Talking Backwards

Real Estate

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but this past academic year I was the recipient of a FLAS fellowship for Portuguese. "FLAS" stands for "Foreign Language and Area Studies." That probably doesn't help. Basically, I got a lovely scholarship for adding Portuguese language and area studies classes to my curriculum.

This also entailed taking an OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview, I believe) at the beginning and end of the year. My first interview went decently well. However, the one I took a few weeks ago did not. I realized it was going downhill because my brain was dead from finals and packing, but when the interviewer asked me to explain my Statistics research, I knew I was doomed. In trying to talk around phrases like "excitation-emission matrices" and "Hotelling's T-squared test statistic" that I did not know in Portuguese, I felt like I was talking backwards.

I will say that the other aspects of this fellowship were extremely gratifying. I ended up taking twice as many Portuguese classes as I originally planned, and I am so glad my original plans were foiled. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.

When I was five years old, my mom and dad pulled me and my little brother Mitch aside to tell us we were moving. It was a muggy afternoon in early summer, and we sat on our back porch in Fairview Park, Ohio. I remember looking out at the drizzling rain as it danced down the window panes and stuck in the notches of the screen door. "We're moving to Brazil!" my dad said, his voice fluttering with excitement. I remember feeling angry and scared, but mostly sad. I cried and cried and cried.

My temper, fears, and sorrow were extinguished soon after our arrival in São Paulo on September 13th, 1998. The city fascinated me: the flickering of its lights, the rush of traffic and rain, the inexplicable pattern of its chaotic streets, the clashing scents of its tropical vegetation and irritating pollution. I loved that city. I love it still.

The fam (minus Mitch) hanging out in Rio

The fam 15 years later in Rio

Seven and a half years later, on December 14th, 2005, I found myself moving to a new--much smaller--city. I have to be honest; I had no idea where in the country St. Louis was, just that it was somewhere in the middle. I guess my international education may have been a little flawed. Maybe not.

Garrett's Brazil-themed birthday party in STL

I have come to love this city as well. It took much longer, but it happened nonetheless. As high school passed and college approached, I began feeling the pressure of an overwhelming and omnipresent question: What am I going to do next? It echoed in my ears, ricocheting off the walls of my high school and inside my head.

One college and one year later, I found myself transferring to Brigham Young University as a sophomore. I started taking Portuguese classes as soon as I could, but I was terrified that I had forgotten everything. It came back, slowly at first, then more quickly. By the time this year rolled around I was consistently taking one class per semester, hoping to squeeze in a minor by the time I graduated.

When I received the FLAS fellowship, I realized that this neat and calculated plan would have to be rethought. I took two classes each semester, including a grammar class, a Portuguese history class, a linguistics class, and a contemporary afro-luso-Brazilian literature class.

My favorite book this year

Words cannot describe, even in clichés, the joy these classes brought me. I may have complained about my research papers and memorizing innumerable dates for my tests, but more than anything these classes made my studies more bearable and more enjoyable. I even had the opportunity to be on the founding council of the Portuguese National Honor Society at BYU, called Phi Lambda Beta.

I truly love this language. To quote one of the best films of 2003, "I'm in love, I'm in love, and I don't care who knows it!"

The fam (plus Janelle) at our favorite restaurant in SP

Back at the restaurant

Buona Sera

Dean Martin

This is one of my favorite songs. Especially the part:

"In the morning signorina we'll go walking
Where the mountains help the moon come into sight,
And by the little jewelry shop we'll stop and linger
While I buy a wedding ring for your finger.
In the meantime let me tell you that I love you;
Buona sera signorina kiss me goodnight."

Yes, this post is about weddings. 

Last weekend, I got to attend my cousin Alexander's wedding. The drive down to Las Vegas was not the most comfortable ride I have experienced. Here's why. Five tired college students. One small Jetta. Numb legs. Too many peanut butter M&M's. No air-conditioning. Road construction.

But it was all worth it. For one thing, we had an accidental rendezvous with some family at a gas station in Beaver, UT. I don't think I have ever seen such unrestrained jubilation as when we found each other in the parking lot. 

(Photo credit: Weston)

Also, Mitch and Giselle look really tan in this photo.

What really made the drive worth it, though, was the actual wedding. The venue was beautiful: a ranch with a courtyard for the ceremony and a huge white tent for the reception. For some unfathomable reason, I didn't think I was going to cry during the ceremony. I was very, very wrong. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The vows were perfect. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were perfect. Alex and Courtney were perfect. 

(Photo credit: Stephanie Heimer)

The reception was lovely. And so fun. My whole family hit the dance floor and didn't stop dancing the rest of the night. Even--well, especially--my grandma couldn't wait until the music started and was one of the last to leave the reception. I honestly can't remember the last time I danced that hard. 

My favorite events: Courtney and Alex dancing with their mothers, their first dance as a couple, and my grandparents' dance. Allow me to explain the last one. The MC had all the married couples get on the dance floor and asked them to move to the other side if they had been married less than 4 hours, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc. The last couple standing was my grandparents, who have been married for 51 years. Then the MC said, "We are now going to play the song that played during this lovely couple's first dance at their wedding, over 50 years ago."

That's when I lost it. As the first chords of the classic song "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" trilled across the dance floor alongside my grandparents' waltz, my throat caught and everything started to look sparkly through the tears in my eyes. 

I'm not one of those girls who has been planning her wedding since the age of six. But I have a confession: I have a secret wedding board on Pinterest. Shocking, I know. Here's a sneak peek.

Basically, you'd better come to my wedding whenever it is, because it will be spectacular.

Strawberries Are Growing in My Garden (And It's Wintertime)

The Dentists

I actually don't have a garden. I had a basil plant once, and it lasted almost a year in my cramped, lightless college apartment before it died. Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb. 

I learned the most fascinating tidbit in my Portuguese class yesterday. My class is called "Survey of Luso-Brazilian Linguistics," and so far we have been exploring the nitty-gritty details of phonetics, phonology, and--most recently--morphology. Our latest venture has been to create these lovely tree charts that plot out the structure of different words, starting with the root of the word. 

Long story short, we ended up discussing the roots of different berry words. Allow me to explain.

blueberry=a berry that is blue
blackberry=a berry that is black

But what about strawberry? Raspberry? Boysenberry?

We learned that historically (and continuing into the modern day), farmers would cover their fields in straw so the birds could not see or get to the ripe fruit huddled beneath. And so, the word:

strawberry=a berry picked through straw

We also learned that a rasp is a tool used in woodworking to scrape off layers of wood. Some plants have protective thorns that, when breached, scrape off layers of the picker's skin. And so, the word:

raspberry=a berry with rasp-like thorns

Lastly, we learned that a man named Rudolph Boysen created a hybrid between blackberries and raspberries in the 1920's. The result:

boysenberry=a berry created by a man named Boysen

Cool stuff, yeah?

A Hazy Shade of Winter

Simon and Garfunkel

It's been a long week. Even though we had a three-day weekend. How does that work? 

I had a test in one of my upper-level statistics classes today, and after I finished it I had this overwhelming feeling of paralysis. Given, I was in shock about how poorly I think I did. But it was more than that--it was a feeling of being in a winter wanderland. And no, I did not just misspell "wonderland." 

winter wanderland \'win-ter 'wän-der-land\ noun
: a place of hazy daydreams of summer, frost-bitten hands, and muddled minds resulting from the February drag of winter

Basically, I am ready for winter to be over. It has been raining quite a bit in Provo lately, and I have taken advantage of the melting snow by embarking on afternoon drives up the canyon. I go about four times a week, first making a stop at a local eatery for driving sustenance, and then taking the winding road up, up, up into the throat of the Rockies. If you plan on a similar adventure, I would recommend listening to your favorite book on tape. Mine has been Jim Dale's reading of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Give it a listen; Dale's performance is a fantastical masterpiece. And no, I did not just misspell "fantastic."

Some things I actually appreciate about winter:
1. The mountains in the morning when the clouds are thin and the air is cool and every crack and cliff is crisp and clear.
2. The quiet of the library when everything is silent, but the silence is full of deep breaths and deep thoughts and deep snores.
3. The sweet, biting taste of cilantro that seems to intensify exponentially the further along in winter it gets.
4. The last remains of fall--crisped brown and gold leaves that scatter the ground and peek out through the snow like confetti from a party the night before.