacional de Sao Paulo I was elated but scared. Everything was new and unpredictable, and simple tasks required an untold amount of concentration.
When I went to recheck my luggage, after running through customs, I was told by the desk attendant that I had to hold onto my bags until three hours before my flight. This presented some complications, especially considering that my departure to Salvador was not for another twelve hours. So there I found myself, meandering through the airport, carrying 80 lbs of unappreciated, yet invaluable junk. In a place where people eye your stuff, fastidiously, one must be cautious and mentally present. This was tiring, to say the least, and I was awfully close to handing my bags to the nearest person with a “you take care of it!” Communist tendencies aside, I instead kept a watchful eye on my stuff, dealing with such difficulties as, “My bag won’t fit in the bathroom stall, so tough, just don’t go!”
Eventually, I found myself sitting across from the embarque corridor of the airport, just spaces away from the Banco do Brazil and the Black Coffee restaurante; also known as the sixth circle of hell. I’m not sure how it happened—how I slipped, like a farmer’s hand impregnating a cow, through a temporal vortex—but time moved far slower there than any where I’ve ever been. I would move, with my bag cart in tow, from my off-brown airport seat, to standing outside, watching the Volkswagen cars and busses roll by.
My only consolation, during this rather aggravated displacement, was the gorgeous brasileiras that would walk by me as I sat in my chair. I’m not really sure how it happened, how an indefinable number of features could meld together in such perfection, but Brazilian women “have it going on” as a more colloquial gent would say. Generally speaking, men enjoy curvaceous figures that inspire thoughts of Aphrodite and the finer things in life. I swear, every three seconds, my eyes would swagger—an abrupt left to right—and under my breath I’d mutter a que beleza, wondering how a person could be so fine. And another thing I’ve noticed; it seems that Brazilian girls tend to ‘take care’ of themselves more than Americans, at least in regards to fashion and the strict necessities of well sculpted nails and hair. Call me bias, or a chauvinistic pig, but I’ve always enjoyed the sight of a well manicured women.
Adolescent thoughts not withstanding, I preceded to sit, stand, sit, stand, and sit some more. After working up enough courage, I eventually found myself at a food/vendor counter, trying politely to order a cafézihno, and some pão de queijo. The girls taking my order would laugh at my expressions, and I’d cheerfully return with a gringo smile, hoping they would take pity.
Now, lest I fail to mention, I was in all honesty very happy to be in Brazil. Over the past year, I had invested a great deal of thoughts and hopes into this trip. Seeing the dance and sway of the palm trees, and the cultural nuances of a motorbike passing, I felt rather dizzy, like I was falling into a dream. It was good, even in these first few hours, to feel like I had ownership of something in my life—that I made this trip happen, and this reality was all but my own.
Eventually, after more physical and mental turmoil, I came upon the Leo Robideu sign, horribly misspelled, by the folks from Idioama. It was, at that point, two in the morning, and I was very happy that someone from the language school had even come to pick me up. Even at that hour, the ride into downtown Salvador was absolutely stunning. Concrete apartment buildings, tree lined avenues, and all forms of businesses stretched for miles. The barzinhos blared Baianas musicas, and huge crowds filled the entryway of each intoxicating club. Large mega structures filled the sky, and industrial sculptures accentuated the flora of the praças. Eventually, to my benefit, our car peaked over a hill, and we came upon a vision of the Bahia dos Todos os Santos—the bay of all saints. Huge waves crashed upon its shore, and I was utterly amazed.
When I reached my host family apartment, in the graça neighborhood, I was completely wiped out. I tried to offer some formal greetings to my hosts, but nothing really legible came out. Dreary eyed themselves, they showed me to a quant little room with a window that overlooked the street. There was a glass table in one corner, a tv and bed in the middle of the room, and a white cabinet on the far wall. I dropped my head into a pillow and crashed to oblivion.
The next day, with the rise of the Bahian sun, was muito movimentada (very busy). I awoke to the sound of my host mothers voice, talking on the phone in the living room, and I slowly, with but six hours of sleep, rose from my bed to greet her. Silvia, an affable women in her early forties, welcomed me to Bahia. She seated me down to the largest breakfast I had ever seen, offering me eggs, cheese, freshly squeezed juice, coffee, five plates full of different types of fruit, three loaves of bread, and a whole assortment of other goodie’s. I think she was gauging my likes and dislikes with this meal, serving me everything in an attempt to ascertain what I was and was not in favor of. Either way, I came away from the meal adequately stuffed, and well engaged in conversation. She didn’t speak any English, but my chicken Portuguese got us by.
After breakfast, I tried to make my way over to an ATM, a few minutes walk from meus casa, but failed miserably in figuring out the machine. The door to the bank proved equally unfamiliar. There were these dark metal doorknob looking things in the center of two glass panes, that, as I came to find, had no real function. A guard standing inside the bank laughed at my futile attempts to sac the fortress, eventually pointing out a button on the side door that needed to be pressed to enter. So having figured that out, I tried to surmount my next challenge, the confounded caixa electronico, and failing miserably in that regard, had to return later with my host mother to pull out some cash.
Now, interestingly enough, as the day progressed, more and more women came to invade Silvia’s apartmento. Maria, Siliva’s dark and beautiful twenty four year old maid showed up, and began doing my breakfast dishes. I was happy to meet someone my own age, but laughed at the fact that there was a maid for a rather poor Brazilian family. The apartment off Rua da Paz is very modest, with a small living room/dining room, kitchen, and side bedrooms. There are few adornments in the house, and few luxuries that most Americans would take as domestic ‘givens’. For there to be poor amidst the poor is a great irony only possible in a third world country.
Well, Maria gave way to Emilie, Jackie, Maria, Alicia, and more—all friends and family of the Liborio tree. Jackie, I should not fail to mention, is a spunky twenty-one year old, with a rear end that can upset a man’s conscious logic for a good time to come. Together, Jackie, Emilie, Maria and I, spent the day at the beach, swallowing great deals of salt water at the bequest of the sea. The colors and senses of Salvador are as lively as the people that inhabit it, and the trip to the beach was imbued with such accents that I could hardly contain myself. Hundreds of loud boisterous black and tanned Brazilians occupied beach space, sipping on cold bear and great amounts of suco (juice). The waves off the bay were incredible, knocking me into the surf sand at multiple intervals. I spent the time, traveling from beach to beach, eating queijo on a stick, and flirting with Maria and Jackie in my broken Portuguese. We visited the light house, a major travel point in Salvador, and eventually made our way back home up a large cobblestone hill.
Unfortunately, the good feelings and good vibes did not last through the night. I really wanted to go out and hit the club scene, but Maria and Jackie didn’t want go. What was new to me was same old, same old, to them, and they lacked the abuse yourself after hours commitment I was ready for. Maria left, and I was stuck, dicionario in hand, trying painfully to have a conversation with Jackie, who did not know or want to know a single word of English. Eventually I got sick of my confusion, and my inability to communicate clearly, and I went outside to go buy some beer.
When I got back, I tried to continue the conversation, but failed miserably. We were clearly both uncomfortable with the situation, with the long drawn out silences, and the “your weird gringo” vibes that I probably gave off. At one point, we did have this great conversation, where I just talked in English, and she just talked in Portuguese, and we completely couldn’t understand each other. Nonetheless, we both seemed to appreciate the awkwardness of the moment, and for the first time I felt the infinitesimal spark of a connection, so taken for granted in conversations back home.
When I gave up, beer in hand, with a boa noite, I could see the relief in her eyes. Trying to talk when you can’t talk is just miserable, and she was glad to be out of there. I too, feeling a bit tired, retired to my quarters, hoping for some strangeness relief in my o computador.
…Thus completes my first journal entry. It’s twelve o’clock midnight and I have two and a half beers in my belly. I don’t usually write so much, so fast, but I don’t think that I adequately got my conversation fill throughout the day.
(first cafezinho)
(outside the airport...waiting...waiting...waiting)
(Aeroporto Sao Paulo)
(giant breakfast)
(Cuisine da Bahia)
(view from my bedroom window)
Please note: I will not be able to update my blog as often as I would like. Not only do I have to pay for internet, at a computer cafe, but I have to format with a rather foreign keyboard. So no everyday posts as I would like. Blah.
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