We began our language studies with a wide range of books.

On particular book was called “Grupos”.  It was basically conversations written in Portuguese on one side and English on the other.  The idea was to learn to read the conversations quickly, thereby improving one’s knowledge and pronunciation.  Being of a competitive sort, my sister and I also spent a lot of time trying to say it the fastest.    We might have no idea what the words meant, but at least we could say them quickly.

We were quite upset when it was decided that, perhaps, comprehension was more important than speed and our races ended.

One particular conversation in the book included a woman speaking to a guest in her home.  After asking if the guest liked the coffee she said, “My daughter made it.  She’s eligible for marriage.”

A useful phrase if one is a closet Mrs. Bennett trying to get her daughter married off.  With four daughters, my mom might have found the conversation useful if we hadn’t abandoned the book in favor of better ones.

The main problem with Portuguese, though, is that a lot of words sound the same.  (Yes, yes, I know English has to, too, and two, etc…  But I found English so much easier, I learned to speak it as a baby).

Three particular words were Sol, Sal, and Sul, meaning Sun, Salt, and South respectively.  The danger, of course, was to ask someone to pass you the sun at the dinner table or tell someone to go salt to Uruguay. 

Two more words that sound alike are the words for soda pop and cold (as in sick cold).  My Dad fell into their trap when he asked a waiter if he had a cold while trying to ask for pop.  The waiter gave him a funny look.

And we never did get that pop. 

In America, people dream of white pickets fences.

In Brazil, people dream of high cement fences embedded with glass and topped with razor wire.

Or, perhaps of barred fences topped with spikes, or a swirl of barbed wire.

My Dad says because they can’t lock all the thieves up, they lock everyone else up instead.

When it came time to choose a house to rent we had a choice between two.  One was in a neighborhood and had a lemon tree.  The other was part of condominium and the back gate opened onto a long courtyard with a pool and basketball/soccer court.

We forewent the lemonade in favor of the condominium and promptly moved in.  The house was slightly reminiscent of a prison.  The front of the house was cement with two small barred windows high in the wall. 

On one side was the gate that led into a roofed garage area.  Bars went up and ended in spikes.  Bars came down and ended in spikes.  Getting locked out of your house could be deadly if you tried to break back in.  On the plus side no one else could break in either.

It was a bit annoying that you couldn’t pull into your driveway without unlocking a padlock and undoing the chain.  After making it past the first gate you still had to contend with the front door, which was also barred.

As you can imagine, hearing someone knocking on our door was a thing of the past.  Instead, people clapped outside the gate to get your attention.

We became quite grateful for our barred house when there was a prison break shortly after we moved in.  Although the info varies, around seventy men escaped from the prison.

For days, the sound of helicopters searching for the escapees left us very glad for our barred door, our gate, our chain, and our padlock.

In Brazil, we quickly learned the prayers for protection were not a mantra to be taken lightly.

Brazilian homes are also empty when you buy them.  As in NOTHING is left in the house.  We were fortunate in that our kitchen still had a sink.  Cupboards and appliances were gone, but we did have a sink.  There were also built in cupboards in the bedrooms, which was highly unusual.  Most Brazilian homes have bureaus.   

Not so fortunately, the cupboards were painted a particularly weird shade of orangey-browny-yucky-yellow.

We shared common walls with the houses on either side.  Our hallway bordered the neighbor’s hallway.  Since there was not insulation and the walls, ceiling and floor were all cement, the house echoed. This was unfortunate since it wasn’t only our echoes we heard.

Our house was haunted.  Often we would hear the clicking of high heels and we would all be sitting still.

Okay, so maybe that is a slight exaggeration.  It just might have been the neighbor’s heels we heard clicking up and down the hallway.

  All in all, though, our fortress was very nice.

And secure.  Quite, quite secure.

 

 

 

 

Brazilian cuisine is not extremely exciting.  I mean, yes, they do eat chicken hearts and feijoada, a bean dish that contains such delicacies as pork feet and snout. 

For the most part, though, they eat rice and beans (sans pig snout most of the time).  The rice is plain white rice and oil is added while it is cooking.  Beans are brown beans that have been pressure cooked in water.  The beans in the unflavored bean water are then poured over the rice and that’s your meal.

Without salt, it is little more than an exercise for the jaws. 

We were forced to embrace it.  According to missionary friends serving a guest anything other than rice and beans is an insult.   

Salad in Brazil is not tossed.  Instead, the vegetable are cut or shredded and arranged on a platter.  There is no dressing.  Eventually, the wife of another missionary taught us to make homemade French dressing which was the only kind of dressing we had.

We tried to do things properly when having company and so adopted the Brazilian way of having a salad.  We arranged our carrots, beets, avocado, etc…

It was until we’d had several groups of people over that a lady finally took us aside and informed us that avocado was, in fact, a dessert.  It should be served with sugar and not in a salad.

We rallied—although we never did look upon avocado as a dessert.  We removed it from our menu.

Next on the foods to be chopped was the Jell-O.  In the States, Jell-O is considered a side dish.  However, in Brazil, it too was a dessert and only a dessert. 

I can only imagine what our guests thought as they came to the Americans’ house.  Probably something akin to what we would feel if we were guests in someone’s house and found chopped cake in the salad and lemon meringue pie as a side dish.

Of course, there probably is a recipe for cake salad somewhere out there, but it is not something I necessarily want to try.  Nor is feijoada or chicken hearts, although according to my braver sisters chicken hearts aren’t that bad.

I’m quite willing to take their word for it because I never did bring myself to try one.

Have you?