Slow Independence

So after a long and hot but relaxing and aesthetically pleasing ride back to my new city, Alexandre and I spent Monday lounging around the apartment. This consisted of me reading Blood Meridian and then taking the necessary Facebook Scrabble breaks with Danette, and Alexandre studying for a midterm of sorts. (Monday was a national holiday for this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiradentes. It is akin to Presidents’ Day in the US in the sense that the guy’s on a coin and stuff, but no one actually cares about the people, but just the excuse for a 3-day weekend.)

Today, Tuesday, I had my first grammar/teaching test at one of the jobs I’m applying for here. I was the only non-Brazilian in the interview, which at first sounds awesome because my native speakery should have put me a cut above the competition. The problems arose, however, when I was the only non-Portuguese speaker in the group test process. Two admin people from the school came into the testing room and gave speeches that I vaguely understood. One included a history of the school and some of their teaching philosophies (I know that because I picked out phrases like “6 months” and “teaching philosophies.”) The other one included important things like salary and the details about the interview process, but I just missed too much of it. At one point the admin lady was asking everyone a question that I didn’t understand. When she got to me, I said my new and bestest catch phrase: “Nao falo muito Portugues!” The lady was surprised for a moment, but then said, “Oh, you’re the American! What’s your name?”

“Danielley,”I said, because that’s what I’m called here. She just smiled and went back to her speech.

So when I figured out that it was time to actually take the test, I actually took it. That was the easy part; I love grammar, whatever. When I went out of the room to turn the test in to the lady, I was trying to explain that I didn’t understand the speech, and asking what was going to happen next. Another guy applying for the job so nicely piped in that he could explain it to me since, you know, he spoke English. I thought that was so nice of him, being as I was his competition and all. We chatted a bit, he asked me where I was from, I complimented him on his Cockney accent. It turns out that, aside from the woman I met when I turned in my resume, none of the staff at that school speaks English except for the teachers. Suck.

I’m kinda worried that this will hurt my chances of getting hired because I may be a logistically difficult employee. If they like me enough, and if I know grammar enough, I’ll get a call tomorrow for an oral interview (in English…woot!). That’ll be my chance to insist that I actually do know Portuguese grammar and phonetics very well, and that I do promise to take classes, and I’m fluent enough in Spanish that I can help students with difficult vocab stuff and just pleasepleaseiknowi’mtalkingreallyfast but I really just want the job.

Phew. Tomorrow morning is the same thing all over again at a different school.

This afternoon, Alexandre and I made the mistake of going to the grocery store on an empty stomach (empty stomachs?). We ended up buying more delicious snacks and less food for real meals and spending like 65 bucks, oops. Alexandre had the idea of “policing each other,”but that became more like this:
A: Come on, leave me buy this cookies.
D: No. We don’t need cookies. Soy gordita.
A: Eres perfecta. And I want cookies.
D: Well if you’re buying the cookies, then I’m buying the Nutella.

In the store, I had my usual experience of seeing a bunch of fruits I had never seen before. I channeled Jamie and took some pictures:

We made a delicious dinner of barbequed steak and Brazilian rice (I did it myself!) and then I tried to make my grandma’s carrots but they just weren’t up to par. Sigh.
Overall I’m ready to not be writing so much detail about my trips to the supermarket and writing about a job instead.
Below are some pictures that I took while we were driving around today, so you guys could get an idea of where I live now. I also uploaded the pictures below of the hotchidoggi and the bar with Juliana.
I miss you guys and wish you well in the good ol’ US of A.