The Portuguese language, despite how beautiful it is, drives me crazy. With my spanish skills, I can understand the gist of written Portuguese, but when someone opens their mouth, completely different words come out. Not only different words than I read, but with sounds that I've never heard before eliciting my tongue to twist in ways it was not made to.
Having no comprehension of anything anyone says around me has been a pretty crazy experience. Most of the time I am confused; am I going the right way on the Metro? Did I just buy cough medicine or liquor? What on earth did i just order? On a few occasions, people have been trying to get my attention and I had no idea. Other times, I am bored; left out of social converstations because, although many people try to include me by speaking English, the converstation usually turns to Portuguese (of course, I don't blame them). I didn't realize how much eavesdropping I do and how much you learn from droppign in on converstaions. In these situations, I have a game that I play to combat the boredom; I make up conversations for the people that are amusing to me. This morning, a couple on the train. "You crazy monkey, this is our stop! No, I am not getting off here unless you cook me pork chops tonight. etc..." Then, there are times that I am thankful that I don't understand Portuguese. For example, on my run when guys are saying who knows what to me and cat calling, I pretend like they are saying "great job! Enjoy your run today. You can do it, just one more mile to go!" I'm sure it's way nicer than what they are actually saying.
I start my Portuguese lessons tomorrow, though, so these situations should start waning. Nonetheless, they have led to some pretty comical events. See next post.
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