After a full day of travel and about 14 total hours sitting in a plane, I’m glad to be in me new home!
My host family is great and basically speaks NO ENGLISH…which should be fantastic for my language acquisition. My host father speaks more than my host mom, so we trade. I tell him the words in English and he tells them to me in Portuguese! I’m hoping that learning the language remains this relaxed. All my language books tell me that if I relax, take breaks, and REALLY try, I’ll be able to learn a new language. I just want to avoid the dreaded immersion headache that can sometimes occur one- to two days after being in a place you can’t understand what others are saying.
As a result of all the learning I’ll be doing, I’m probably going to be putting up a Portuguese word of the week or meal of the week, or something pertaining to my experiences that’s culturally related.
My host family is great. They are happy and warm people and my host mother is a GREAT cook. Even though I speak very little/no real Portuguese, I’m an ardent dictinary user and I make words/phrases up by mixing the french and spanish I know…it’s been working thus far. I can’t wait to learn real verbs and words to practice with my host family. They’re supportive of my fake Portuguese and still talk to me even though my sentences are slow and unsure.
I believe this living situation will be a happy one. There’s also wireless in my house, which thrills me beyond belief. If there’s one thing I’m not crazy about having to find and pay for, it’s Internet…I love when it’s everywhere I go and FREE!! =)
As a start to my blog, I want all my readers (hopefully faithful and consistent ones) to know that for the first month or so, I’ll be chronicling my acclamation to the culture, people, and language of Brazil. The frontier market part will be starting in August when I ship out to Sao Paulo. From then I’ll still chronicle my adaptation, but I’ll be talking about my work at the business incubator Artemisia more than anything else.
After a long day’s travel, I just wanted to get a post up that let everyone know that I am alive, safe, and happy. Less than 10 hours in the country and I can see why people love Brasil so much!