Ups and Downs
Domingo
As you can see, I've already learned lots of Portuguese. On the first taxi ride I realised I'm going to struggle to communicate, the bits I've learned from Duolingo helped very little. There were 0 cats reading newspapers.
Since then I've already come along way, my most recent taxi ride involving several discussions including him explaining his higher tariffs. Thanks to all the natives at the hostel I picked up many useful and some not so useful phrases but have been able to communicate and make myself understood. One worker telling me I talk too much. Shock
But its been tough, very much a baptism of fire (a phrase I have enjoyed recently), being thrown in at the deep end to speak Portuguese almost constantly, writing things down and even in my chill time trying to learn. Its a constant stress to not only socialise in the hostel but in an alien language. I guess this is what I signed up for though and my favourite times so far have not been the beautiful beaches or the many cervejas but have been learning the language from the locals and reciprocating lessons back.
I still get waves of anxiousness matched by waves of happy disbelief, but now becoming mixed with times of comfort, and of awkwardness. I feel it in a flux, a struggle to get out of bed in the morning accompanied by facebook and instagram scrolling before buzzfeed posts about tumblr laughing me into positivity to start the day.
This gets a Mario kart esque boost from a coffee and breakfast which leads to a feeling of happy shivers alongside contentment (usually at the beach, today with added beach football) fuelling me through the afternoon of socialising before I crash either into a nap or a period of self deprecation or both.
Today that involved heading up to Christ the Redeemer on a whim, however when at the top I was ironically feeling kinda low. This did nothing to take away from the vast views which were beyond stunning. Llow the statue, Christ is alright but the views around it should be deemed the redeemer. Things changed though as I had another coffee at the top and wrote in my personal diary. It cleared out my head of things I guess I've struggled to communicate here and at home which was perhaps the inspiration for this 'blog'.
I came down on a bit of a buzz and chilled to write this alongside a beer, knowing what I have to do, to keep moving forward. To now move onto what I came here to do. Find a place I like, find people I belong with and settle into it.
