Day 15-17 in Brazil

Day 15

It wasn’t my favorite day. I went to Portuguese class and after reviewing my homework, we went to put my Portuguese into practice…..didn’t go well at all. I didn’t feel confident in my vocabulary, pronunciation, or my ability to recall the terms I learned the day before. To sum up the experience, it was me, my instructor, my host sister (who was instructed to take pictures of the excursion), the instructors grandson who was acting as a sort of translator for my instructor who spoke almost no English, and lots of people staring as I was told to “speak Portuguese” again and again as I stood there mute and at the brink of tears. People were staring at me, a lot of people, and I was frozen, the panic and discomfort I was in erasing any amount of Portuguese I might have actually known. My instructor was frustrated with me, I felt ridiculous and like I wanted to go crawl under a rock somewhere.

At home Jess explained what had happened to my family and they were really sweet and sympathetic. All I wanted was to talk to someone that would understand that I was trying, but that I was also completely overwhelmed. I was taken to My host brother’s work and introduced to lots and lots of people. A few of them spoke English, the family wanted to find me someone to talk to, and it was a really sweet gesture but I needed more. I needed a full blown conversation where I could unload all of the pent up emotions and things I was feeling. That meant I needed someone who spoke English fluently. One of the guys I had met the other day with Jess and I had been talking on Facebook and he offered to come over to help me with my Portuguese. Vinícius is Brazilian, but he lives in Ohio and was back to visit his family for the month of July, he’s really nice and his English is flawless. Jess went to English class that night and he came over to help me with Portuguese. We ended up just talking most of the night. He probably still has no idea how much I needed to talk to someone, and how his being there gave me the strength I needed to keep trying. I felt so much better after he left, it was like having a little piece of home there letting me know it was going to be ok, and it was, everything turned out perfectly.

Day 16

Class was better, but I was slowly becoming more and more defeated. I had a lot of fun when we got home. Jess was in a crazy mood and we ended up dancing around in the living room to ACDC, Fatima came in and all three of us started dancing switching from Brazilian music to rock, to hip-hop, and comparing American dance moves with Brazilian ones. Later,  Jess and I hung out with Vinícius and then went to English class that night.

Day 17

Class was bad again: verbs.  I was on the brink of another melt down. I had a test the next day of verbs, and I had only had one class on them and I was suppose to know how to conjugate them, and also study adverbs and adjectives, which we never covered in class. I was also beginning to think my arm might be broken. It was still really messed up from my bike accident and I was starting to worry it was more than just sore from flipping over into the road….oops! Even though I really didn’t want to say anything It was getting better and I figured I needed to talk to some people about going to the hospital.  I really didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, I was still embarrassed I even had the accident and here I was over a week later having to remind everyone about it again. Also, I don’t like making problems for people or complaining, but I figured maybe, I might want to take care of my arm if It was really broken.