Learning Portuguese.

It's been two weeks, I'm onto my third, and while I can now struggle through checkout lines at the grocery store, pay my bills at restaurants, and get around from place to place, having a lively, engaged conversation is still a struggle for me. To be honest, I've had it easy. My roommate speaks English, my advisors at Fiocruz speak Portuguese so slowly to me that I can decipher the Latin roots that make words similar to English, and I have yet to meet a friend who can't speak English. (Scratch that-- I made one friend who knows NO English.)

Regardless, if there's anything I've learned about traveling, it's that the key to understand a city, a culture, is usually through their language. So I've realigned my efforts to improve my Portuguese in as rapid a manner as possible. Starting from today, where I can help it, total immersion. I've enrolled in a language course at one of the public universities here, UFRJ, and enlisted the help of a private tutor. This coupled with speaking in Portuguese as much as possible whenever possible-- I'm hoping I can start having decent conversations by December.

For those of you interested in learning Portuguese in Rio, here are a couple options:

• UFRJ has Portuguese courses for Foreigners, which are offered as intensives several times thorughout the year. I was lucky to snag a spot in their last module, which starts on Thursday and ends in December.
• Here's another one at UFRJ that I'm not familiar with.
• PUC-Rio is supposedly the best place to take courses on Portuguese. Alas, I wasn't able to register or come in August, which is when one of their courses starts. Make sure to plan ahead for this one-- they ask you to apply well in advance.
• PUC-Rio also has courses for foreigners through their CCE department. I'm not too sure about these, but some of them are held in Barra, very far from Zona Sul.
• UERJ, the State University here, also has some courses on Portuguese.