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Survivor Journals Every couple of weeks, the
group will be issued a "challenge entry". The
site will post a excerpt from the challenge entries, as
well as the link to the complete entry found on the
journaller's own journal site. |
 Jose called yesterday. He and his fiancee were going to be driving through Davis and wanted to take Walt and me to dinner. It would be our opportunity to meet Aneta. We hadn’t seen Jose for over a year. In fact, it had been a long time since we’d had connection with any Brasilians. There was a time when I referred to this as the “underground Brasilian consulate of Davis,” since we seemed to be the way station for every stray Brasilian that came along the pike. Of the ~70 foreign students who stayed with us through the years, at least a quarter of them, if not more, came from Brasil.
I miss having Brasilians in my life. It was a Brasilian from Rio de Janeiro who was our first exchange student and sold us on the idea of sharing our home and our culture with someone from another country. The whole ten year experience proved to be mostly very rewarding. We’ve had a few bad experiences--when you have more than 70 strangers moving into you life, there are bound to be a few bad moments, but basically it has been very good, and in some cases, inviting someone from another country to share our home has provided us with some of our very best memories.
But it’s been a long time between Brasilians. So it was a serendipitous coincidence that right after Jose called, Nelson called. He is from Sao Paulo and was in the United States, in New York, and wanted to come and visit us (since he was “in the neighborhood.”) He said he would be flying in Wednesday night.
And then, because Nelson also wants to visit our Brasilian daughter, who lives about 3 hours from here, with her American husband and two children, I called and had a long chat with her last night. Suddenly I feel like I’m running the Brasilian consulate again. I’m almost ready to lapse into my broken Portuguese again.
Brasilians are very special people. At times very frustrating people, but as a group, they have brought so much positive to our lives. Before our first student came, we were the typical American family. We loved each other, but were sparing with our hugs, especially to people we didn’t know. Well, you can’t be around a Brasilian for long without getting into hug mode. Get a group of Brasilians in a room and decide to leave and it will take you half an hour to get out the door because everybody has to hug everybody. The experience of having all this warmth around us translated into our becoming very huggy people. If you meet me for the first time, you’ll probably get hugged unless you are wearing a big invisible warning that you are not comfortable with hugs.
It spreads out like a ripple in a pool of water. The kids began hugging their friends. Now their friends all hug each other and their families hug everybody. It all stems from that first Brasilian we let into our lives.
Brasilians are also notoriously late. There is “time” and there is “Brasilian time.” Brasilians are just more laid back than we Americans are about getting things done in a timely fashion. It must be the tropical climate. You don’t feel the need to rush about when the temps and the humidity are both high. And somehow “plans” just never quite get finalized. I’m still trying to figure out exactly when Nelson is arriving. He said 8:30 tonight, which required some careful manipulation, since Walt needs the car to go to the opera. But we figured out that he could take the train down and Nelson and I could pick him up after the opera. I had an errand to run for Peggy, and would spend some extra hours with O in Alameda. No sooner did I have all those plans in place when Nelson says that now he’s thinking of flying in tomorrow instead. Arrrghh. Tomorrow will be more convenient, of course, but I should have known better than to make definite plans until the last minute. It’s always that way with Brasilians. I’m out of practice.
 But we did have a nice evening with Jose and his fiancee. Jose was so determined to give us a wonderful evening out at a restaurant. He just couldn’t order enough for us. Walt agreed to order a glass of wine. Jose bought a bottle. Aneta and I said we didn’t want wine. He ordered glasses for us. I had to almost fight him to have him NOT pour me a glass of wine. I rarely drink any more and I did not feel like wine last night. He ordered two appetizers and when our meal came, he ordered two more, though we all said we had more than enough food. He insisted we help him eat the last plate of appetizers (we couldn’t; he ate them). And then we all had to have dessert. He was so earnest in wanting to do all he could for us. But it did get a little overpowering!
Change of plans
I called Nelson to confirm that he was arriving, as planned, at 8:30 p.m. He informed me he was trying to negotiate with American Airlines and he might postpone his arrival for a day. (Which would have been more convenient for us). He would call me back in 15 minutes. Thirty minutes later, I called him back and he wasn’t there. Walt had to go to work. Did I give him the car or not? Fortunately Nelson called before Walt left for work and yes, he is indeed arriving tomorrow, not today. So Walt’s gone off to work with the car, and I’m rescheduling my day.
I’m feeling very weird today. As is evidenced by the fact that I normally post this entry by 11 p.m. at night and I’m now posting it at 9:30 in the morning. I am feeling very frazzled. This is what it does to have Brasilians back in my life again. Maybe I need to go whip up a batch of feijoada (the national dish of Brasil).
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| created 11/5/00 by Bev Sykes |
