I highly underestimated how much the language barrier would be here in Sao Paulo. Sure, I bought and studied Rosetta Stone- Portuguese (Brazil) but knowing the colors and family members isn't really helping me much. Fortunately everyone working on my team at my internship can speak English, but the language difference hits me that most when I have to small talk. Everything just doesn't flow as well and probably takes twice as long.
Communicating in restaurants and surviving in Sao Paulo are another story. Most Brazilians do not speak a second language, which was what me and my Portuguese-English mini-dictionary were banking on. Right now the most valuable word in my Portuguese vocabulary is "obrigada" or "thank you." I try to smile a lot which makes a big difference until they repeat the same thing they just said and I still don't understand the Portuguese. I have also come to the point in many conversation where I just keep talking in English and they just keep talking in Portuguese and we somehow think the second or third time we say it they might understand. Another thing that isn't very useful is my Spanish. Spanish helps a lot when I'm trying to read Portuguese and sometimes you can get lucky by talking to someone in Spanish and they can somehow understand what I'm saying.
One thing that is universal in every language is kissing and the Brazilians do a lot of that. In Sao Paulo every one greets each other with one kiss and in Rio they greet with two. The one exception is that men don't kiss men. I love the kissing thing and it brings me back to my days in the theatre (except in theatre the men did kiss the men).
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