Tag: expats

My Daughter’s Bilingual. It’s not a big deal.

My Brazilian-American daughter listening to her anglophone Great-Grandmother read Curious George.

About a month ago, I was invited to be interviewed for a podcast with Marianna Du Bosq at Bilingual Avenue. She asked me to talk about raising my daughter bilingual in Portuguese and English, with English being the minority language. (Jargon alert! In the bilingual community, minority language is any language not spoken by the majority of people in the community.) I was flattered and excited. In preparation, I visited her site and pulled up previous podcasts. As I listened to the PhD experts and trilingual parents, the researchers and published authors, I began to suspect that I would be the least helpful person ever interviewed for Bilingual Avenue.

Well the interview is up, and I’m certain that I’m the least helpful guest ever.

Of all the issues that come with parenting my daughter, raising her bilingual is one of the last I think about. In terms of energy usage, reflecting on her bilingualism comes just after flossing her teeth and ahead of which hand she writes with.

I don’t have a favorite book on bilingualism. I don’t have tips or special strategies to share. I can’t list the names of prominent researchers in the field or site the latest journal article making waves. I don’t have a “biggest fear” or “primary concern”. I’m not visiting online forums and sharing my struggles with other parents.

Before my daughter was born I did buy two books on raising bilingual kids. I read enough to know the common strategies: One Parent One Language (each parent speaks his/her native language to the child) and Minority Language at Home (the child learns the majority language at school/in public and speaks the minority language with both parents at home). Our pre-birth strategy session went something like this:

Me: “Since she’s going to be getting Portuguese at school and with all her friends, we should probably speak English to her at home, right?”

My Husband: “Absolutely.”

And that was that. Marianna asked me during the interview how my Brazilian husband feels about speaking English to his daughter. Not to spoil the interview, but I considered revealing my suspicions that I married a robot. He speaks English fluently and wants his daughter to be fluent in both languages, thus the logical choice was to speak English at home. Period. I realize this story is not helpful for the majority of people who also consider feelings when making decisions. I personally would not be able to say “I love you” in Portuguese and feel it the way I do in English, but my husband didn’t give it a second thought.

It’s possible we would have talked about it more, but then my daughter was born seven weeks early. We spent a month in the NICU. She developed a severe food allergy that caused bloody stools until she was 8 months and left me, the breastfeeding mom, only able to eat fruits and vegetables handpicked by fairies and meat that hadn’t been cooked in anything remotely tasty. Her breastfeeding feeding schedule was every two hours, so I didn’t sleep for almost a year. She has severe separation anxiety which has allowed me one night off in over four years, and that night was such a disaster it will take years for everyone to recover enough to try again. When she started throwing tantrums, they included biting, scratching, spitting, kicking, and screaming until she lost her voice. Two years later, we’ve managed to reduce the tantrums to only screaming and throwing toys at doors instead of people. She refuses to try new foods. Iran is more flexible over nuclear policies than my daughter is on the subject of vegetables. And she has recently decided she is done with both school and sleeping.

Truly my daughter speaking two languages is the least of my concerns.

Her teachers report no problems with communication. She has lots of friends she speaks to in Portuguese. She enjoys speaking in English to my parents via Skype. She might have in total fewer words in English than a monolingual her age but so, what? I’m a native English speaker and still regularly have to look up English words I’ve never seen before. With every piece of writing, I learn new ways to use and manipulate my native language. Learning a language is a lifelong activity, not something you need mastered by 18. My kid can identify an armadillo in both English and Portuguese. I’m not worried.

When I do consider her bilingualism and her place in the world as a bilingual, I remember that the idea a child should only have one native language or risk never being fluent in any has been totally and completely debunked. Linguists estimate 75% of the world’s population speaks more than one language and about 20% of the U.S. population. She’s far from alone in her bilingualism. In fact, compared to the many families passing on three or even four languages, our two-language family is pretty straightforward.

I think about these facts for two minutes and then go back to finding a way to make applying sunscreen less traumatic. Which is why, I’m the absolute last parent to ask about raising a bilingual child.

Because when someone says “You’re raising her bilingual. How’s that going?” I say, “Fine. Hey, do you have any suggestions for getting her to not hate carrots?”

*Here is the link to my interview with Marianna at Bilingual Avenue. Episode 87: Learning Language from our Kids with Brynn Barineau

If you have any questions or doubts about raising multilingual kids, Bilingual Avenue is a great resource!!

September 21, 2015
Why I’m an Expat in Brazil Part III: Leaving the Friend Zone

Dancing crosses culture and brings people together. It did for my husband and me.

My husband and I never actually dated. Not officially. He never asked me to dinner. I never invited him to a movie. We didn’t sit across from each other in a dimly-lit, over-cooled restaurant asking about family or hometowns between sips of wine. When one of the parties can pull out a two inch file on the other there is no “getting to know you” period.

“So, I’m from Rio de Janeiro originally…”

“Yes, I read that in your program application. I also saw that you got your law degree from a university in Bahia and recently completed your master’s in law at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Changing the subject, your blood pressure is fantastic! Do you have any cardio tips?”

For his part, he’d listened to a running stream of personal revelations from me as I attempted to make each of the Fellows (him in particular) feel at home in DC. I thought the best way to do this was to talk about my parents’ divorce and bring travel photo albums to lunch. He’d met my closest friends within two weeks of meeting me because I’d recruited them to be student hosts for the Fellows, and he met my parents when I brought them along to karaoke with the Fellows at a bar in Adams Morgan.

He may not have had a full medical history for me, but he knew exactly who I was within a month of meeting me: a 22 year-old who excitedly brings her parents out to a bar to show off her new work colleagues.

I hid nothing. I revealed all of me including friends, family, and cat. The only reason I did something as insane as show the HD version of myself from the start is because it was inconceivable that we would end up in a relationship. And I mean inconceivable literally. I did not imagine, envision, or hypothesize any scenario in which we were more than friends. His different nationality and culture had nothing to do it with it. He was…is sixteen years older than I am. His professional career at that point included naval officer and auditor with Brazil’s IRS. My professional title at the time was “Graduate Assistant”. We were at such different stages in our lives that all I had my sights set on was an incredibly impressive letter of recommendation from him at the end of year.

So when my friend confidently told me over dinner one Saturday night “He’s totally going to stick his tongue down your throat.” I replied “Wha…he…I…uh…we…nooooo, he is not.” Because I was both incredulous at the idea and painfully uncomfortable talking about physical relationships. It was a cool evening in early October, and my friend and I were having basin sized salads before I headed out clubbing with some of the Fellows. The Fellows from Zimbabwe and Cameroon were desperate to go out dancing, so I’d agreed to pretend I could dance and go with them. The Brazilian said he’d come too. The plan was for me to meet him at the metro stop near our apartments and head to Dupont Circle together.

“So you’re going to the club together,” my friend concluded. I changed the subject.

We were headed to Cafe Citron, a club I had visited once before, and thought (wrongly) I could get to without directions. After lapping the circle, asking for directions, and finding the other Fellows at the club, we hit the dance floor. This was the part I had been dreading. Besides soccer playing, the only other skill I associated with Brazil was dancing. Samba. The Girl from Ipanema. Carnaval. Bossa Nova. I imagined a country full of people who celebrated soccer victories by literally dancing, extremely well, in the streets. I could handle the “Electric Slide”, the “Chicken Dance”, or a montage from Greece, but as we weren’t at a suburban high school homecoming, I didn’t expect to shine very brightly on the dance floor.

Fortunately, neither does he. The Brazilian doesn’t dance.

Oh, he dances better than I do, but the music and the crowd that night kept things simple and close. I could follow. Not that we danced for long.

I felt the tension from the first sway of my hips. After having lunch together for weeks, I suddenly couldn’t look him in the eye. I looked at his shoulder, just beyond his shoulder, his feet, his forearm, his hand, his chest. Eventually, I was down to body parts that would have been far more awkward to stare at than his eyes. So I looked up. We made eye contact. And he made his move.

His move was confident and calm and so wonderful. It was the unhurried and sure kiss of a grown man. Thank god, we got married because after a minute of kissing, I was spoiled forever for mid-twenty grad students.

We left the club a couple. Not dating. Not open to other people. We left together.

Not that we told anyone. Why cause a fuss if it wasn’t going to work out? But by Christmas break we’d said I love you and it was time to tell my family I had fallen for a Brazilian, atheist, sixteen-years my elder, who was in the states for only another seven months.

It went better than I expected.

August 18, 2015
Why I’m an Expat in Brazil Part II: Between Meeting & Dating

Some very impressive Humphrey Fellows and me.

It is a long way between meeting someone for the first time and marrying him.

I saw my future husband for the second time early the next morning as I collected the entire group of Humphrey Fellows to escort them to their welcome meeting. As an international studies major, I was in quite the fan-girl tizzy over the Humphrey Fellows, specifically the Fellow from Bhutan. There are only about 700,000 Bhutanese in the world, and I was going to work with one! I’d been bringing her up in conversation regularly for months in an effort to compete with my roommate’s stories from her internship on Capitol Hill.

On that typically humid August morning, I found my Brazilian waiting in the dorm lobby next to the Fellow from Kenya. We chatted as the others slowly trickled down. There was a lot of hand shaking and slow pronouncing of names, my own name included. “It’s pronounced like Lynn, except with a Br instead of an L.” “No, it’s not a boy’s name. That’s Bryan, with an A.” “No, I don’t think my parents knew my name would be unpronounceable to, apparently, the entire world.”

Orientation for an international exchange program is probably the most emotionally exhaustive thing a person can go through that doesn’t involve a birth, a death, or a space suit. A person is expected to navigate a new place, new culture, possibly a new language, and new people, all while jet lagged and in some amount of digestive distress from new food. It’s not a vacation. There’s no sleeping in. I met the Fellows in the lobby at 8:45am for a welcome meeting that started at 9 sharp, and from that moment on for the next two weeks, it was a race to get them registered for classes, bank accounts, cell phones, and long-term housing before fall semester began.

Our Fellows had an added emotional blow as they went from being up and coming stars of their respective professions to nobody.

Welcome to Washington DC! It has the highest concentration of PhDs, law degrees and self-esteem per capita of any city in the world. You are now officially unimpressive. You will not have maids. You will not have secretaries. If you don’t know how to send an email or cook, well…we can teach you how to email. Try not to starve.

Undergrads who study abroad don’t have these problems. They haven’t been on their own long enough to be embarrassed by dependency. The Humphrey Fellows however ranged in age from 35 to 50. They arrived for their year in Washington with impressive CVs and very fragile egos. Working with them taught me how to explain what to do with used toilet paper without sounding condescending.

Culture shock and a complete lack of family and friends explain why I, at 22 with the ink still drying on my diploma, was treated by the Fellows as an equal. Nobody asked me to get their coffee. They asked me to explain the online course registration. They asked me to listen as they cried over how much they missed their kids. They asked me to explain the endless variety of milk in grocery stores. At that moment in their lives, they needed an insiders guide to Americans. I was an American with a ~~embarrassingly~~ fortuitously empty social calendar and that huge fan-girl crush on them. I became the group’s cultural wingman.

I started hanging out with the Fellows on weekends. We went to a coffee shop at Dupont Circle for s’mores. We hit some bars in Adams Morgan and tried out an Ethiopian restaurant for lunch. The group changed depending on who had a paper due or a bad case of culture shock, except for one member: the Brazilian. In my memories he’s always there. Always up for anything. Usually available for lunch. He’d rented a basement apartment close to where I lived, and we often ran into each other on the shuttle heading to and from campus.

But I was so hung up on his resume and the sixteen year age difference, I never imagined he actually thought of me as a fellow adult. I was sure the Brazilian, like the other Fellows, was being incredibly polite to someone helping him. When he paid close attention as I took him through every picture from my semester in India, I must have subconsciously chalked it up to good manners because I would never, NEVER, have brought a photo album to lunch with someone I actually hoped to date.

About a month after orientation, the Korean Fellow invited everyone to his apartment for dinner. I clearly remember a few wonderful minutes in the kitchen as the Brazilian taught me how to make caipirinhas and I tried one. I blamed my flushed cheeks on the cachaça. Later a group of us took the subway home. It was several blocks to the metro station, and the temperature had dropped changing my sandals from cute to extremely impractical. My toes were slowly freezing and I probably would have lost a few, if the Brazilian hadn’t stopped, taken off his shoes, and handed me his socks. He gave me the socks off his feet.

And I still didn’t see the first kiss coming. But that night deserves its own story.

August 10, 2015
How I Met My Husband or Why I’m in Brazil

We met, we married, and I moved to Brazil.

Ten years ago today, I met my husband.

He showed up at the office a day early and if he had been less adventurous or more patient, if he had just followed his orientation schedule, I’d probably still be in Washington DC with an impressive career in international education.

He was one of nine mid-career professionals from around the world being hosted by the Washington College of Law as part of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program. His welcome orientation was scheduled for August 4, 2005. I was spending August 3 sprawled on the floor with my hair in a pony-tail hole-punching, stacking, and assembling orientation binders. At least, that was my plan, but about mid-morning the office manager poked his head into the conference room and told me the Brazilian was at the front desk.

The office manager actually called him, “The Brazilian”. We all did, even program staff at the national level, because no one had a clue how to pronounce his name, which is quite a statement considering the range of nationalities around the office suite. My boss was out of the office, so I got to be the first to hear the correct pronunciation and fail repeatedly to say it. We would be dating before I could correctly say his name.

I saw him as soon as I stepped out of the conference room. He was standing by the reception desk just beyond several ubiquitous office cubicles, including my own, and I thought, “Wow, he’s white. I didn’t know Brazilians could be white.” It was the first in what has turned out to be a lifetime of revelations about Brazil, many of which have revealed an embarrassing number of unconscious assumptions based exclusively on Pelé.

My second thought on seeing him was “He’s really handsome.” My third was “I can’t believe he found this place.” The program office was located in a suite on the bottom level of a building two blocks down from the law school. The suite housed a variety of programs and offices, none of which had found a way to give directions that didn’t get most visitors lost. The Brazilian had successfully navigated the maps and directions while jet-lagged and operating in a foreign language. I was impressed.

But I’d been impressed by him for months. We received a binder on each Fellow that included a medical history, their complete program application with letters of recommendation, and the Fulbright selection committee’s evaluations. The Brazilian came with a letter of recommendation from a Supreme Court Justice and a clean bill of health. Not bad as boyfriend applications go. For my part, I’d been a college graduate for three months.

Truly I don’t know what about me got his attention. Maybe it was my stellar administrative skills or consistent punctuality. Somehow, I managed to make navigating my home country in my native language seem impressive. Thank god for home court advantage.

I wasn’t thinking relationship in that first moment. After recognizing that he was attractive, I went straight to professional mode. I took him on a tour of the school and to the bank. There is nothing romantic about banking or walking around DC at midday in August. Unless pit stains are considered a turn on. We grabbed lunch at the sandwich place across the street where I proved I was strictly business and indifferent to others by ordering the onion smothered Greek wrap. We chatted easily over lunch, and I believe that casual conversation over vegetarian wraps laid the groundwork for everything that followed.

If my boss had been around that morning, she would have been the one to take him to the bank and to lunch. If we had met the next day along with the entire group, we wouldn’t have had the rapport that made me the obvious choice to go with him apartment hunting while the other Fellows opened bank accounts. And if we hadn’t gotten to know one another while touring some rather frightening basement apartments in Northwest DC, it wouldn’t have felt perfectly natural to meet up for lunch periodically over the coming weeks.

By the time we went on our first date, we’d already opened a bank account, shopped for an apartment, and been subjected to a variety of team building exercises together. Rarely has a couple’s compatibility been so thoroughly tested. All we lacked was an astrologer’s blessing.

But all those moments came after that first meeting, when he showed up early and I mispronounced his name exactly ten years ago today.

August 3, 2015
Dear Brazil: Pay Your Nannies a Living Wage!

Seriously Brazil, it’s 2015. Pay your help a living wage.

Dear reader, if you’re not in the mood for a rant, check back next week.

It all started when I received an early morning WhatsApp message from a fellow mom asking the group about rates for a substitute nanny while the permanent nanny is on vacation.

A little cultural context. Here in Brazil full-time nannies are common. This was surreal for me coming from the United States. In the U.S. full-time nannies are something only the Jolie-Pitt or Kardashian families can afford. I remember a combination of church daycares and grandparents after school and over the summers while my parents worked. Personally, I’ve never known anyone in the U.S. with a full-time nanny.

In Brazil, almost everyone I know has a full-time maid and many have a full-time nanny too. Often if the family has kids but can’t afford two employees, the maid will have childcare duties in addition to the housekeeping, grocery shopping, and cooking. Several of our friends also employ a weekend nanny because labor laws in Brazil don’t allow families to ~~demand~~ ask their nanny to work 7 days a week. It’s like Downton Abbey in flip-flops with more beer and better weather.

How can these middle class and professional families afford full time nannies and housekeepers in the year 2015? Minimum wage in Brazil for 2015 is $250 a month. (I’m using today’s exchange rate of 1 U.S. dollar to 3.15 Brazilian reais to put all values into US dollars.) U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, so assuming four 40-hour-weeks a month, the U.S. federal minimum wage per month is $1,160.

$1,160 versus $250 a month.

Now, a lower minimum wage doesn’t necessarily indicate a lower quality of life.

Maybe the cost of living is significantly lower in Brazil than the US? Maybe goods are less expensive? They’re not. The only things cheap in Brazil are coconuts and people, and even the coconuts are experiencing inflation.

Maybe there are a variety of free/very low-cost public services in Brazil? There aren’t. Public services from school to health care are abysmal. Everyone who can scrape together the cost goes private, and a full-time nanny at minimum wage is significantly cheaper than private day cares here in Vitoria.

But there’s no way people pay nannies minimum wage, right? In practice people are paying more than the legal minimum, aren’t they?

This brings us back to this morning’s Whatsapp conversation among local moms.

A mom wanted to know what other people had paid for someone to fill-in as a nanny for a month. The values reported ranged from $254 to $476 for the month. For two children. For the entire day, Monday through Friday.

But these shockingly low values are not what drove me to clutch at my hair and mutter obscenities at my computer. Nor was I upset that a family of four is looking for the highest quality childcare at the lowest possible cost.

I got upset after I sent a message saying that our kids’ pregnant preschool teacher was at the doctor again due to pain from her sciatic nerve. I commented about how what she really needed as a present was a housekeeper. My message got no response. The conversation continued about nannies until finally the original poster asked, “Did your nannies just take care of the kids or did they also clean their rooms and do laundry?” This sparked the rant.

Dear Brazilian Middle and Upper Classes, nannies are people! Housekeepers are people! Preschool teachers and assistants are people!

There are so many wonderful things about Brazilian culture, like the attitude toward children, the judicial selection process, and dental hygiene. But the way upper classes treat people in the working class is NOT one of those things. I’m so tired of listening to good, ethical people, friends, colleagues and parents I respect, refer to their nannies or maids as “them”. I’ve heard complaints about how much the maid eats, stories about getting older kids to spy on the maid and report back, and indignation about a nanny who went and got married. The underlying message is that “we” must be vigilant against “them” or they will use up our sugar and make a lot of long distance phone calls.

When I saw the movie The Help, I thought, “Wow, that’s like present day Brazil”. That’s what I see here. Upper-classes in Brazil often deny the basic humanity of the people working in their homes. (And to Brazilians who protest that Brazil doesn’t have The Help‘s racial component, I recommend a walk around Ipanema in the afternoon or a visit to a private daycare in Vitoria. Look at the color of the kids and look at the color of the people holding their hands.)

I believe for most people it’s unconscious. It’s how their own parents and everyone in their circle has always talked about nannies and housekeepers and drivers. They’ve internalized this division, don’t see anything wrong with it, and haven’t been challenged on it.

I’m not against paying for a housekeeper. We employ one. I’m not against paying for a nanny. I believe affordable child care is a HUGE barrier keeping women from advancing in the workforce in the U.S. and Brazil. I’m writing this while my kid is at daycare. Many of the mom’s I know are amazing professionals, and it’s only possible because they can find childcare be it a daycare or nanny. Many moms want to work. Many moms HAVE to work. Quality childcare is a necessity.

I’m against a system that keeps people from empathizing. That makes it “us” versus “them”. That causes a really nice person to ask the woman she’s paying almost minimum wage to watch her kids if she could also do the laundry.

What about the kids of the people we pay to watch our kids? Who watches them if we pay their moms $300 a month? Is it ethical to ask a woman willing to assume the enormous task of keeping two small children alive for only $350/month to also do the laundry? Is this woman really in a position to say “no”? Are we going to be annoyed if she does? If we’re paying minimal costs, why do we expect top-quality service and undying loyalty?

Beyond respecting and talking to each other as people as opposed to being constantly on guard against the machinations of “those” others who want to exploit us…I have an idea for improving things for the moms, maids, and childcare workers.

Everyone gets rid of their housekeeper.

We take the money we were paying to housekeepers and put it toward childcare, either by increasing the wage of the nanny or increasing the salary of daycare and preschool teachers. The former housekeepers come together and start cleaning-service businesses. Their former employers, now clients, hire the company for once or twice a week, and now the preschool teachers and nannies may even be able to afford the housekeepers’ services with their increases in salary. The former housekeepers can also find employment at all the new public daycares the government will open in my utopia.

And what about all the cooking and laundry and grocery shopping left in the wake of the maids? Well, I think it’s time for Brazilian men to stop watching soccer and do some freakin’ laundry.

How does that sound?

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June 29, 2015
Flying with Preschoolers: It can always get worse.

My only parenting standard at airports is “don’t lose her”.

My little family of three took a trip to Rio de Janeiro this weekend. Our nephew recently had a birthday and we needed to put in some face time with my husband’s family. It’s only a 45 minute flight from Vitoria to Rio, but that was long enough to learn a valuable lesson. There is no length of time short enough a three year old can’t turn it into forever.

It’s like in Interstellar. For the pilot and crew who have tasks to complete, 45 minutes is barely enough time to toss bags of crackers at everyone. They’re the lucky ones down on the planet. The parents of small children are the ones stuck in orbit who stumble off the plane with more grey hair and beards, demanding to know what year it is. How long were we up there? Six years? Ten?

For our flight home, boarding was scheduled for 6:50pm. Right at dinner time! But my husband and I were prepared. We had packed sandwiches…which my daughter ultimately refused to eat because we miscalculated the nap.

The ride to the airport was about 30 minutes. When my daughter fell asleep in the taxi, we thought “Oh good, she can take a short nap and be in a better mood.” Only, she didn’t fall into nap-time sleep. She fell into bedtime-for-the-night sleep, and as my grandmother says, “You don’t need to step on a snake to know it’s going to bite you.” The same principle applies. You don’t need to wake a preschooler up from deep sleep to know it’s going to cry.

And cry she did. Through the whole check-in process. While we searched for a place to sit. While I bought water and snacks. Even after we resorted to the emergency M&Ms. Eventually, she calmed down and filled her stomach with 2 tiny bites of sandwich and 5 pão de queijo.

No longer hungry but still exhausted from the weekend, her emotional pendulum swung to the other extreme. We then had a deliriously giddy 3 year old on our hands. While deliriously-giddy child is less emotionally exhausting than inconsolable child, she is more physically exhausting because deliriously-giddy child cannot occupy the same space for more than 3 seconds.

Did I mention that my back locked up this weekend? It happened while checking in at the airport for our flight to Rio. For the first time in my life. I couldn’t bend over, lift anything, or even take a deep breath the entire weekend.

Because I was benched from parenting due to injury, my husband was the one running after her while I kept our place in all the various lines. He was the one who chased her through security, from the gate to the plane, and took her on the bathroom run she needed the moment we stepped on the plane.

Eventually the plane took off and everything was ok. For about half an hour.

With fifteen minutes of flight time left, my daughter decided she could no longer tolerate her seat belt. My husband and I desperately tried to head off the fit we could see coming. She was straining and arching her back against the seat belt. Her face was scrunched and turning red. She stopped speaking in sentences and devolved to “No seat belt!” Very aware of the 150 people trapped on the plane with us, I grabbed a doll and made it sing “Let It Go”. As we got to the chorus, my daughter joined in and shrieked “Let it poopy! Let it poopy!” She dissolved into a fit of laughter and proceeded to sing at the top of her lungs different versions of the song featuring everything from pee pee to smelly socks to farts.

I’m certain if there had been a vote, the other passengers would have unanimously voted us off the plane.

That was the emotional knife edge we balanced on for the remainder of the flight. We teetered between a breakdown over the seat belt and belting out classic Disney songs rewritten to feature bodily functions. “Let it fart! Let it poopy! Let it poopy and faaaaart!” The plane eventually landed three months later, and we made it home where my daughter finally ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and went to bed.

All in all, it was a pretty uneventful trip. It could have been so much worse.

June 22, 2015
5 Things You’d Never Guess About Brazil

5 of the many things that have surprised me about Brazil…

“Do you like Brazil?” I heard this question for the thousandth time last night. I don’t know why people bother to ask this question. It’s in the same category as “Does this make me look fat?” and “Did you read my last blog post?” Nobody wants an honest answer. “Do you like Brazil?” The correct response is an enthusiastic “Yes!”

At least this question has an obvious correct answer, unlike “So which country do you like better? The US or Brazil?” What am I supposed to say? I usually cop out with humor. “Neither. I’m giving up on the whole nation-state system. I’d like to start my own island tribe based on handedness.”

Another strategy I’ve developed over the years is to answer these politically loaded questions with lists: “Things I love about Brazil” or “Things I miss about the US”. Below is my favorite list. I like it because it’s personal but more unusual than the standard “Things I love about Brazil.”

Five Things That Surprised Me About Brazil

1) Stellar Dental Hygiene Brazilians are obsessed with their teeth. If you go into a restroom after lunch, there will be a wall of people between you and the sink, all of them flossing their teeth. Helpfully, many public restrooms have floss dispensers to facilitate this habit. You should brush your teeth after every meal and ideally after every snack. As an after-breakfast-and-before-bed brusher, I have the most disgusting teeth in all of Brazil. Fortunately, my husband accepts me for who I am and ascribes my poor dental hygiene and once-a-day-showering to my Anglo-Saxon ancestors’ affinity for filth. Although thanks to him, I have grudgingly become a daily flosser.

2) Your Fingers Must Never Touch Your Food When I learned that many Brazilians use a fork to eat french fries, I almost moved back to the US. Brazilians use a knife and fork for EVERYTHING! Your fingers must never touch your food. As my people created a category just for “finger foods”, this is not a custom that I’m particularly comfortable with or always able to keep in mind. I’ll be at a birthday party happily popping mini-pizzas in my mouth, when I notice everyone else at the table has a napkin delicately wrapped around their snack, creating a polite barrier between fingers and food. After 9 years, I still can’t muster that level of formality for something that came frozen out of a box. (Honestly between the finger eating and lack of teeth brushing, I’m surprised my husband agrees to go out with me.)

3) Japanese-Brazilians My initial thought when I saw my husband for the first time was “Hey, he’s white!” True story. Pretty romantic, huh? Before my husband, the only Brazilian I was aware of was Pelé, thus my unconscious assumption about how Brazilians look. I wasn’t totally wrong. According to the 2010 census, 50.7% of Brazilians do consider themselves black or mixed-race. But in addition to the 4.8 million people brought as slaves from Africa and the indigenous tribes who were already here, Brazil has had substantial immigration from Portugal, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, and Germany to name a few countries. With a history of intermarriage between the groups, Brazilians cover the entire range of possible human phenotypes.

4) Brazilians Love Volleyball! Everyone else in the world besides Americans might already know this. Probably the world loves indoor volleyball, and it’s only us Americans who are in the dark. Literally. We’d rather just sit in the dark than watch a volleyball game. But not Brazilians! If there’s no soccer game, the sports channels are covering a volleyball match. They have incredibly popular professional leagues here, and if you stay in Brazil long enough, you will find yourself at a bar with a women’s club volleyball game on the TV. Or judo. Judo is also very popular in Brazil.

5) Did You Already Add Salt? This is a question most Brazilians won’t ask because they’re going to go ahead add more salt regardless. Meal after meal, I see Brazilians get food placed in front of them and without even tasting it, they reach for the salt packets, rip one open, and rain salt down on the entire plate. Very shortly after arriving, my husband made sure to treat me to one of Brazil’s traditional meals imported from Portugal, bacalhau or codfish. Imagine a salt lick served with potatoes and onions. That’s bacalhau. I couldn’t eat it. The same was true for feijoada, a uniquely Brazilian dish involving black beans, all the leftover pieces of pig, and a few ice cream scoops of salt. Not surprisingly, Brazil has a hypertension epidemic.

Those were some of the most surprising truths I learned about Brazil. I’d come up with more, but I just ate a pretzel and must go floss my teeth.

June 8, 2015
The Two Kinds of Americans Abroad

There are two kinds of Americans abroad.

Last week, I gave a lecture comparing Brazilian and American culture to a group of law students from West Virginia University. I like to think that I was asked to lecture because I have a Master’s degree in International Communication, a subject I have been living everyday since I moved to Brazil. But I think the decision making process was more like this.

“We have a large group of Americans coming and none of them speak Portuguese. We need English speakers with advanced degrees! Quick!”

“We have these five professors. That’s two days, but the group is here a week.”

“Crap.”

“Hey, isn’t there a professor with an American wife?”

“Yes! She can talk about the differences between Americans and Brazilians. Plus, she’s not actually a professor so we won’t have to pay her anything. Perfect!”

And that’s how I ended up on a stage talking to a gaggle of WVU law students, who unfortunately didn’t come dressed in coal-dusted miner’s clothing, strumming banjos. Thus the only images I had of West Virginia were shattered.

I opened my lecture by asking for the audience to describe a “typical” American and Brazilian. I asked each group to describe their own nationality. The Brazilians in the room described a typical Brazilian as “friendly”, “family oriented”, “has lots of kids”, “talkative”, “kind”, and “social” among other things. Now, how do you think the Americans described themselves?

A little personal reflection before I tell you. I’ve traveled a fair amount, and I think Americans who venture outside the US can be divided into two categories. One group is the famous American tourist. The loud, pink-faced, sneaker-wearing patriot who cannot fathom why this third-world country doesn’t put ice cubes in the drinks. They seem surprised and confused to discover that not every person everywhere lives exactly like they do.

“Cheryl, did you see that you cannot flush the toilet paper?! I tell you what…I don’t know how these people can live like this. If I lived in this place, I’d get myself an American toilet right quick.”

Then there is the other group. These students were from the other group.

These American students described a typical American as “fat”, “lazy”, “arrogant”, “selfish”, and “ignorant”. They basically described the typical American as a cross between Voldemort and Jabba the Hutt.

It was fascinating. Despite currently living through a recession and an enormous corruption scandal involving billions of taxpayers’ reais and rising inflation and gross income inequality and sky high rates of gun deaths…the Brazilians described themselves in overwhelmingly positive and honest terms. Why were the Americans so brutal and negative toward their countrymen? And more interestingly, would any of them have described themselves in those terms? Of course not! They don’t see themselves as “typical”. (Ironically, separating yourself out from the majority as a unique individual is typically American.)

These students are the second type of Americans abroad, the “serial apologizers”.

Perhaps you’ve seen them eating couscous with their fingers in Rabat or using chopsticks like a local in Tokyo. They are Americans who are hyper aware of the negative opinion many people have of US foreign policy and/or Americans themselves. Thus, they go around profusely apologizing for everything the US has ever done wrong. They preempt criticism with more extreme criticism of their own.

“You don’t like US policy in the Middle East? How could you? We’re arrogantly imposing our will on everyone who is different! It’s what we do! Let me tell you about our history with Native Americans and slavery and don’t even get me started on the present day! Between Iraq and the Kardashians, we’ve destroyed everything that is good and decent in the world! Disney! Drones! Starbucks! We are the WORST!”

My fellow Americans, isn’t there some happy middle ground between these groups? Can’t we describe ourselves as hardworking, informal, and innovative while also acknowledging that Walmart is run by the devil’s minions?

Let’s try! Next time you go abroad, don’t assume the lack of ice cubes is indicative of underdevelopment. If someone brings up Guantanamo, acknowledge that our collective fear after 9/11 led to some horrible policy decisions but you’re confident the pendulum is swinging back the other way. Then lead everyone in a rousing chorus, “Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow!” Because fierce optimism and musical theater are two of Americans’ greatest contributions to the world.

June 2, 2015
Getting a Driver’s License in Brazil

Traffic in Brazil is not helped by all the unlicensed drivers.

To put my family at ease, I tend to downplay the more dangerous aspects of life in Brazil, but the truth is you’re much more likely to die a violent death in Brazil than in Canada or Japan or even gun-crazy United States. Oh, you’re not going to get shot. No, you’re going to die in a flaming car crash long before you get mixed up in drug-related violence.

It didn’t take me very long in Brazil to understand that cars were the real danger. After my first months in Rio, I assumed that traffic in Brazil was governed only by the laws of physics. I was wrong. It’s governed by plenty of people laws too. It is Brazil after all.

Licenses require medical exams, eye exams, and psychological exams. Driver’s ed is mandatory and its content federally regulated down to the number of hours for theory and practice. Thus, the only reasonable explanation for the number of traffic-related deaths here is that no bureaucrat in Brasilia has ever actually driven a car, and they have no idea what skills to include on the test.

A student of mine recently turned 18 and has been taking his mandatory driver’s ed class. He brought me several of his practice exams. He knows I love to laugh.

Driver’s education courses in Brazil are divided into two parts: 45 hours and 25 hours. That’s 45 hours in the classroom and 25 hours on the road. Some people might be thinking, “Gee, wouldn’t it be better is these kids learning to drive a car spent the majority of their class time in a car?” These people don’t appreciate the teaching power of multiple choice exams and visualizing your goal. “I can see myself successfully merging in rush hour traffic.” (Actually, visualizing is the only way to practice highway driving. Driver’s ed cars aren’t allowed on highways.)

So if not safe merging practices, what are these up and coming driver’s expected to know? For one, the best attitude man can have in relation to the environment. (The answer is “preservation”.) It’s also necessary to know how the government of Brazil is trying to reduce emissions. Humans have basic rights and there are a variety of ways we can observe the importance of family and friends to society. Know that pointing out to a fellow driver that one of her tires is low encourages solidarity and courtesy in society more so than it demonstrates a concern for traffic. Don’t worry about knowing the effects of alcohol on reflexes. That’s only a leading cause of traffic deaths in Brazil. It won’t be on the test.

Now, a 35 question multiple choice test isn’t the only requirement. The non-drivers in Brasilia didn’t want just anybody who can read getting a license. They also wanted to weed out the crazies, which is why a psychological exam is required. Again, I think this shows a complete lack of understanding of driving and a prejudice against crazy people. There’s no reason a person can’t be a sociopath and an excellent driver. My life experience has shown me no correlation between sanity and a willingness to use the blinker.

The greatest irony is that all these required (and expensive) exams and driver’s ed courses intended to make the roads safer actually result in a huge market for fake licenses. People need to drive and they don’t have 70 hours to spend learning about the parts of an engine.

In the end who ends up driving on Brazil’s roads? A bunch of unlicensed drivers who have no idea how rain affects a car’s ability to stop, a bunch of licensed drivers who can label all the parts of an engine but have never driven on a highway, and not a single person who knows anything about alcohol’s affects on the body.

So, if you’re coming to Brazil be sure to wear your seat belt. Or just stay on the beach the whole time. Cancer kills fewer people here than cars.

May 26, 2015