artistic talent where you wouldn't expect it, and yet another sad coffee episode
I got into a mini-argument a few days ago at the beginning of class with one of the students who is very skeptical of some of the school's teaching methods, particularly the analysis and / or reading of Brazilian poetry, and perhaps to some degree music in order to take a sort of alternate route to fluency. It's his last week and he says he wants to do "serious" study. I said "What, you mean like drills (who wants that)?" and he was like, well, at least rules or something. And I said but that's going to be dry and abstract and non-interactive, etc., and he was like yeah well and anyway you get the picture. I'll tell you what his problem is - he's bored because he signed up for a class even though he ALREADY SPEAKS PORTUGUESE. I think he did so just to meet girls.
This whole discussion was prompted by the fact that we were asked in class to compose a poem in Portuguese based on some books of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso that the profesora brought in. They were mass paperback sized, and must have been ancient copies because the bindings had fallen apart and she had to hold the pages in a stack like a deck of cards. The paper was heavy enough and the binding dead enough that you could lay these little books flat. What I found almost astonishing was that my classmate, after having disparaged the whole poetry-writing-as-language-teaching concept, went on to co-author with me (I did little other than write it down) a poem which I thought for a first draft and for someone who thought this whole idea was pretty darn good. I'm attaching a copy of the picture that "inspired" this, the one that we chose, and the poem in Portuguese and then English:
Monsieur Boileau
Eu gostaria de sentar com você agora
Nesta mesa
Tarde, noite, as duas horas na madrugada
Beber absintho com você,
Falar com você
E jogar domino ou cartas com você.
Mas você mora no seu mundo
E eu moro no meu
E eu não vou falar com você agora
Nem tempo algun.
Tempus fugit.
I would like to sit with you now
At this table
Late at night, at two in the morning
Drink absinthe with you
Talk with you
And play dominoes or cards with you.
But you live in your world
And I live in mine
And I will not speak with you now
Or any time.
Tempus fugit. (Time flies.)
On a completely different topic, I spent 3+ hours yesterday afternoon with a 16-year old daughter and her mother in the mutual interest of learning the other party's language. You think this sounds weird? Well I was there. This came about through the school - one of the coordinators got a call from the mom, who it turns out just flipped through the yellow pages and saw the school as one of two names in the book, and she asked if there was a native English speaker her daughter could practice with since she was going to Canada for a month in January. It made sense then that the only reason I was qualified for this kind of work was my unique status (strange, since everyone speaks English) among people in the school as a "native" speaker.
But of course my first reaction was whoa, whoa, slow down here - let's deal with the real problem first: Why the hell is this girl going to Canada? Whose idea was it to send her there?
Kidding aside, she and her mother are paranoid, based on previous experiences in the States, that the girl won't be adequately prepared language-wise before she gets there. Despite the fact that she's living with a host family and already speaks English fine, as far as I could tell - definitely far better than I can speak Portuguese. Anyway, me and the taxi driver spent a few extra minutes trying to find the location of their apartment, which turns out to be by far the absolute nicest apartment I've seen in Brazil yet. It was the entire floor of a posh building, with an insane view and waaay expensive furniture, and the cleaning lady was working her ass off the entire time we were there. Also, after meeting the mom, daughter, and younger son, she brought me a glass of juice on a (i swear i'm being serious) silver platter. With a freakin' white doily. At this point I'm pretty used to feeling like I'm on a different planet, and for this reason I wasn't too terribly fazed about the platter / doily, but I was awed by all their stuff. The mom works for the government of Bahia, in the department of labor or something related to that.
We went to a bookstore for the mom to pick up some books or cards - i wasn't really paying attention - and talked while in the car, mostly in Portuguese which was primarily to my benefit. The mom spoke English as well as the daughter, and I sensed that she wanted to take advantage of my presence to improve her own speaking skills as well. They asked me if I wanted to go anywhere and I said I could use some coffee, so they took me to what looked like this posh coffee place which specialized in espresso and desserts, etc., with waiters dressed in vests, you get the idea. Without putting much thought into it I ordered a cappucino, which was cool until it came.
Let's just say that some people here adhere to a very loose definition of the word cappucino. What I received, in a very nice glass I should add, was a couple of scoops of instant cappucino mix dumped into the top of a glass of lukewarm water and barely stirred. I took a sip of it, not realizing what was going on, and thought to myself, oh, they must put some kind of cake or something in the top of it. Keep in mind that this whole time I'm trying to keep up with the conversation, in Portuguese, which the mom is speaking relatively slowly but the girl is burning through like it's the verbal Indy 500. The girl saw the look on my face when I realized what I was drinking, and asked her mom in Portuguese if that's what a cappucino was supposed to look like. I didn't want it to be a big deal so I said something like Oh I bet you just have to stir it. 10 minutes later I had stirred the crap out of it, having started feeling the early indications of tendonitis in my stirring hand, and there was still a (smaller) archipelago of undissolved cappucino mix on the top. I was finally just like the hell with it so I pounded the whole thing except for the last quarter inch since I didn't want them to see the cappucino-mix sediment that would clearly have been left in the bottom of my glass.
It was a little weird, but it was cool too. I think we're meeting again next week. And tomorrow the same coordinator at the school wants me to meet with a woman with a similar request, who (thank god) is a little closer in age to me.
This whole discussion was prompted by the fact that we were asked in class to compose a poem in Portuguese based on some books of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso that the profesora brought in. They were mass paperback sized, and must have been ancient copies because the bindings had fallen apart and she had to hold the pages in a stack like a deck of cards. The paper was heavy enough and the binding dead enough that you could lay these little books flat. What I found almost astonishing was that my classmate, after having disparaged the whole poetry-writing-as-language-teaching concept, went on to co-author with me (I did little other than write it down) a poem which I thought for a first draft and for someone who thought this whole idea was pretty darn good. I'm attaching a copy of the picture that "inspired" this, the one that we chose, and the poem in Portuguese and then English:
Monsieur Boileau
Eu gostaria de sentar com você agora
Nesta mesa
Tarde, noite, as duas horas na madrugada
Beber absintho com você,
Falar com você
E jogar domino ou cartas com você.
Mas você mora no seu mundo
E eu moro no meu
E eu não vou falar com você agora
Nem tempo algun.
Tempus fugit.
I would like to sit with you now
At this table
Late at night, at two in the morning
Drink absinthe with you
Talk with you
And play dominoes or cards with you.
But you live in your world
And I live in mine
And I will not speak with you now
Or any time.
Tempus fugit. (Time flies.)
On a completely different topic, I spent 3+ hours yesterday afternoon with a 16-year old daughter and her mother in the mutual interest of learning the other party's language. You think this sounds weird? Well I was there. This came about through the school - one of the coordinators got a call from the mom, who it turns out just flipped through the yellow pages and saw the school as one of two names in the book, and she asked if there was a native English speaker her daughter could practice with since she was going to Canada for a month in January. It made sense then that the only reason I was qualified for this kind of work was my unique status (strange, since everyone speaks English) among people in the school as a "native" speaker.
But of course my first reaction was whoa, whoa, slow down here - let's deal with the real problem first: Why the hell is this girl going to Canada? Whose idea was it to send her there?
Kidding aside, she and her mother are paranoid, based on previous experiences in the States, that the girl won't be adequately prepared language-wise before she gets there. Despite the fact that she's living with a host family and already speaks English fine, as far as I could tell - definitely far better than I can speak Portuguese. Anyway, me and the taxi driver spent a few extra minutes trying to find the location of their apartment, which turns out to be by far the absolute nicest apartment I've seen in Brazil yet. It was the entire floor of a posh building, with an insane view and waaay expensive furniture, and the cleaning lady was working her ass off the entire time we were there. Also, after meeting the mom, daughter, and younger son, she brought me a glass of juice on a (i swear i'm being serious) silver platter. With a freakin' white doily. At this point I'm pretty used to feeling like I'm on a different planet, and for this reason I wasn't too terribly fazed about the platter / doily, but I was awed by all their stuff. The mom works for the government of Bahia, in the department of labor or something related to that.
We went to a bookstore for the mom to pick up some books or cards - i wasn't really paying attention - and talked while in the car, mostly in Portuguese which was primarily to my benefit. The mom spoke English as well as the daughter, and I sensed that she wanted to take advantage of my presence to improve her own speaking skills as well. They asked me if I wanted to go anywhere and I said I could use some coffee, so they took me to what looked like this posh coffee place which specialized in espresso and desserts, etc., with waiters dressed in vests, you get the idea. Without putting much thought into it I ordered a cappucino, which was cool until it came.
Let's just say that some people here adhere to a very loose definition of the word cappucino. What I received, in a very nice glass I should add, was a couple of scoops of instant cappucino mix dumped into the top of a glass of lukewarm water and barely stirred. I took a sip of it, not realizing what was going on, and thought to myself, oh, they must put some kind of cake or something in the top of it. Keep in mind that this whole time I'm trying to keep up with the conversation, in Portuguese, which the mom is speaking relatively slowly but the girl is burning through like it's the verbal Indy 500. The girl saw the look on my face when I realized what I was drinking, and asked her mom in Portuguese if that's what a cappucino was supposed to look like. I didn't want it to be a big deal so I said something like Oh I bet you just have to stir it. 10 minutes later I had stirred the crap out of it, having started feeling the early indications of tendonitis in my stirring hand, and there was still a (smaller) archipelago of undissolved cappucino mix on the top. I was finally just like the hell with it so I pounded the whole thing except for the last quarter inch since I didn't want them to see the cappucino-mix sediment that would clearly have been left in the bottom of my glass.
It was a little weird, but it was cool too. I think we're meeting again next week. And tomorrow the same coordinator at the school wants me to meet with a woman with a similar request, who (thank god) is a little closer in age to me.
posted by n10471 at 9:53 PM
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