Community

 

We've had people to the house twice so far. Our teacher, Herbert, and his wife Marta came the first weekend and welcomed us warmly. We hope to see much more of them in the future.  Then we ran into a fellow student from The Language Club and invited him over for a pina colada and cookies. All conversations on our porch, so far, have been in Portuguese and it really matters. We need community if we are going to learn. We need to share stories and ideas, we need to give advice, and get corrected, and to sympathize and explain and connect and we need to do these things in Portuguese. Neither of us knows how to find community in this new place, with this new language. Carol went to a yoga class, we chat with the dog people and vendors on the beach and the guy that is renting us this space and his parents who keep and eye on things, plus we have The Language Club.  That's our community so far, but the intimacy we associate with community isn't happening yet.