Discussions with Giovanka

I met with Giovanka again this week.  Once again it was fun and she is super awesome.  She brought me candy for Valentines Day!  Oh, and I found out that she is a model-like the on covers of Latin magazines kind of model.  Cool! 

A good portion of the time we just caught up on each other’s lives and talked about everything from our dislike of online homework to our weekend plans.  She talked about Carnival in Brazil.  Carnival is basically a big party before Ash Wednesday (same idea as Mardi Gras).  There is a huge parade in Sao Palo and Rio de Janeiro that lasts all night long where many “schools” of people walk down a big runway.  There is lots of dancing as well as elaborate costumes.  Giovanka showed me neat pictures from when she was there last year.  There are stands along the runway where the spectators are, but there are also VIP suites along the way.  Giovanka shared that in the VIP room she was there were salon people who could do your hair, a masseuse, beds so if you got tired you could rest a little before partying some more, and of course food and drinks.  I want to go!

I asked her about what kinds of humor they have in Brazil or what things Brazilians find funny.  She said much of the humor is quite similar to that in the states.  She mentioned that they play the game where you punch someone when you see a blue “bug” car.  We played that but in the U.S. but it is called “slug-bug” or “punch-buggy” and people inflict pain when they see any color of “bug” car.  Giovanka also said that blonde jokes are common where she is from.  I thought that was interesting; even on a completely different continent, the blondes are still singled out for jokes. Haha.

I listed some common forms of jokes that we use here to see if she was familiar with all of them.  When I said knock-knock jokes, her response was “What is a knock-knock joke?”  This is a difficult concept to explain to someone who if they have never heard a knock-knock joke before.  I started to tell her one before realizing that it is a two-person joke and I had to first teach her how they work.  Responding to knock-knock jokes seems like almost second nature to us, so teaching someone what to say was a weird but funny experience.  She probably thought that I was a little crazy at first, but after two tries we got one.  I also had to explain that they were all pretty cheesy and dumb but that was the point. 

She wasn’t familiar with the concept of cheesy pick-up lines either.  I read some to her from online and explained that they were also intended to be cheesy and rarely used in real life.

Giovanka had mentioned the last time we talked that she wanted to eventually learn Spanish.  It is similar enough to Portuguese that if she speaks slowly in Portuguese and her friends speak slowly in Spanish, they can understand each other for the most part.  I am aware of this because I know Spanish and I can usually read her Facebook posts that are in Portuguese.  We talked about how cool it is that your brain can just switch between different languages.  She said that sometimes she’ll be on the phone talking with her mom in Portuguese, one of her friends in IEP will say something to her in Spanish, she’ll reply in English, and then go back to using Portuguese on the phone.

Once again her English was quite impressive.  Most of the words she pronounces incorrectly are things such as brand names, which is perfectly understandable.  Her accent was the most noticeable when she read (she looked up the meaning for my birth year according to the Chinese calendar online).  The only time that we really had any communication issues was when she was trying to me that she was going to go see the movie “Identity Thief” over the weekend.  She had to repeat the title several times to me and I didn’t realize what she was saying until she started describing the film.  It turns out that she doesn’t use the “th” phoneme in Portuguese so it is harder for her to pronounce.  She had me repeat the word a few times to her so she could copy what I was saying.  Maybe my semester of speech pathology will come in handy.

            Overall, it was another cool discussion.