Saturday, February 9, 2008

I Don´t Make it Easy On Myself, To Impress the Brazilian Women.

Instead of sightseeing yesterday, Luis and I spent most of the day visiting with Jason and some of his friends and family. I realized once again that I should have brushed up on my Portuguese, and by "brushed up" I mean "learned more than one word. " For most of the time I was listening, understanding one word out of ten, if I was lucky. Portuguese is very similar to Spanish but I don´t speak Spanish particularly well so I would recognize a word, translate it to spanish, then spanish to english by which point I´ve missed twenty other words. However, it wouldn´t matter because I wouldn´t have understood them anyhow.
Later in the afternoon Luis and I went out for beer with Jason´s cousin Daniel and his girlfriend Camilla. Let me just state that the weather was warm and sitting on the patio, the first sip of beer was so good. That´s not the point though. The point is that it was very enjoyable and since Daniel and Camilla spoke slower, or in English, I understood much more. Afterwards we headed back to Jason´s aunt´s house where we were to be met by some of Jason´s friends who had offered to host us. We got back to the house and met our new hosts, a very lovely couple indeed. Before we left for their house I decided to use the facilities.
After using the washroom I walked passed the back door. The thing that I like about houses outside of North America is that they are usually quite unique. It´s impossible to know what might be hidden behind a door or whether a yard will be a tiny concrete patio or a large garden oasis. So with this in mind I decided to poke my head out the window and see what the yard was like. However, the window wasn´t actually opened, jus particularly well cleaned rendering it invisible. I smacked my head against the glass. It was of the thin, quick to shatter variety. The incredibly loud crash quickly summoned a crowd of people to discover what the Canadian goon broke. They found me standing by the window, somewhat dazed, bleeding from my forehead and the back of my hand.
The cut on my forehead was superficial but a falling shard of glass cut open quite a deep wound on the back of my hand. Jason´s aunt thought I should go to the clinic for stitches but I didn´t agree. It´s bad enough to get a reputation as a "clumsy, walking disaster" without having to be known as a "clumsy, walking disaster who faints while getting stitches." I managed to convince everyone that I would be fine and I think that I am. The cut was taped up and it seems to be much better even after 24 hours. The other interesting thing about the incident is that after the shock of the crash I looked down and realized that I had instinctively caught two large shards of glass in my uninjured hand without getting the slightest cut. Catlike reflexes I suppose.
Well I have to go get ready for the wedding, hopefully I´ll manage to make it through the evening without making too big a fool of myself. Granted, I´m quite used to having a room full of people making jokes about me in a language that I don´t understand.

4 comments:

S said...

so far i'm quite happy with your posts. your trip is quite entertaining for us half-frozen calgarians. have fun at the wedding!

Anonymous said...

Ed, I think you would be safer here with us. After all, you got fewer stitches working for 16 months with all manner of power saws... well, just barely :)

Anonymous said...

Ed! Please remember that your hands are invaluable. I don't want to find out how much more abuse they can sustain without serious injury. As for impressing Brasilian women... perhaps they will overlook the fact that you're accident-prone, and focus on your good looks and wealth. **cough cough**

lowenfels said...

Hehe, it's so cute that you're good natured about people laughing at your language and adaption. A good friend of mine went to Germany, and while she spoke pretty good German people laughed at her quite a bit for her phrasing. She would say, well tonight, we have two options, we could stay here and drink or go to this club, etc., and everybody would laugh, saying "two options!" in German and she had no idea what was going on. I guess the gist was that she explained one option as being way better than another, but maintained that they really had two options when really she was only presenting one, but that's just a theory. Anyway, i'll quit rambling. Glad you're having a fantastic time in Brazil despite the injuries! :-)