Brazilians are lovely. Generalising there
but it is er... generally true. There are lovely people everywhere – always seem
to be so pleased to see you even when or especially when you say you can’t
speak Portuguese and also appear delighted when you stumble trying to buy a
loaf of bread. They never make me feel stupid (although I do feel stupid). They
are amazingly helpful, or they would be if I could understand what they are
saying – I’m assuming it’s not abuse. They are usually smiling.
Now, those who know me might say that I
sometimes lack subtlety. Some have said blunt or maybe just plain rude on some
occasions but this has not come out here. This can’t come out here because what I am beginning to realise is Brazilians
are terrified or offending you.
I’ve lived in shared houses where people
can’t talk to each other about the fact they need them to stop using something
of their's so passive aggressive notes are left all over the place – we all hate awkwardness so we
avoid saying things face to face. In our apartment, a note was not used to ask
us not to use the phone, instead, the phone was disconnected while our landlady
went away – the phone had been made so unusable that all wires had been
removed and hidden.
Obviously this did my head in – did she not
trust us? Why not? Why would she rent out her house to people she didn’t trust?
G, a fellow European explained it to me.
Everyone is so lovely that don’t seem to know how to say something that might
not make you happy. She explained that in one situation, the phrase ‘stay as
long as you want’ actually ended up meaning ‘please leave’ but it took her a
while to work this out as it ain’t that obvious. I guess you need to look at
things realisticly…or maybe learn how to read minds..
No comments:
Post a Comment