Hello human beings! How is life on “global warmed not so warmed but slightly cold Earth”?!
Hope everything is alright!
Today I’m not here to post some great adventure that involves trains, heavy backpacks, sightseeing or anything for that matter. No, I’m here to post about another culture encounter, Brazil and England.
There I was at home, bored to death on my bed watching another episode of South Park, which by the way you can watch on line. I needed to see the sky, breath fresh air otherwise I would go crazy.
The Internet is a disease, at least for me, if I have it around I won’t do anything productive. I have three books that I have to finish but instead I check my scraps once every 5 minutes. I figured it out that the only way to read then is go as far as I can from my laptop. I grabbed my bag, sunglasses, my books, some coins and left to the main plaza where they have a big set of stairs, perfect place to sit, relax and (try) to read my book.
I got myself an ice-cream on the way to satisfy my need for glucose, took a little walk to avoid my muscle to atrophy and head to the stairs. At least I managed to read a couple of pages before engaging a conversation with two English speaking girls that were sitting next to me. I was sure they were American, but with all the noise I couldn’t distinguish. It turned out they were a English, one from Manchester and the other one from Liverpool, Hellen and Jade respectively .
That’s was perfect, a month away from going to London there I was talking to two English native girls. I won’t deny that I have thing for English accent, maybe the same I have for the southern accent in Brazil.
We talked for a while until they decided to go home to get something and go back for the show it was about to happen at the “piazza”, something about Labor Day. We all about agreed to be back at 7 for the show. I went back home, made dinner, checked my “(s)craps” as usual and headed back to the “piazza”….at 8, but there they were, having a Kebab. You all know that I had a hard time when I got to Lisbon as far as understanding a different accent is concerned, it wouldn’t be the same with the British accent(s), (yes, there are a lots more different accents going on in the UK than you can possibly imagine)
So there we were, two not familiar accents, a bunch of huge loudspeakers and I trying to communicate. It was and unfair competition since in spite of they being native English speakers, they are much more used to the American accent than Americans are used to their Brit accent due to the massive influence the US have around the world.
Like 2 weren’t enough to make my ears work to the fullest they introduce me to a group of 4 people who at first were Italians but it turned out everyone was English.
I lost count of how many times I nodded along without getting a word of they were saying. They might think that I have a retardation of some kind haha.
We went to a bar after the show was over. I got myself a tequila and a large beer straight after, maybe that you help me tune my ears and at least get the gist of what they were saying.
I still can’t believe that I witnessed a fifteen minute conversation about chips. Yes, a conversation about potato, they were talking about how they miss their food, I mean chips. Chips with vinegar, chips with gravy, hot sauce, cheese, ketchup .
One funny thing that I’ve observed is that since England has a shitty weather, English people are very into indoors activities. They were very critical about clubs, always talking about the music, the atmosphere the decoration.
I now realize that is not going to be easy to adjust to their culture, especially as far their accent is concerned, but I guess it’s just a matter of tuning the ears. I’ve got a slightly feeling that I said that before….that what happens when you want to finish writing something you started the day before.
Ok, that is it for today, hope you guys didn’t kill yourself and made it until here!
See ya!
