Fun with Portuguese
Spending my last few Costa Rican colónes, I bought two small packages of dark chocolate covered coffee beans, which I had only seen in much larger packages and did not indulge. These small packages, though were perfect, and I quickly devoured one before getting on the plane, more interested in the taste than the caffeinated effects this would cause. Needless to say, I was wired. I ususally have no problems falling asleep on planes. In fact, on the contrary, I often can´t keep myself awake, such that I fall asleep before the plane even takes off. I blame it on the lower amounts of oxgen in the air (as for falling asleep on buses, I got nothin´). I tried to counter the effects of the caffeine with a healthy dose of free rum, but even that combined with the free inflight movie “Snow Day” still was not enough to put me to sleep. Arriving in Lima, Peru with less than an hour layover, excited about my first time in the southern hemisphere, I ran to the bathroom to relieve myself of the free rum, but more importantly to check if the toilets did indeed flush the opposite way. They did! How fabulous! I even flushed it twice for reassurance. Finally, a childhood curiousity realized, and not just from that faked-out coin donation demo at the Museum of Science and Industry!
On the way to São Paulo, I realize that I have an hour less to sleep than I thought…I think this must do to them being on Daylight Savings Time (I´ve yet to confirm that), but the time there was an hour ahead of what I thought it should be (we´re 4 hours ahead of Chicago). In an effort to not arrive in town a complete zombie, and to avoid another showing of “Snow Day”, I crooked my head in some ungodly position and managed to get some sleep.
When arriving by plane into a new country, the lines for immigration always seem to be excruciatingly long. Well, in Brazil there´s a first line for the department of health (where I finally got to show my fancy yellow vaccination card), and then a line for immigration. There was no line for customs, so that was a breeze. It´s a funny thing with customs, though, because even though you may have nothing to declare, they can still randomly search your stuff. I always feel the impulse to run as fast as I can once I hand in my declaration form in order to avoid this bonus search. Once again, I avoided the bonus just-to-be-sure check. The unfortunate thing was that it was now only 5:00 in the morning and it was still pitch black outside, so I sat around and waited to figure out the bus situation until there was daylight. While I was waiting, an Israeli girl came up and approached me, with no idea of where to go, etc., so she decided to come with me, which was not particularly what I had in mind. I was on a journey to locate some hotel next to some store on some street in some neighborhood which was recommended to me by a girl from São Paulo. She seemed to add at least an extra step to every bit of progress we made, and I was extremely tired and just wanted to get to where I was going. I did find myself torn, though, in whether to resent her presence or appreciate it, as she did somehow know how to speak Portuguese, which proved to be extremely helpful.
Portuguese looks a lot like Spanish on paper, and the Brazilians tend to get the gist of what you´re saying if you speak Spanish. The problem, though, is that they reply in Portuguese, which sounds nothing like Spanish (it sounds kind of like a mix of Spanish, Italian, and maybe French…but then sometimes I hear a little bit of German and/or Dutch), which means that I can´t understand a word. So, what happens is, I go up to someone speaking a bastardized version of their language, a language which is still a bit foreign to me. They may or may not understand what I´ve just said, and then they reply, a word of which I can´t understand. It´s beautiful communication, folks, just lovely.
So anyway, we finally found a hotel by 11:00(!), and by that time I was hardly tired anymore, so I went to go run some errands, including buying a small English-Portuguese dictionary. In my delirium with lack of sleep, I was slightly overwhelmed and frustrated with all these people mushmouthing everything, not looking forward to being in the country a good month, two months; I got to the point where I started to resent the Portuguese people for conquering this part of the world and subjecting their language to such a large area in South America. Who the hell are these Portuguese, anyway…such a small plot of land hanging off the Iberian peninsula, and how did they come up with such a dumb language?
So, I´m back to square one with the language thing. In fact, I maybe started at square 3 with Spanish (not really knowing how many squares there may be, but with a bit of a head start), but I´m definitely at square one now.
I walked around this little neighborhood all afternoon, trying to keep myself awake, and stopped in a little place for a piece of pizza. Pointing to one and asking in spanish what kind it is, I heard Americana, so I figured I couldn´t go wrong with that and got a slice. Well, I must have misheard him because there was nothing American about this pizza. The sauce was a bright orange and it had green olives and maybe artichokes on it. It wasn´t particularly good. I noticed the guy kind of hanging around my table, eyeing my empty plate, and then he said something to me. Having been in this situation before, I knew he was asking me if I was done and can he take my plate, so I said yes. Americana? he asked me. Well, yes, I am American, so I replied yes, and he started to get me another piece of this awful pizza. Oh, nononono I clarified as I realized I had obviously misinterpreted his gesture.
I went to bed early that night…passed out around 5:00 and woke up at 8am the next morning. Went to walk around town, and stopped for some breakfast. Ordered a small coffee (which is finally good and not instant) and some pastry thing, which turned out to be filled with some sort of weird meat, and a little salty. Not too bad, but not what I had in mind for breakfast; it was served with a spicy mustard which made it ok. When I was finished, I asked the guy for my bill. He wrote down coffee and asked me what else I had (this was a different guy from who served me). I don´t know, I said, really with no idea what it was that I had just eaten. Well, so he asked the guy who had served me, who didn´t remember, so I went up to the counter and pointed at the thing I had asked for. Another guy at the counter, who I thought was part of the conversation saw me point at it and asked me something, and I said yes, and he started to get me one. No no no, I said and tried to explain that I already had one. One? he asked. Yes, I said, and he again started to get me one. No no no, and we went through this again. By this time, the whole place was cracking up, I mean doubling over, in tears; the original guys I was talking with to determine my bill motioned to me that they had figured it out. I went to go pay the lady at the counter and she was just dying, one of those gut-splitting laughters, and so I started laughing, part because they were laughing, part because the situation was funny, this awful communication, part because I was slightly embarrassed and frustrated, and part because I really didn´t know entirely what was going on.
Tags: Brazil, Tag Index
Tania
December 10th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
haha
December 10th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
hahahehehoho