With a Little Help from My Friend

I have been looking for all sorts of things Brazil to get ready for the upcoming trip, but as always when I'm not studying the place I'm going with a reliable professor, it's hard to sort out the good from the stereotypical.  I did have an "inside source" to go to, however, a former exchange student and a friend.  I decided to ask him for some help.  He responded with a gloriously annotated list of books, music, and movies that I am starting to explore.

One of the first things I got was the album Acabou Chorare by Novos Baianos.  I love the sound of it.  It's happy music.  I can only understand pieces of it that drift through my Spanish, but I'm getting better, I think.  I don't care that I can't understand it.  I enjoy it anyway.  Oddly, there are parts of it that sound a lot like Widespread Panic to me.  I would love to know if anybody else thinks so, too....

I also went ahead and got the book on this page, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, yesterday.  I only read about two pages last night before sleep came and slammed me in the head with its mighty hammer, but I'm going to get into it today.  The premise looks interesting.  Thank God for Amazon and used books.  It's allowing me to do all this exploration on a budget.

I have another CD on the way, too.  It will be here after I get back from my Ireland/England trip next week.  It's supposed to be another fantastic slice of the musical culture.  That will be something to look forward to, a little present waiting on me.  It's from the 60s.  I love looking at what is going on and comparing the styles across time and nations.

Finally, I got a little Lonely Planet phrasebook.  I'm trying to learn basics from it, trying to use their phonetic pronunciation to help figure out how to say the necessary and polite phrases.  It's so hard without hearing it, though.  My Spanish keeps getting in the way as well.  I was trying to learn the numbers last night, and I kept slipping into Spanish when they were close. Grr!  I wish I lived near a university so I could take a class.  So frustrating!

The larger process of exploration is wonderful fun, though.  I have always loved language and culture, so this chance to delve deeply into a place as I prepare to go there in person is really just right up my alley.  All I want it just more, more, more.....