Spiders and Stuff

Oi amigos,

Hi friends! Just getting settled in here at ALEM, the mission center.

After helping with various projects yesterday morning, I got into an intense and competitive game of volleyball with about fifteen of the other volunteers and students. Even though I couldn´t understand much of what the others were saying, the body language of fun competition was definitely clear.

Traveling and participating in a cross-cultural context almost certainly guarantees miscommunication and linguistic faux-pas. So last night, as I was reading, my roommate came back to our room from the bathroom and said something in Portuguese. My roommate is one of the linguistics professors here, and she has a different Portuguese accent than the others. I only recognized the word for diarrhea, so naturally I dug around in my suitcase for some medicine. (Odd, I thought, that I would be offering Immodium to a Brazilian sister). I followed her to the bathroom with the pills and stood outside the door. She opened it and beckoned me to look inside. Weird. So I tried to justify her motive for wanting me to look at the toilet--maybe it won´t flush? I hesitated, but then mustered up the courage to look inside. What I saw was unexpected to say the least, a huge spider and my roommate trying to kill it inside the toilet with the toilet bowl cleaner. Ha! So I sighed with relief and managed to tell her that I had thought she was sick with diarrhea. That´s why I had offered medicine. We lost it. Then she put the pieces together and said something along the lines of```So you thought I was trying to show you my diarrhea in the toilet?!?´´ Ha!

Moral of the story: aranha (spider) is NOT the same word as diarrhea in Portuguese

Laughter (even caused by misunderstandings) is truly the best medicine. I think I was carrying tension throughout the day even without realizing it because I was concentrating so hard on understanding others and picking up Portuguese. When you laugh with someone (even if you don´t speak the same language), you are effectively connecting emotionally without saying a word. So cool.

I´m grateful for the patience people have with me as I try to learn Portuguese without any background in the language.

Até logo (Til later!)