I met with Pedro in the same place we’d first seen each other – the TCU Barnes and Noble. I was surprised to find him wearing the exact same sweatshirt I’d met him in, but I didn’t want to comment on it – who wants to be that guy that immediately points out socioeconomic gaps between the ones who speak English and the ones who don’t?
There weren’t any seats available in the place where we’d had our conversation last time, so I asked if it was okay if we walked and talked at the same time. He agreed, and we held the doors open for each other as we spilled out onto University Drive.
As we started talking, I asked Pedro to remind me whom he lived with again, and he told me his aunt and uncle. I asked him what his uncle was like, and he looked confused, so I rephrased the question.
“What kind of person is he? Your uncle, I mean,” I asked, tilting my head and hoping my sunglasses didn’t make me look too much like a douchebag.
“He’s cool, I guess. Every now and again I don’t like. He doesn’t let me do…” Pedro trailed off, struggling for the words. I waited – I’d like to think I was patient about it, but I’m not going to pass judgment on myself.
Finally Pedro finished his sentence with “…anything I want.” It took a second to register, but I burst out laughing and we launched into a lively debate about the difference between Brazilian law and American law. He said in Brazil the drinking age was 18, and I feigned jealousy – I don’t drink, but I’m sure many students would be extremely envious of Brazilian policy. We continued to talk about how his uncle doesn’t let him perform any “illegals,” as Pedro called them.
After that topic kind of died off, I asked him what he loved the most about America and what he didn’t like. He smiled and told me he loved “everything about this country,” except for the drinking age. He said that not going to bars was really strange because normally, in Brazil, he could just go out and have a couple of drinks at a pub really easily.
Then he said something that really surprised me. We were chatting about American society and he blurts out, “Before I come here, to Texas, I thought there was no beautiful girls here.”
I tripped over a jutting section of sidewalk, and asked him what he meant by “here”. Pedro said “the US.” I asked if he was serious. He smiled and nodded and began telling me about when he’d visited before. “All I see was…” he puffed out his cheeks and started waddling. “Big girls.”
I snorted and put a hand over my mouth. “No way!”
Pedro nodded. “Yeah…and I just realize why I only see the big ones earlier. The pretty girls all are at TCU.”
I agreed with him. “Yeah, there are some pretty girls here…”
“No, I mean all the American pretty girls. They here,” Pedro said.
We had to stop for a minute so I could breathe after laughing so hard my face hurt. I could kind of see his point though. I wondered if he’d ever seen the Showgirls. Then I decided not to bring that up. Robin Williams once said that “men were born with two heads and only enough blood for one to operate at a time.” I assumed that if we kept talking about girls we’d up at some sort of Portuguese-English mixture. Portuguenglish.
After some more banal conversation I used an expression again. This time I was prepared to quickly clarify its usage and context in a way he could understand. He was happy I’d taught him another expression, and I was too. I’d made it a personal goal of mine to teach him a new idiom every time we spoke together. He seemed to take well to that, so I wanted to continue that tradition.
We parted at the stoplight by the library. He asked if we were meeting next week, same time same place. I said yes and walked away.
It seemed strange, how our perceptions of society were so different. But then again, I’ll be in Japan for a month over the summer. Will I be plopped into a strange, unfamiliar territory that someone else knows as their entire world? How will I react to that?
I hope I’ll be as proactive as Pedro has been.
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