A Cup of Coffee

I believe I have a tendency on this blog to overlook certain smaller facets of cultural life in favor of more heady intellectual matters, the academic side of cultural issues, or other similarly lofty concepts, but today I had a stark realization amid the confusion that happens when you feel like your life is simultaneously falling apart and building itself up from its platform.

While the other students have ebbed and flowed from cafe to cafe around the buildings—there are five in total—I have opted to stick to the one that seems to have the best quality of coffee and least amount of hassle when paying for it. This is partly a result of my natural tendency toward routine and partly because I find people-watching more interesting in that particular cafe than any of the others. The prices are all the same between them, so that is a non-factor. So as I was standing there, fumbling with the cord on my headphones in order to be polite and not have music blasting for all to hear around me as I got what I wanted, the same woman as usual actually smiled at me and said "bom dia, querido! Um galão normal?" to which I smiled back and replied that, yes, just the galão as usual. For reference, a galão is an espresso with three parts milk, served in a glass; whether it is more equivalent to a latte or a café au lait depends entirely on which brand of coffee snobbery you subscribe to and who is making it. It was only after I managed to carefully guide the coffee and my things to an open seat, the balance or depth perception for which I've never had in appreciable quantities, that I realized the very subtle, but strong cultural and social implication of being a regular with the cafe workers, them accustomed to what I order to the point of being friendly (at last!) about it and not impatient if I would actually like something more or different on a given day.

It figures that such a thing would happen right as my course is approaching its end, although whether I come back in the fall is yet to be determined (more on that later). Yet the significance of that gesture of recognition, an act of becoming just a student customer as any other instead of one of the frustrating ones who doesn't quite use the tools of the language to master the fast-paced line or decide what he wants on the spot, that is something that I have perhaps previously overlooked. It's the kind of gesture that isn't culture-specific, one of the things I take for granted in the United States because in service environments it is a given because of my native fluency and, accordingly, perfectly sound situational familiarity. It is the direct counterpart to the Gringo reaction, a tacit nod that yes, we recognize your place here. It's the kind of gesture that makes the difference between just being content with the intellectual side of staying here and finding it fully enriching. It's the kind of gesture that makes the more difficult side of recent events feel less hopeless.

Interruptions

Related to the Art of Letting Go, I can only remark that sometimes life has a way of tripping you up and seeing if you break your nose as you fall on your face, or if you catch yourself with your hands and continue unscathed.

Sometimes you are meant to get a perfectly well-reasoned message on a subject that has lacked coherent thoughts that still manages not to be the signal you were hoping for, sometimes the signal has to hit you upside the head in order to sink in appreciably. Sometimes you are just meant to be sad about something that has just happened, be it a departure, a termination, the apparent loss of something significant, or anything otherwise, and that means that the downbeat music, the tears, the night of drinking excessively and making poor decisions about the manner of conversation and with whom you choose to spend time on Skype just need to happen. And once the hangover that makes you feel as though you're going to die—or at least as though you want to—has passed, once you take a shower to rinse the drunk off of your body, once you start to eat the comfort food that you didn't really need but have decided to eat just for the sake of it, once the mess in your room has been cleaned up and sorted out, once everything has settled, life will move on. Positive notes that have come to emerge unstoppably need not be trampled on, just embraced. Sometimes these things happen and they just need to, to fuel growth and understanding in retrospect, to make way for a paradigm shift, to alter the course of where you thought you saw yourself going in the way that will ultimately keep things interesting and dynamic for some time to come. Taking a moment to acknowledge that some emotions and feelings are inevitable but don't need to be dragged out is another way of taking a deep breath and getting back to work.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

On Life as a Gringo

There is an irritating but persistent manner about Portuguese people that due to the fact that I have (somewhat) blonde hair and an accent, I must not speak Portuguese very well and need to speak in English to do very easy things such as repeating the fact that yes, I really did say that I just want a coffee, stop making me repeat myself, thank you. It is not for want of talking loudly enough or enunciating myself clearly, it is as simple as the idea that those two things combine—especially, nay, to a degree of magnitude more so as the summer months approach and tourists begin to arrive en masse—to form the metaphorical equivalent of a neon sign on my forehead that flashes "Gringo!" every time I open my mouth. It's not that I mind speaking English, to be sure, but it's an obviously disrespectful assumption made automatically even while I am speaking perfectly decent Portuguese. Sometimes I quite simply did not hear what they said, others I was not paying attention. Sometimes I am bewildered by the fact that they didn't seem to catch the simple thing I ordered, others I am just annoyed by the useless necessity of repeating myself. Mostly it isn't personal and it would be more courteous to repeat what was said in the language we had otherwise been using. This is something perhaps more grating the longer I spend here and the ever more banal such interactions become, in which I can not lay any legitimate claim to having "off days" that would preclude me from being able to function in the world of food or other service even to the point of bantering somewhat. I may be lazy, but the language, at least to that extent, is all up there in the 'ol cabeça. Similarly, I often hear comments like "oh, how do you know so much Portuguese, do you use Google Translate?", "you look a little red today, did you go to the beach?", and so on.

It is a manifestation of a cultural insecurity, the collective doubt as to why someone would want to bother learning Portuguese here in the first place, much less spend an extended period of time here, doubt that someone who doesn't look like the prototypical Generic Portuguese Person speaks their language because the country is small, doubt that this person conforms to cultural norms as a result, doubt that this person is more than just another grating fair-skinned, lighter-haired insensitive tourist. I have never experienced anything similar anywhere in France or francophone regions of Europe except when in groups of several people where the language being spoken was English, there they opt instead to simply repeat themselves or explain themselves in a different manner. I suppose the weather makes up for it.