Aubs: 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.