Como vc chegou aqui???

Sao populares as asneiras que escutamos a respeito de seu pais de origem enquanto se esta fora...

Tem agua encanada onde vc mora?
Vc nao tem medo de morar tao perto da floresta?
Vc e meio branquinho para aquela regiao, nao?
Vcs falam ingles ou espanhol no Brasil? (essa foi quase!)

Quando falo "a respeito de seu pais de origem" me refiro ao fato de que esteriotipos estao presentes em qualquer cultura, em qualquer pais do mundo. Ou seja, a regra vale tambem para um finlandes no Brasil, por exemplo. Recentemente acompanhei um forum de discussoes a respeito de relatos de uma curitibana residindo em Lisboa. Um comentario, em particular, me chamou atencao:

"Humor e um otimo lubrificante cultural"

Nunca tinha pensado nisso, mas uso deste recurso ha um bom tempo. Quando alguem vem com alguma pergunta estupida, primeiramente eu digo que no Brasil, desde os 5 anos, nossas familias nos obrigam a nadar 5 milhas no rio mais proximo, por dia, caso contrario nao ganhamos almoco (normalmente um sabugo de milho).

Os olhos se arregalam e logo em seguida a reacao obvia: Why?!?!

Dai eu respondo: Ue? Como vc acha que cheguei aqui? Nadei 2 dias para cruzar a fronteira!

Upon requests, here it is. An English post. I know I have to do this more often considering the amount of non-Portuguese speaking friends... We shall see ;-)


My leasing was up at the end of May. One year has passed by and I can tell that it is, indeed, a pattern the fact that foreigners usually stick together. Don't know why, but when you come across a foreign, usually his best friend is his countryman. That's why I have a very important piece of advice if you intend to live abroad and fully enjoy the experience: keep distance from people from your own country! Naturally it's easier to communicate and get along with somebody that has the same roots that you have. Not even same roots. If the person is going through the same situation (language/cultural barriers, food issues...) you have the tendency to stick together. Nobody ever said that going abroad and fully emerging in the foreign culture would be easy. You have to try though.

Anyhow, I decided to move in with an American friend. Not only that, I went out of my security net and I'm leaving far, very far from work. I drive by myself every day around 70 miles roundtrip - just to get to work. In the beginning, I thought it would be insane. But actually this problem was solved a couple of months ago, when I bought my Ipod. Now, I don't care driving whatever the distance is. What an awesome gadget!

It's unreal the amount of junk that one can keep throughout a period of time. I guess we only realize that when we move. Old clothes that you've never worn before, pictures that you've thought you would never see again, all types of letters tossed in different drawers, keys (Oh my God!! Keys!!) I don't know why, but it seams that I have this powerful magic skill to make them disappear when they are needed the most, and appear when copies are already made. It took me three long days to pack everything and I tell you, the outcome was scary: How am I gonna take all this back home?

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Summer has finally arrived. Temperatures now remain around the 80s (+- 30 C) and the heat sometimes is overwhelming. I'm starting to miss those early January days when we had house parties and left our drinks outside to keep them cold... sometimes they would even freeze...

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A couple of weeks ago I underwent the most awkward experience since I got here: I had to visit "the Mystic Tan Headquarters". Yeah, shame on me, but I had to go to the tan bed. It's been roughly one year that I don't tan at all - the closest beach is too far and pools are boring - so I had to go. I had this Scandinavian look (nothing against, just not appealing to me) that I badly needed to get rid of. 4 sections later and my tan lines were back! It's unbelievable how profitable this business is here in the US. Everybody goes to those places and even the whitest human being gets some tan.

Are they serious?

Check this out!

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