email to Josh
16 August 2005 @ 01:07
Part of an email I sent earlier tonight...
Oi from Brasil. See? I told you that I would write. :P
As I told you earlier, not much is going on. I've been in Brazil for about a week, visiting my boyfriend and his family. It's been interesting, since Andre's family doesn't speak English and I am very very lucky if I can understand their Portuguese. My Portuguese is improving, but slowly since I'm not studying formally. They talk to me like a child....Andre does all of the translating.
Simple things like trips to the doctor (I'm sick) or to the store are a strange dance of language barriers and unfamiliar things. For example, I want to make meatloaf. I need ground beef, spices, crackers, and ketchup. Ketchup is one of those things that's not eaten here like it is at home, but we were able to find it. He had no idea of what I meant by crackers or ground beef -- both are here, just have different names. I wanted black pepper...but that one simple thing? Doesn't exist here. So I'm using a little bit of thawed red pepper instead. It's definitely not going to be like my mom's meatloaf, but that's okay.
The doctor? Oh, that was fun. Go in, see the doc, do normal doctor-visit stuff, have Andre translate... The doc teases me for eating a bunch of junk food (there was a festival/fair going on here, yummy food!), and orders an x-ray before giving me a prescription. So, go into the hospital contected to the clinic...their x-ray equipment is broken. Which means we get to walk up the block to the next clinic. Shell out R$60 (roughly US$30) for two x-rays. Laid down on an old table, had the shots taken with old equipment, waited for them to be developed (which was really quick), and walked back to the other clinic. The doc read them -- everything was good -- and finally wrote out a Rx... basically for drugs to treat the symptoms of flu and food poisoning.
Yeah, not much else. I'm in pain, I'm sick, and I'm tired.
But I'm here. And that's what matters most right now.
Boa noite,
--Annie