Ode to Pântano

Pântano do Sul: it is an anachronism of a town at the far south of the island, with a nice long beach and restaurants in the sand. We had it all living there for 14 privileged weeks that went by too fast. A simple portrait of the way things used to be, it that taught us what we have is enough and gave daily reminders that our untamed souls still resonate with wild life and wild places. 

Mind control (to major tom)

 

Carol and I were talking about some new vocabulary words that are hard to pronounce. She spelled one out for me and after verifying that it was right, I asked her how she knew. She said she pictured the written word in her mind's eye. This makes me crazy. I can kind of visualize a word if I try, but it is fuzzy and falls apart upon inspection. I tend to hear my thoughts more than see them, and sometimes my thoughts come with no sensation at all. A little reading about the subject got me thinking. Research shows that we can improve our mind's eye, so can we also develop our mind's voice? If I can imagine nasal sounds and other mysteries of pronunciation coming from my body, could I then learn to physically replicate those sounds that I imagined? I've looked into it and it doesn't seem that the idea of mental pronunciation exists. But that doesn't mean it isn't a thing. I know I'm grasping at straws but I'm desperate and willing to spend some focused time mentally making these sounds that, as of yet, elude me physically. Who knows, maybe I'm on to something.

Identity Crisis

 

We've got a teacher who challenged us to write a blog post in Portuguese. The very thought has me all confused and wondering who I am. When I write in our blog, one of the things I try to do is make Carol laugh. I can't do that in Portuguese. I can't make puns or insert irony or even swear. I can't use any of the little tricks that get my lover laughing and make writing fun. Even more challenging is that the person writing these words right now doesn't exist in Portuguese. There is another me, the Portuguese-speaking me, who is a very different from the me I've always been. The me I've always been is talkative, pensive and confident. The Portuguese-speaking me is tongue-tied, slow-witted and insecure. I don't know how I'm going to get this new me to get Carol to laugh but maybe there will be something else that will come. Maybe the new Portuguese-speaking Kristin and the new Portuguese-speaking Carol will have an entirely new relationship in our new Portuguese-speaking blog, and maybe the posts won't make her laugh but will be just as good in some new Portuguese-speaking way. 

Temos uma professora que nos desafiou a escrever um post em português. O pensamento me deixa confuso e me perguntando quem eu sou. Quando escrevo em nosso blog, uma das coisas que quero é fazer Carol rir. Não consigo fazer isso em português. Não posso fazer trocadilhos ou inserir ironias ou até mesmo xingar. Não posso usar nenhum dos pequenos truques que fazem minha amorizinha rir e tornam a escrita divertida, porque não sei estes truques em Portuguese. Ainda mais desafiador é que eu não me conheceo em português. O eu que fala português, é muito diferente do eu que sempre fui. O eu que sempre fui é falante, pensativo e confiante. O eu que fala português é de língua presa, de raciocínio lento e inseguro. Não sei como vou fazer com que esse novo eu faça Carol rir, mas talvez haja algo mais por vir. Talvez a nova Kristin, que fala português, e a nova Carol, que fala português, tenham um relacionamento totalmente novo em nosso novo blog de língua portuguesa, e talvez as postagens não a façam rir, mas sejam igualmente boas em algum novo jeito.

First we make our habits (then our habits make us)

 

We habitually respond with "okay" when we understand something. We hadn't tried to change this until recently because "okay" also exists in Brazilian Portuguese. Importantly, o que and que also exit and sound just like "okay" but can mean "what" or "huh" which is opposite of what we want to say. We frequently experience various forms of the the following conversation.

them: "I will check on that" 

us: "what? 

them: "I will find an answer for your question"  

us: "huh?"

them (in English): "where are you from?"

us: 😒 

I'm happy to report that at least one of us has broken this habit. During a recent medical appointment, a tech was talking about the things that were going to happen. After each item, Carol responded with 'tá which is short for está and means "it is." This sounds goofy af in English but it works like a charm here. Now that "okay" is broken  it should be easy enough to get into the habbit of "tá." 

Aint nothin' easy

 

Carol is working on getting our absentee ballots so we can vote. I accompanied her for part where we got the forms and shipping labels printed. The instructions said to use 8.5 X 11 inch paper for the forms. Funny thing, haha, 8.5 X 11 inch paper doesn't exist here. In fact, inches don't exist here. But we want our votes to count so we pulled out the phone and got to work on the math. We estimated that 21.6 by 27.9 centimeter paper would do the trick. This, of course, they did not have. It's going to work out. The patient young man reduced the print job to 96% and used a box cutter to make things fit. Carol and I will do a little more cutting and pasting after we get envelops. I asked Carol how we will ship the envelopes once we get them ready and what that will cost. She reminded me, dryly, that this is an on-going saga. Stay tuned...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

 

We moved into the fifth place of our current adventure. This move brought us off the margins and into the mainstream. Heretofore, our abodes have abutted trails and beaches and wild spaces. Those places helped us, a little, with the language and culture because the plants and animals are important to idiomatic expressions and part of a common understanding. The place we now live is going to help a lot. It is smack in the middle of people and we expect that it will to teach us how to talk. It's a tall order for a small town of fading glory but we think it will work. It is a busy, walkable community, with a bohemian vibe. We are pretty sure that we will have opportunities to engage and a fighting chance at making friends and immersing ourselves in Brazilian Portuguese. 

That's why we call them "waiters"

In the US, we try to kind of move it along when we talk with service staff. As a former server myself, it is a pain in the ass to wait for customers who don't know what they want at a restaurant or a bar. For the love of Christ, just pick something already. Here, you can chill with your waiter and they will patiently wait while you go back and forth and they will answer questions to help you determine which options are low FODMAP, no gluten and anti-inflammatory. This is expected behavior and nobody minds and they will chat you up as much as you like and warmly welcome you if you return. It feels strange for us but we are getting used to it and oddly genuine because there is no tipping here which we are also getting used to. 

The language of love

You would think two people really invested in learning this language would talk with each other in Portuguese. We would if we could but we can't. Technically, we have enough of the language to communicate but we can only stick with it for about 5 minutes. The second we indulge a moment of mindlessness we find ourselves back in English. It is our baseline. A Brazilian married to an American who is fluent in Portuguese explained that they speak together in English because that is how they know each other. A young polyglot from Germany told us that his relationships with other polyglots tend to stay in whatever language they start in, even if they later learned that they were both more comfortable in another language. Weird, but presumably true. For Carol and I, our relationship is in English and so are many of our goofy  sweetnesses. I couldn't imagine calling her "dumplin cups'" in any language other than ours and "bunny muffin" doesn't sound right at all in Portuguese.

Say what now?

 

We are getting up on a year in this country and I still can't have a normal conversation if the topic is remotely complex, or if the person talks fast, or if I feel nervous, etc, etc.  It's okay in class, our teachers are trained to be patient. They know what we know and how to coax it out of us. Outside of class, even with the teachers, I don't understand quase nada. And for the most part, people don't understand quase nada of what I say either. Carol translates a lot and I get the feeling that people feel sorry for me. The experience is giving me empathy. There are plenty of opportunities for me to meet people who have speech challenges or heavy accents or who are deaf or developmental disabled or new comers to the country. Like me, these people will have things to contribute and a need to make connections. Unlike me, they may not know that someday they will rejoin the conversational mainstream. Those people, my foster siblings in frustrations, deserve to be understood and I hope that when the time comes I have the patience and compassion be a good speaker and listener so that we can understand and get to know each other. 

We don't say those words in these parts

 

I'm finally reading an adult book. It's a good story but it is slightly over my head and there are a lot of words I don't know. Thirteen per page, on average. I know this because I wrote them down and counted. Our friend was over and saw my list words and let me know that a lot of the words were out-of-date and a lot more were from the north-east. She kind of absolved me of feeling stupid because mostly it was my antiquated-northeastern vocabulary that was underdeveloped. Carol was intrigued. She was interested in the dialectical differences in vocabulary across regions. She is so smart. There are distinct dialects in the US to be sure. For example, a person speaking African-American Vernacular English and a person speaking Cajon Vernacular English would probably not understand each other at all. But we wonder, are there regions in the US with a whole book-full of words so different from the mainstream that they would be classified as "not from around here?" I don't think so but do plan to find out. 

Dogs seen in Pantano

 

Keppy once had a fling with a dog at Matadeiro that ended in indifference and we don't get back there very often anyway. After that we lived in a couple of places with not so much of a dog scene and then we landed in Pantano do Sul. Pantano is a slowly gentrifying fishing village at the far end of the island. It has fishermen who fish for a living and a salty set of dogs. There area few bravo dogs who will fight. In fact, since we have been here, a dog that Carol identified as trouble bit another dog who ended up dying from the infection. But there are also good dogs here. Sometime they go out on the boats and sometimes hang out on shore. Keppy's favorite fisher-dog is Petey. Petey joins us for walks and is usually good for a little cavorting and paling around. My personal favorite is Gus (pictured). Gus is a big white and tan bull dog who is getting on in years. He mostly only runs with Keppy when it is cooler, which it hasn't been recently. These days, Monstro spends most of his time playing in the waves by himself, splashing, barking, wagging and bringing good cheer to passers by. 

No laughing matter

One of the silver linings around Carol's myriad of health concerns are the real-life language and culture lessons. Carol went alone on the most recent school of hard knocks enrichment experience. She returned six hours later, beat up and pissed at the world.  I cuddled her and listened. She told me about waiting 20 minutes to be called to the wrong reception desk and being sent upstairs to start over. She told me about not knowing how to describe the specialized team that usually takes her blood and about the frantic jabbing, squeezing, shaking and stabbing by the amateurs sent to find her itty bitty veins. She described feeling abandoned in the "special problems room" where a disinterested lady succeeded in finding the vein on the first try and then disappeared.  She recounted the near-death sensations she had as a result of the dye that must be different than the dye she doesn't react to in the US. By the time she got to the scolding for trying to pay for parking at the wrong kiosk we were laughing hard at the stupidity of it all and stayed giggly the rest of the night which was another silver lining.