The Rainy Season

ive been thinking a lot about language lately and Ive decided that language is like a relationship. The familiarity with the process should, in theory, make it easier when you begin a new one. But often you confuse them, substituting words and meanings, switching accents and applying rules where they don’t belong while ignoring or forgetting the new ones. Like a relationship, when you are learning a new language you think about it a lot – analyzing the structure of a sentence or trying like anything to figure out what a word signifies. The process is a relationship- alternately wonderous and frustrating (why oh why are there 3 words for ‘this’ in Portuguese?”), adventuresome and exhuasting ( I was quiet because it takes so much energy to constantly explain what I actually mean. And im tired of being corrected.), impressive (you’ve been studying Portuguese for only 3 weeks – wow you’re a fast learner) and can cause concern ( you didn’t understand that? she asked you ‘where we are from’ -which we learned the first day of class). Language, like a person, takes a really long time to know. Often you think you are getting a handle on it getting into the grove, the rthymn (cool- I totally made a joke and they laughed) and then you are shocked to learn that though you thought you were speaking with the correct accent, right verb tense and correct prepositions - the other person doesn’t know what the hell you are talking about. Sometimes you think you understand them, are quite certain even that you do, and it turns out that they are saying something completely different than what you thought. And sometimes you just cant understand the other person at all – you look blankly at their face, and they are incomprehensible to you. And you realize that all of our assumptions, our nuances, our preconceptions, our selves, are in language. And you are literally speaking a different one. But unlike relationships, one doesn’t become a cynic about language. You keep trying, failing a lot, succeeding some and getting corrected often. Im in my 4th week of language classes and this is where I am. New students come and go each week – this week there are people from France, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Britain, Austria, the U.S and of course Switzerland. But May is a sleepy time in salvador. It is the rainy season, a time for cleansing and clearing away. It rains almost every morning, washing away the trash of the previous evening, clearing the leftover beer cans and quejos on a stick (delish grilled cheese by the way). Still, every morning old men can be found soaking in the blue ocean. Its nice to have some respite from the unrelenting sun and but this is rainy season tropics style. There is usually enough sun for the beach and its still warm enough that official outfit here is bikinis and cute swimming trunks for the men. The other news from brazil is about the pope’s arrival (Brazil has the largest number of roman catholics than any other place in the world) and the daily murders and carjackings in rio. I watch this on the news every morning. That and a special interest program hosted by a Susan Powteresqe blond with so much plastic surgery that is fascinating to watch her speak because her face is pulled back so tight (Brazil has the largest percentage of people with plastic surgery in the world). And I bought a really cute shirt the other day. ive posted it for y'all to see