Stuffing and Festas and Shyness, Oba!

Deborah used the word oba to describe her Thanksgiving-Eve potluck party. “Oba?” I said. She replied, “É uma comemoração!” (it’s a celebration!). Google Translate tells me “oba” is an interjection sort of like “wow,” which seems like a useful word to know! I told her I would bring stuffing and we had a good time trying to translate that into Portuguese! (“Stuffing like in a couch?” “Yes – but you ‘stuff’ it into a turkey!” Her roommate eventually came up with a word for it that I have now forgotten.)

Deborah’s roommates are all Brazilian and it was fascinating as always to be a linguistic minority at the festa (party). A couple of other native English speakers were also there, and at least one Spanish-speaker, and most of the Brazilians I talked to seemed to know at least a little English. I forgot that I knew even basic pleasantries like “nice to meet you” (é um prazer conhecer você) – Spanish is so deeply entrenched that I kept wanting to say “mucho gusto” instead.

As I had experienced before, it was a lot of work to understand the rapid-fire conversation swirling around me, especially over the loud (but entertaining!) karaoke situation happening nearby. I also realized I need to practice saying things like, “can you repeat that” “more slowly please” etc.

But I made do and managed to have some conversations, though I left early and scurried through the rain back home and under the covers, where I could marvel yet again at my own mousiness in new and uncomfortable situations and try to let go of the fear that my shyness, poor language skills, and fear of looking foolish will prevent me from doing the work I want to do in BH. Duck was very helpful in responding to my panicky texts from the party and encouraging me to take “field notes” and talk it through with him after. He also reminded me that parties are basically the deep end of language learning pool, with lots of background noise, slang, and relaxed pronunciations, so I’m trying to let myself off the hook and praise myself for making conversation when I could. I am so, so grateful he’ll be with me; it will be so much less lonely and scary!