For one of the weeks of this two-week period, I was feeling under the weather and sent into the isolation housing in Keller, so we did not have class. Thankfully, I did not have COVID and it was just a flu. We continued the following week with reading a bit more of Alice in Wonderland, or Alice no Pais das Maravilhas, which I am continuing to enjoy. I have noted that the further we get into the story, the more difficult it becomes. More vocabulary is incorporated, more nuances in the story, or subtext, and more plot to keep track of. As I mentioned before, it is very helpful to be familiar with the story when reading it in another language for the purpose of language practice. I have not noticed much difference in the stories between the English and Portuguese versions, and I am glad that the translation still managed to maintain Lewis Carroll’s light, witty, and at times slightly absurd tone.
In terms of my language progression, I definitely feel that I am improving. I noticed a difference in feeling rustier after being sick for a week and not practicing my Portuguese, as to be expected, but overall, I note a definite sense of improvement. I am more confident in our conversation classes and am referencing dictionaries and my notes less while doing my write-up essay exercise for Thursday.
As we begin to wrap up for the semester, we are mostly finished going through the material that I hoped to cover in the textbook Pois Não. The final section that I had copied had a section of Capoeira and about the Berimbau, a musical instrument that accompanies the practice of capoeira, and my third cultural post will be about this topic. I thought it was fun to read about it now, having some knowledge of both of those. I had seen capoeira as some of my friends in Cuba attended lessons there and discussed what a berimbau was with my music instructors for Brazilian Music and West African Drumming. However, I did not know much about the roots of capoeira and its actual history, and it was really interesting for me to read more about that. It appears in the popular TV show “Bob’s Burgers” as a novel hobby that is more about getting you to buy lessons and DVDs similar to karate lessons in the United States, but its history is really a story of resistance and teaching slaves to fight back and rebel under the guise of traditional dance. Slaves on sugar plantations, the overwhelming colonial crop of Brazil, would practice capoeira as a form of fighting when you are outnumbered and focuses on constantly moving and outsmarting your opponent, under the pretense that they were preforming traditional dances when the plantation owners would ask. When slavery ended, capoeira was outlawed as the government was afraid the newly freed slaves would use it to rebel against the government, and they were forced to keep it a secret again. Now, it is almost a tourist attraction and one of the internationally known cultural attractions of Brazil.
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