lazy

last night a baiana told me that i was lazy (with regards to speaking and listening to the language). well, he didn´t put it that way. basically, he told my friend, O, who speaks english and portuguese to stop being my interpreter.

in my mind i was screaming really loudly, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

ugh. we weren´t even having a conversation about language. in fact, the subject was about beer or samba or something. then jorge gave the instructions to O and she obeyed him. traitor.

now, i know that my ass should be trying to speak and understand portugeuse. but it gets so hard when there´s so much else to understand like smells and sounds, and why people are wearing crazy things, and... .

and it is SO VERY EASY when you have friends who are bi-lingual. you just sit back and let them do all the talking except for an occassional "now, what´d he say?"

one time i went to paris with "psyche". neither of us speak french. BUT, there are lots of vietnamese people in paris. so, i made sure "psyche" took every opportunity to speak vietnamese to get us around places. lol.

i bought a "portuguese for strangers" book last week. it´s still in the same spot when i brought it home. however, i have two more months here. this afternoon, guilt was laying heavy on my conscious. i was thinking about people who have to go to another country out of necessity. they are then put in a position where they may not have any material resources, let alone any grasp of the language. people (americans) make fun of latinos who travel in large groups to the store for example. but most likely this is the one opportunity to go to the store with somebody who speaks this foreign language. so, you get there how you can.

my being here is a luxury. i can afford to not speak the language. but it ain´t right. i should learn.