Brazilians think that their pizza is the best in the world. Don’t even think of comparing them to Italian pizza because they’ll tell you theirs is much better (despite having pizzas like “banana, bacon and tomato). Granted, though, their pizza is really good, especially the banana, bacon, and tomato. Also, the cheese, peas, corn, sausage and oregano. Try it.
They have horrible diets filled with fried, greasy food, pastry, and mountains of sugar, cheese, and blanched starches. I mentioned before that at breakfast, you have a choice of sugared cereals, toast that you can put caramel spread on, chocolate and/or pound cake, and cookies. You can also have processed meat and cheese on white bread or white hard rolls – with a nice big serving of salted butter, of course. And yes, there is also delicious fruit – thank god for that. However, as I get to my last two days in Brazil, I have to admit that I’m feeling shockingly unhealthy. In fact, the only other time that I’ve felt this unhealthy was when I lived in Hungary where I ate fried cheese and french fries with mayonnaise for practically every meal, french-inhaled two packs of the nastiest communist-grade cigarettes a day, and practically every night drank several vicious cocktails of cheap red wine mixed with orange soda pop. Also in Brazil, ice cream is, like, a national pastime. They’re really into it. I’ve heard that Argentina is much healthier food. Yes, please.
They love their telenovellas, aka soap operas. At night, they have soap after soap after soap on the tube. Really poorly acted, really melodramatic. I’ve watched a bunch and they’re hilarious! And of course, you can imagine that the TV shows from the US that they like here are things like Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives.
They have these hotels called “Love Hotels,” that are specifically made for trysts. I read about these and didn’t really buy it, but I just saw two on my way to the airport. One was called the Eros Hotel and the other was called the Venus Hotel. They definitely looked like a place where you would hook up for a few hours on your lunch break, furtively sneaking from your car into your room (which of course, adds to the excitement), desperate to keep your anonymity intact.
There’s this AWESOME word in Portuguese… Gustozho (SP?). Gustozho means a bunch of things. If you say that that guy is gustozho, he’s a hottie. Or if you jump from a rope swing and do a back flip into the water, that’s gustozho. If you have an amazing time at Carnaval, you say your night was gustozho. I love the word gustozho. I want to say it all the time. Other Portuguese words/expressions I like:
Oi! Which means Hi!
‘Ta bom which is shortened from Tout a bom. ‘Ta bom is an exclamation of agreement or acknowledgement, like cool or ok or sweet or word or yup or any number of expressions we have like that in the US.
For the most part, the aesthetic is very Latin. Men hone their swarthy swagger and women wear their clothes at least two sizes too small. There are a lot of bare midriffs (no matter if you’re thin or are carrying significant extra weight) and a lot of tight, sleeveless bustier tops with a healthy helping of cleavage that seems to be fighting its way out. Men strive for the buff upper body and as Brazilians, are naturally without hair on their upper bodies. They like to pretend that it’s too hot outside and lift up their shirts to show off their stomachs and chests. People are very comfortable about public displays of affection, which is great, I think. I wish the puritanical, uptight USA would get over it. All in all, it’s a culture that seems comfortable with its sexuality and is flirtatious, just for fun. Let me say that I’ve never felt threatened or unsafe around any Brazilian man. They seem to have been taught by their Mommas to respect women, from opening to doors to holding your umbrella in the pouring rain.
Brazilian Portuguese sounds amusing. The whole crux of the language is based on nasal sounds. So here’s something phonetic for you so you can get the sound of it… Tauw oocheh saou, no sa aeirra, sowao see ownce t’daysh naowe weiy magh shay-gagh. Now say those sounds really hard out of your nose, with as much nasal as you can muster and really fast. It’s kind of funny. Sometimes, though, I think I hear someone speaking English and it’s just a person speaking Portuguese, which says to me that we have plenty of nasal sounds in English. I also love that they have these words that sound like something we’d know, but if you read them, you be like, huh? For instance, the word salon. They spell it “salao” but you pronounce the “ao” so nasally that it ends up sounding like “salon.” Also , anything that ends in an “om” is actually “on” so that “bom” os actually pronounced as “bon.” And anything that’s spelled with a “tem” is actually pronounced as “teng.” Also, “moveis” aren’t films, “moveis” is furniture. Anyway, you get the idea.
Brazilians seem to find it hard to give any specific information that is sometimes really necessary to have. For instance, tonight was a perfect example. I asked an airport employee (in Portuguese), “What time does the shuttle for the Hotel Panamby come?” In his smiling and helpful way, he told me that, “It comes at all times.” What a lovely answer, but in no way helpful to me getting to this very important destination at the correct time. Funny if I wasn’t so dependent upon a much needed, precise answer.
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