turns out my Portuguese is just hand signals

So this is my third time in Bahia. I'm thinking and telling people back home before I go "Well, I don't know Portuguese, but I know enough to get around." It's really very similar to Spanish, which I took 2 years of in college but forgot most of, blah blah blah.

Well, guess what. Turns out I can't speak Portuguese for shit. I was in class today with a new student, who has a much better grasp on the language than I, and I didn't have a goddamn clue about a goddamn word he, the teacher, or anybody in the school spoke to me today, in Portuguese, English, Farsi, whatever. It was like I'd had my brain wiped clean over the weekend and left only with the minimum neural facilities to get me to class without wetting myself and sit there with my mouth open, staring blankly.

Luckily for me tomorrow is a holiday celebrating the day Brazil officially became a federal republic. Hopefully by Wednesday I will have learned enough to avoid being demoted to the class where they go over the alphabet again.