The cool açaí guy

07 Nov 2009
So we took a 2 hour bus to Praia do Flamengo on one of those really cool bright yellow buses.

We sun bathed/burned but of course we need to be snacking on the common beach foods, acarajé, abará, and açaí. And água com gás that two of my friends are obsessed with. By the way a tip for when buying bottled water, make sure you read whether the bottle says "com gás" or "sem gás" because the former means it's carbonated and the latter is just regular water.

It was really cool when I went to get açaí the guy working there and I got into a pretty long conversation because of a song on the radio. I got there and I'm like (in portuguese) "oh isn't this,...oh what's his name...Alejando Sanz!" And he's like yeah, and I expressed my surprise that they listened to him here, and it turned out that he actually got into Alejandro Sanz while he was living in Spain. He was working in Spain at a Mexican restaurant and then I told him I'm Mexican and he said he loved being with those Mexicans because they were really funny and crazy. I'm like "yeah that's us" jk. But he learned Spanish with them, like my friend Jonas who went to Florida to learn English but ended up learning more Spanish than anything because every one thought he must be a Spanish-speaker.

But yeah he was super friendly he even gave me extra banana for my açaí because that's how I like it :).
But it's always interesting to hear about so many different experiences that people I meet have had, and you couldn't have guessed it by just talking to them.

language notes

noticing laguage stuff

i hear a lot:

everthing is "-inho -zinho": diminutives are a characteristic of Bahian portuguese because it's just a way of adding affection to everything you say apart from making things small.

devagar/devagazinho= slow or slowly. Bahians have several reputations and stereotypes and one is the preguiça bahiana, that they are lazy and slothful very slow and just have parties all the time. i can't say i have enough experience to know about this but my sister is a full time university student and does construction work almost every day too. my host father works a lot too, but there definitely is an air and way that people have of speaking kind of slowly and relaxing when they can. i must say i don't see anyone rushing practically anywhere. once i think my sister was going to be late to class but we walked super slowly to the car while conversing and what not. i'd be running may be or speed it up a bit but no...no.

Direito, direitinho "voce comeu direitinho? "

which is hard to translate but it would be like a did you eat well but with another connotation, because direito means right, directly, or properly soo..

"mesmo" sometimes used at the end of sentences to ask "really?"

For spanish speakers:

• Salada/salgada: salada is salad not salty; salgada=salty
• puxar not= push so don't be suprised if you're pushing and pushing and nothing happenss. puxar=pull. it more sense once you see empurre [rr=j] on the other side
• pastel vs. bolo: pastel is not cake, it's like an italian calzone kind of. bolo is cake
• vitamina in portuguese means licuado/shake
• assistir televisao, nao e ver televisao
• precisar=to need; necessitar isn't really used
• brincar doesn't mean jump. it is to play.
• legal=cool/chido
• can’t say "mais grande" or "mais pequeno"; it's maior and menor i kept saying "e mais grande .." and i kept bieng corrected because in no occasion is it okay. jaja. it's like saying "mas mejor" or something
• ps: mucho in spanish is muito by the way
• and older and younger is mais velha and mais nova even for people; it’s not rude to say "estas mas vieja"