Não quero, não

Another note on language usage:
I haven’t been making too many comments on the language anymore I guess I just pick up on things discretely without even noticing it, which I imagine happens to most people.
But não is used very interestingly. Sometimes people put não at the end of things like “Quero não, quero não” instead of “não quero” so it would be like “I don’t want it” and “I want it not”. Although it’s not as awkward in Portuguese. It adds more emphasis to the não. Or people use it twice like “you know we take the classiest pictures, não brinque com isso, não” like “there’s no joking about that” [literally: don’t play with that, no].

Another:

"mais um" is much more common than "um mais" or "dois mais" for 1 more, or 2 more. you reverse it, which is something else I had caught onto but didn't even notice it until later. It just seems natural to say it like that.

Language, viu?

So remembering back to my first days with my house family, my mae would always say "viu" after almost everything she said, and I just understood that, as it literally means "you see?"
it's kind of like "understand?" or "okay?"
so you can use it like this, viu:

We have food in the fridge and you're welcome to it whenever, viu?
You can ask me for anything you need, you're going to be staying with us for 3 months so you better let us know how it's going, viu?

along with "entendeu" which literally means "did you understand"
and that's used pretty much like interchangeably but "entendeu" can be used in more cases I think. Like when my friend's host mom talks about her past or some form of gossip it's like "entendeu"
So I was waiting in line all day, entendeu?
or some other kind of empathetic inquiry.
I have to work all day, entendeu?

And they weren't just saying this because we were foreigners and they were asking if we literally understood what they said. They said it amongst native speakers the same, entendeu?

Latin American's happier than Europeans?

21 oct 09
Today when I was eating lunch at home they were saying on the Brazilian news that there is a genetic predisoposition for Latin Americans to be happier than people in, say, England.
That there is a gene that makes you produce more serotonin. I don’t know how true it is because it was on the tv news, and I don’t like to jump to genetic explanations to things too much.
However, I have to say that the people I have met in Bahia and comparing my family in mexico to others in California too, seem to be so happy just sitting out on the side walk playing dominoes and just chilling with their friends. So I guess my experience definitely confers! my family is a bunch of jokesters. And just looking at other people, in say, England ...jk. but really that was very interesting and I am happy to be of Latin American heritage!


Shoot, these are our normal faces.

Pastel

11 Nov. 2009
I've mentioned this previously in the Spanish-Portuguese entry but pastel is not cake!
It's this:

these are pictures taken by my friend Katherine at a fair in Goiana, Brazil, in the super interior pretty much smack in the middle of the country. Most of the time they are fried like this on the street. It's like an empanada. Kind of like a thin bread outside and fillings like this:but my Fernanda* made them like this at our house: she baked them and they had like marinated chicken filling. sooooo good! I ate like 7 of them that day! mmmm....

Street food V: picolé & street café

20 nov. 2009
Picolé!
became one of my favorite words since the first time I heard it. I first saw it on a box like this one:
being held by one of the beach vendors who also sell kangas and jewlery made of brazilian wood, seeds, plants etc. And I was intrigued by just the sound of it: picolé /pee-ko-leh/.
anyway I soon found out that it was a Popsicle like this one.

Exhibit B: the street cafés or carrinhos de cafe


I also was a little confused by them at first because there was just a cart with all these red jugs in it and it didn't say coffee (or at least from the angle I was looking at it). And also because I guess I've just never been used to this idea of selling hot coffee in the summer, in the evening! But I guess, people need it? The cool this is that they don't only sell coffee..ohh nooooo! Every cart besides having some colored thermoses, has it's own personality, different colors, art work. Some are simple

[photo credit Dimitri Ganzelevitch because i was always paranoid about taking pictures out in the street when I wasn't surrounded by like 10 people]

and some go all out with music, umbrellas, couches!
Apparently there is an annual competition/show of these carts to see who has the most accomodating atmosphere and my host mom said that there was one with a couch and a big TV with loud speakers and all this stuff. And like Clara the coordinator or the Big Mama of the group would always say "This could only happen in Bahia, people!" and I believe it.
apparently these little carts started appearing in the 70s and now they're just a part of the busy urban setting. Too bad I don't drink coffee.