Learning Portuguese the way everyone else learns English

This week we got a new Portuguese teacher, which I was quite happy about (normal teacher rotation).  Our original teacher Adonis spoke excellent English.  He studied English Literature at University, spent time in the States, etc.  It was useful at the beginning when he was explaining grammar and stuff to us, but towards the end it was a bit annoying because he liked to talk (a lot) and he would often go off into an explanation or story about something to do with Brazil in English which was very interesting but not particularly useful for our oral Portuguese comprehension skills.

This week, our new teacher was Clarissa.  She speaks next to no English.  This was a little challenging at first, but it's helping me understand spoken Portuguese a hell of a lot better.  It's still difficult if she's teaching a new grammar rule or a new piece of vocabulary, because some things can't be explained easily - but then again, that's what dictionaries are for.

The other two English students in the class (my mother and another lady from Cambridge) are having more difficulty keeping up than the rest of us.  My mother complained that it was a big jump from someone who speaks excellent English to someone who speaks none.

However, as the rest of the students (all non-native English speakers) in the class pointed out, this is the way they learned English.  They didn't even have the first two weeks of someone speaking in their language to ease them in - they were straight in at the deep end.  This is how English is taught to foreigners when they come to English-speaking countries.  Basically, "we can't be bothered to speak your language, and if you want to learn ours, you're gonna have to do it the hard way".

Sounds harsh, but this approach works.  All the non-native English speakers in the school who have learnt English in an English-speaking country speak/read/write it quite well, because they had to.  They had to for economic reasons, they had to because their English teacher wouldn't cut them a break, and now they're learning another language.

I'm personally inclined not to complain.  And besides, the tough approach is doing me the world of good.

Nightlife #1

This is probably the first of quite a few posts on my experience of nightlife here.  I like going out.  In London I was more specifically interested in EDM (electronic dance music) and gay clubs (which mostly play either pop or house music - my preference being the latter).  However, I am interested in most genres of music.  London just has a particularly good dance scene.

On Saturday night I went out for a birthday get-together thingy for our host Fernando's boyfriend.  We went to a place in Jardim Paulista called 'DJ Club Bar'.  As a native English speaker from England, I found the name of the bar highly misleading.  The words 'DJ' and 'Club' usually denote some form of danceable music of which there was none.  Well, not what I was expecting anyway.

The ground floor (there were three floors in total) consisted of a few seats and some retro arcade games: Virtua Street Fighter, another game like VSF, and two proper old-fashioned pinball machines.  Fernando is a massive gamer, so we played video games while we were waiting for the club room downstairs to open up.  Upstairs was a slightly quieter bar, but nothing particularly interesting.

We went downstairs into the club room about 1am when it opened.  The music was British and American indie/rock.  Most of the songs were instantly recognisable to me and I spent the whole night singing the lyrics to practically every track played.  I heard: Metallica, Guns 'N' Roses, The Cure, The Smiths, Morrissey, Talking Heads, Simple Minds, Kings Of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Florence + The Machine, amongst many others.  After a very strong caipirinha, I got over the initial weirdness of dancing to late-80's indie and got 'on down' as Fernando kept saying.  The dance floor was rammed.  The atmosphere was great.  Everyone knew the lyrics to all the songs despite the fact that most of them had great difficulty in stringing together a sentence in English.

I ended up getting pretty drunk (bebedo - I'm not going to forget that word quickly) after forcing myself to finish a second caipirinha and I had to escape to the ground floor pinball room to get some air before I passed out.  The whole group came to find me about 5 minutes later which I felt very guilty about.  After it was clear I was having issues standing up straight, we went home, played Just Dance 3 on the wii for about half an hour before I retreated to my bed about 5am to pass out.  Everyone else carried on without me in the living room.

Maybe next time I'll stick to one caipirinha and a beer (gnat's piss), if I feel like having a second drink.

Iguatemi Sao Paulo

We came across the Iguatemi SP mall completely by chance yesterday after an unsuccessful attempt at getting into Hebraica (come on, who carries their passport with them at all times anyway...).

The nearest metro station definitely isn't within a comfortable walking distance.  This is deliberate: the mall was constructed before the metro system was (1966 & 1972, respectively).  Something to do with 'keeping away undesirables', or more to the point: poor people.  Brazil has a lot of those.

The very first thing I noticed about Iguatemi SP, was that there was a valet service for customers to drop off their cars.  A valet service.  Secondly, I immediately felt under-dressed the second I stepped foot in there.  No one was wearing trainers, converse or anything of the type.  There weren't many people wearing jeans either.

It was relatively empty when we walked in, just a few well-dressed people milling around with very well-behaved children.  As we ambled along the white marble corridors past the overpriced shops I thought "this is a nice mall".  Then I saw the Christmas display.

Just to give you and idea of scale: those figurines are people-sized.  And the train is pretty much to scale.  Yeah, I know.  And that ain't all.  It carried on up the stairs, along the wall:

It was the largest and most overwhelming Christmas display I've seen anywhere - and I've been around.  It filled the entire central hall from ceiling to floor - there were six animatronic reindeer attached to a sleigh suspended from the ceiling.

We decided to see if there was a food hall so we could get a coffee.  The signs were all written in both Portuguese and English, so it didn't take us long to find it.  This is what we found:

Ok, now I've been to some really nice malls... I had a couple of holidays in Palm Beach with my ex-step-dad's millionaire parents, went to a millionaire's golf club, visited some seriously impressive 'rich people only' malls and I have NEVER in ALL MY LIFE seen a food court as opulent as this one.  It really took your breath away.  On top of which, each restaurant/cafe had an equally beautiful but completely individual design of it's own - even the McDonald's.  It was just as well there was a McDonald's because we were totally out-priced by everything else on offer.

This is one of the cafes - notice the chandelier.  Again, this picture doesn't really do the place justice:

The opulence carried on in the bathrooms.  The floors, walls, and sinks were made of red and white marble - the floor was like a chess board.  The fixtures and fittings - including the hand drier - were made of solid, highly polished brass.  There was a member of staff in a maid's uniform standing by the basins ready to assist at all times.

Check out the solid brass hand dryer on the wall on the right.

My mother was on cloud nine the whole time we were there, she didn't want to leave - that place is basically her idea of heaven.  I, however, felt... well, a little uncomfortable.  I always feel a little uncomfortable in places where there are a lot of rich people.  It's not that I have a problem with rich people: I have known plenty and some of them have been lovely and some of them have been total assholes - the same as the rest of us.  Politically I'd probably be slightly left-of-centre, so I don't hate rich people or 'the establishment' per se, but I do think certain things rich people do/buy/have are a bit over the top.

Iguatemi was over the top.  It was a bit much.  In fact, it was bordering on insensitive.  The only black people I saw in the mall were staff - and by 'black' I am also including what we in the UK would term 'mixed race'.  I come from a city where it's not unheard of to see black/mixed race people actually buying stuff in expensive stores in expensive areas with their own money.  I didn't see a single one - not even at lunch time when the mall packed out. 

The prices were shocking.  Prices for a lot of things in Brazil are higher than we're used to in the US/Europe because they have to import a lot of 'luxury' items in.  However, I saw a pair of Prada sunglasses for R$1800 - that, translated into GBP is approximately £700.  I saw the same pair of Prada sunglasses in Selfridges recently and they cost HALF of that... and Selfridges ain't cheap.  You get my drift.

Considering just down the road there were a bunch of homeless living in squalor in cardboard boxes during a torrential downpour, and a little bit further down there were thousands upon thousands living in makeshift shanty towns, it was downright outrageous.

Our host Fernando told me about another mall in Sao Paulo, a bit further out, that is only accessible by car - you can't walk into it like you can at Iguatemi.  Parking your car at this mall in order to shop there isn't free, either: it costs around R$80 (£32).  As you can imagine, this mall is frequented mostly by the super-rich.  In Brazil, you don't ever see these people.  They live in large mansions with high security, they only travel by car, they don't go out in public, they have their own private clubs, they go to each other's houses.  They are nowhere to be seen.  They are entirely separated from the rest of Brazilian society.  This is the reason I felt so at odds in Iguatemi: it was merely a small indication of the vast gap between the rich and the poor in Brazil.  The rich here are REALLY rich and the poor here are REALLY poor, and that just doesn't sit well with me. 

On the plus side, I can confirm that I have a fully functioning conscience.

The obese FINALLY get the recognition they deserve...

I was on the bus earlier.  I saw this on the window and I had to take a picture:

Translation: "Reserved seating for the obese (YES, THE OBESE), pregnant women, women carrying babies/children, the elderly and the disabled."

I laughed. A lot.  People were staring at me.  My mother was staring at me.  I found it very funny.

And before you start getting on your high horse: technically I'm obese.

The difference between English and Brazilian customer service

This is what happened in a pharmacy in London a couple of years ago when I was waiting in a queue:
A young Spanish-speaking woman was trying to buy something but didn't know the word for it in English and she was trying to work out the name by saying it slowly to the cashier, then using quite clear hand signals for body moisturiser.  The cashier rolled her eyes, looked sarcastically at someone behind the spanish-speaking girl as if there was some private joke going on, didn't even attempt to understand or help the girl and said "Look, there's a queue, I have no idea what you're after - maybe get a dictionary or something, yeah?"
The cashier then motioned as if to go to the next customer, when I piped up: "Hold on a second, she's clearly after body moisturiser - see?" and I mirrored the spanish-speaking girl's hand movements.
"Well, why didn't she say?" the staff member replied in an insolent tone.
"Because she doesn't know the word in English, obviously - do you know the word for moisturiser in Spanish?" I replied, staring her right in the eye.  Someone in the queue coughed.  I turned around to look at them and they immediately looked in another direction.
"Well, if they're going to come here they should make an effort, innit...."
"...so I assume you brushed right up on your Spanish when you went on holiday to Tenerife or wherever it was you went last summer?" Someone in the queue giggled.
The spanish-speaking girl got her body moisturiser in the end, but the cashier gave me plenty of evils.

Similar situation in a Brazilian drogaria last week, involving a lady in my Portuguese class:
Again, the non-Portuguese speaker is at the front of a reasonable-sized queue.
"Bom dia, um...Eu gosto...uhhh....cream, for cuts?" (makes cutting movement on her arm)
"Eu nao entende...voce poderia repetir?" The cashier is genuinely interested in hearing what the English-speaking customer has to say, doesn't cut them off, waits patiently and makes a hand movement to repeat.
"Ummm....cream? antiseptic cream?" (more flailing hand movements)
The staff member looks puzzled for a couple of seconds, then brightens up.
"Creme anti-septico?"
"Ummm....possibly..." (N.B. the pronounciation of Portuguese is far more confusing to an English-speaker learning Portuguese than actually reading the words - just because you understand the words when read doesn't mean you'd be able to if they said it)
"Sim, temos." Staff member comes out from behind the cash desk, gets someone to replace them, personally takes English-speaking customer to where the antiseptic creams are, helps them pick one out, then escorts them back to the beginning of the queue to complete the purchase.  No one in the queue is annoyed.

I think I've made my point clear.

Portuguese so far

Our Portuguese school - 'Fast Forward'

Ok, yeah, the grammar can be a bit finicky - I'm not used to conjugating verbs etc, but it's not horrific.  After a few times you get it - I can conjugate 'to go' off the top of my head right now:
Eu vou
Ele/Ela/Voce vai
Nos vamos
Eles/Elas/Voces vao

Once you know the order of conjugation you just go through the list in your head - there's only four conjugations, even for irregular verbs (so far, anyway - maybe I'll have to eat my words later).

But listen, people: I studied German in secondary school, OK?  GERMAN.  There are 16 different ways of saying 'the' in German.  I'm not kidding.  So thus far, for me, Portuguese is a breeze.

The main problem I'm having is forcing myself to use Portuguese in real life situations.  Although I understand the grammar and I've gained a fair amount of vocabulary in my lessons, my brain freezes up when I actually need to use the language.  It's getting better, I'm talking in bits, but I've yet to vocalise an entire sentence without a bit of help outside of the classroom.  Considering I've only done 4 days of 4-hour classes, I think I'm doing alright.

At least I'm not as bad as my Mum: we were walking down Avenida Paulista yesterday evening with the dog, my Mum asked me "how do you say 'I don't speak Portuguese' again?" "You say 'Eu nao fala Portugues'," I replied.  "Ok, got it," she said.  About 30 seconds later, while waiting for the lights to change at a crossing, someone asked her in Portuguese for what sounded like directions and she immediately responded "Je ne parlais Francais".  We both burst into a fit of giggles.

Communication blocks, gays and supermarkets!

OK, so I NEED to learn Portuguese.  FAST.  There’s only so many hand signals I can think of for “yes, he’s a very cute dog” (people keep stopping us on the street whenever we take my mum’s Chihuahua out for a walk).  Here is a picture of said dog – named ‘Squirt’ – to illustrate:

Squirt the chihuahua*

The weather is pretty warm here, but it dips right down at night by about 15C.  Being on the 7^th floor makes it even colder.

The supermarkets here are quite impressive – very little processed food.  They never got mad cow disease here because they wouldn’t be daft enough to feed their animals anything other than what they naturally eat.  Vegetables and fruit are plentiful and varied – some things I’ve never seen before and I don’t even know if there are actual English names for them.  Garlics and onions usually have an entire section to themselves – they’re usually surrounded by huge piles of dead skins, presumably because people don’t want to pay for the bits they aren’t going to use. You wouldn’t get away with that shit in Sainsbury’s.

Things are not dirt cheap here, so if you think you’re going to come on holiday and spend hardly any money, think on.  Prices are very slightly less or on a par with London as far as most things are concerned.  Food shopping is slightly cheaper, but electronics cost a bomb.  I’m waiting for someone to fly over from London so I can ask them to bring me a bloody flatscreen.  Screw paying R$1249 (£500) for a not particularly impressive 32” LCD.  I’m more than happy to pay whatever tax the customs want to slap on, and the £70 additional baggage fee – it’s STILL cheaper than buying it here.

There’s something to be said for having a lesbian haircut here – I don’t look like a soft touch (even when I’m carrying the Chihuahua) & every gay guy who speaks English is falling all over themselves to tell me what to do, where to go, where “our people” hang out.  We went to have a look at the Portuguese school the other day to check it out – mostly so we know where the hell we’re going – and one of the teachers there recommended an area in Rio for us to look for flats.  “I think it’ll be good for you,” he said, nodding, “the beach there is very nice.  It’s OUR beach.”  I swear he was doing jazz hands as he said that.

I’m starting to understand what pretty much every Brazilian I know has said to me about Sao Paulo: “yes there’s a lot to do there, but I wouldn’t want to live there”.  The place is dirty, busy, dangerous, overcrowded, and doesn’t even make up for it in beauty the way Rio does.  Or so I’ve heard. 

P.S. These are great, you should try one.

*Squirt is the official company mascot of the website BeARichBusinessBitch.com - check it out!

Observations on spending 5 hours in Guarulhos Airport

The first recognisable sight on landing in Sao Paulo are the hundreds upon hundreds of favela houses, piled one on top of the other like some kind of higgldey-piggldey lego set or those brick-like temporary office structures on large building sites, metal roofs rusting and staining the bright walls underneath a reddish brown.  They go on and on, rolling over hillsides & squeezed against motorways, stopping only at the very edge of the airport grounds.  I would imagine when a plane flies over those houses they’re more concerned with making sure their home is structurally sound enough not to fall down – the very least of their problems would be noise pollution.  Kinda puts the whole extra runway at Heathrow thing into perspective, really.

The airport doesn’t look like it’s been updated since the early 80’s – lots of dark tiling, metal walls, square shapes.  Your path to the baggage pickup is punctuated by open gates, passengers crossing your path on their way to board their flights.  There’s no separate way for arriving passengers, everyone’s lumped in together.  The baggage carousel system is basic, old and really disorganised, with a handful of young men jumping around desperately trying to keep up with the onslaught.  I can’t find my carousel, it’s not labelled so I walk up to the TAM baggage claim desk to speak to someone who might have an idea what’s going on.
“hola, fala Ingles?”
“No, Spanish?”
“Only English, I’m afraid.”
“Ok, only small…”
“Which one is for the TAM flight from London?”
“Uhhh…tres ou quatro…”
“Ah, obrigada!”

I make my way to the front of the crowd and wait.  A few middle-aged women start squawking loudly at a very stressed out 20-something who’s handling the London carousel alone with just a walkie-talkie for company, and a fat lot of good it’s doing him.
Someone has taken what appears to be a driveable lawnmower onto the plane as luggage rather than ship it.  I've seen Brazilians pack surfboards and mountain bikes before but this just takes the biscuit.

Eventually my bags turn up, I head through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ door, past an unimpressed lady collecting declaration tickets, and out into arrivals.  More grey tiles, metal columns, and a solitary central café looking rather unappetising.  I need to get to Terminal 2 and I have no idea where it is.  I head to the Information Desk steeling myself for another painful verbal exchange.
“hola, fala Ingles?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh good!  Could you tell me how to get to Terminal 2, I’m meeting my mother there.”
“Just go out of these doors, turn right and follow the sidewalk around.  It’s about a 5 minute walk.” All said in a crystal clear Portuguese-American accent.

Outside it’s sunny, a comfortable temperature with a cool breeze.  I see a car park, concrete everywhere, buses, people smoking and…PALM TREES.  I immediately perk up.

Terminal 2 looks a lot like Terminal 1.  I buy myself a small coffee and sit down, but not before another awkward conversation with the girl behind the till trying to work out how much I need to pay.  I can’t understand what she’s saying so she quickly writes on a post-it note ‘3,50’.  “Oh, ok” I say and count out the change.   She smiles politely as she hands me my coffee.  I look at it.  Jesus, when they say ‘small’ here they really mean it – it’s the size of an espresso and I asked for a ‘café con leite’.  But I sit down and drink it, and it’s enough to keep my very awake for the next three hours.  F*** me, they know how to make a coffee.  I think I’m going to like it here.

Two people come up to me separately and hand me Brazilian schmatters (cheap stickers & a couple of key rings) with a R$2.00 price tag attached, walk off, come back one minute later and take them back again, smiling graciously despite the fact I’m clearly uninterested.  I smile back.  Properly.  I find it a pleasantly unobtrusive way of trying to push their crap on me.

Basically I get the impression English isn’t spoken particularly well by the majority of people here, but they’re really, REALLY nice & helpful about trying to work out a way to communicate with you.  And they smile!  France this ain’t.