Well it was for me yesterday. A new school, CELIN, a new class, basic Portuguese, did I do that badly in my assessment test, I guess so and new people. Felipe Ribeiro our class teacher, very articulate and very good, although I learnt that he will only be with us this week. Nine new colleagues who may become friends over the next eight weeks. Two from China, 2 from South Korea, 1 from Vietnam, 1 from Lebanon, 1 from Japan, 1 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 1 from Australia. The common language between us all is English, so naturally any difficulties in explanation descended into English. However, to give credit to Felipe he did speak in Portuguese ninety percent of the time.
Well what did we study? You must remember I am in the basic class so we went back to basics, what is your name, where do you come from etc, then we spent quite a lot of time on pronunciation going through all the sounds of the alphabet, half of my colleagues have never learned Portuguese before. I’m a little concerned that I will not learn anything new on the course but I will give it a few days to see how quickly we progress. Two and a half hours of lessons on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays & Fridays should see us moving forward. You might well ask what about Wednesdays, well that is a cultural learning day when all the CELIN students get together to learn about Brazilian culture whilst practicing Portuguese. Let’s see how many interesting people I meet on Wednesday. I’ve already introduced my blog to my class mates but I don’t think they understand that I want to interview them and post on the blog, let’s see how many I can persuade.
A view of Curitiba from the Botanic Gardens
Its 6am here and I’m up drinking my fresh lime and ginger infusion, it gets me going for the day before my tea and toast. No I did not find any marmalade yesterday, only orange jam so I guess I will have to do without.
Yesterday after class I went to the University book shop and bought the course material 11.60 reais, not very expensive. I’m going to go through it this morning to see how far we are going to go in the next 8 weeks.
Enjoy your day wherever you are.
This is Leo Gringo in Brazil going for an early breakfast
No Comments