New York City rocks!!!

Fun. If I could summarize my weekend in a few words, this would be the right one. We left Gadsden in the evening of the September 2^nd to go to NYC. We drove all night long, crossed the states of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey so as to reach New York City. All was done so we could attend to one of the most important Brazilian Celebrations in the United States of America: Brazilian Day.

Wow, New York City is just the sweetest spots on the whole planet! It is huge to say the least, and to say the truth, if I had gone to the Big Apple only for the sake of seeing it, it would have been totally worth the trip. We visited the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Times Square and had a quick look at the Central Park. This was wild!

The concert itself took place on 48^th Street, with the presence of great Brazilian artists, among which there were : Dj Malboro, Margarete Menezes, Zeze de Camargo e Luciano , Ana Maria Braga and Luciano Hulk. Dear readers, I so must confess I never thought that there were so many Brazilian people in NYC. The city was packed with people from my country, everywhere we went there were guys speaking Portuguese (I even commented with Brian that I felt like Sao Paulo instead of New York!)

All in all, my weekend was so cool that I have no words to say what I felt during my stay in NYC. Tomorrow I will start tutoring in the Alabama Language Institute and I hope everything goes well as I start teaching. Ate mais amigos e ate a proxima!!

What's crackalacking'?

Hey'all!
How are y'all doin'?
I would like to start this post by expressing my formal excuses to Brian! I didn't mean I didn't like to listen to Victor and Leo, what I really meant is that it was so much fun to listen to you guys listening to them!
I also would like to show my Brazilian buds some of the expressions I have learned here in Gadsden! So here it goes a list of a few things I have seen so far:
1. What's crackalacking ?= What's poppin' ?= What's up?
2. Y'all= you all
3. Have a nice one= Good night

As I get to remember the other ones I will post them!!

It's a party in the U.S.A.

Life has been so nice up to now. I still have faced lots of problems with English, which I just do not understand why, but I have been able to get by during the lessons. I will have to read some poems by Walt Whitman for my American Lit. class this weekend.That might a little bit harder than usual ...
Also, I have been on a diet so I can waste my belly. I havent eaten as much as I used and I have made up my mind to start working out next week. I do need to get in a better shape if I want to have my self-steem a little bit higher than it is now.
By the way, I have been a little down since I got here. Maybe that is because I have been kind homesick... kidding, it ain`t that!
So, guys...I have nothing left to tell you but should you have any doubts or questions on what I am up to, just let me know it and I will promptly write you back!

My first days in Alabama

Everything started just as it should start. I arrived in Atlanta at about 6.30 am in the morning (listening to “I want it all”), missed my flight to Birmingham, had to wait three hours for the next plane to take off and finally got in Gadsden by noon. As soon as I arrived I met some friends who were waiting me so that they could help me buy everything I would need for my stay in a supermarket near our house.
I must confess that for the first time in my life I felt like a housewife. I had to buy one microwave oven, one refrigerator, a lap top (which I’m using now), bedding items, higiene products besides food.
The same day I got to meet Manoel, who is a Brasilian student from Universidade Federal de Goias, Ana Paula, another girl whose name I don’t remember, and the most lovely American couple I have ever met : Brian and Melissa. As it was Melissa`s birthday, we went out to a restaurant in Birmingham where we could have some sea food; I had mozarela sticks, though. By the way, Brian is learning Portuguese and I had to listen to him singing Victor e Leo during all our trip to Birmingham, which was hilarious.
The following day was Sunday and I went to church with Ana Paula, Brian and Melissa. The church was very beautiful and everybody seemed really friendly there.During the church meeting I also got to meet a girl who`s having her masters in ESL (English as a second language).
Yesterday was a nice day. I went to the Office of Finacial Aid to pay for my dorm stay, I went to the International Student Office where I could talk to Doctor Paula Ross and Misses Ginger about the forms I would have to fill in so that I could buy my health insurance, and I went to a supermarket so as to buy a chapstick. By the way, yesterday I could see my little dog “Lilika” by the web cam…. I soooo miss her.
Well guys, that’s it by now. Today I will take a placement test and will talk to Doctor Hill (who is my school adviser) so that I can enroll myself in the subjects I will take. Bye Bye
PS : Here are some curiosities about Alabama I would like to share.
• The weather here is really hot and humid!!! I have never seen something like that in Brazil! (and this wasn’t a hiperbole)
• I realized I just can`t speak English …
• My friends are basically Brasilian, Korean and Indian.
Should there be any mistakes in spelling or grammar, just let me know it. I’m not used to writing with this lap top yet and I’m always writing in a hurry so it’s okay if I don’t write everything write…ops ,right ( kidding) .

My personal experience as a Second Language Learner of the English Language

I was born in Brazil, in a house where no English or any other languages were ever spoken. I came to study English in a public school by the age of 11 and during my very first year as a language learner, I fell in love with the subject. I remember how happy I was when I memorized all the numbers in English and how successful and accomplishing it was to me when I was able to say all the colors while I was coming back from school. It was really joyful to be best in my language class, even though, nobody spoke English out of the classroom.

My following years as a student of English were not as nice, though. I had this really horrible teacher named Nice and all I could do in her class was to watch her say a lot of words in Portuguese about the functions concerning the auxiliary verb “to do”. I was really confused in her class and I recall having lots of very difficult times at home while I struggled to learn a little bit of grammar. That teacher taught English me for 3 years, three years of hateful English classes.

At my first year in high school things changed. I had a new teacher and I was really excited when I got to speak a little English with him. My new teacher was nice and tried to be as dynamic as possible. This way, he encouraged me to study English in a language school where I would have the chance to better my performance as a speaker.

The Following year I entered “Centro de Línguas” as an “English 5” student. It was really hard for me for I had never studied English in a communicative environment before, and I had a lot of problems with pronunciation (I couldn’t distinguish the difference between “teacher” and “t-shirt”, for instance). However, by the end of the first semester I could manage to be a student within the average and not to be the butt of my friend’s jokes and by the end of the year I was the best student in the class, which I kept being until I got graduated.

Now here it comes one of the most important happenings in my life: after I finished high school I went to the USA under a program sponsored by the government of the United States of America! It was called “Youth Ambassadors” and it provided me the chance to live with an American host family in the State of Ohio and to have a trip to Washington D.C.. This was a very nice opportunity to me; because besides getting to know another country, going overseas made me feel like I really could speak English.

All these nice experiences with the English Language helped me shape myself as a Brazilian/English speaker and, in order not to forget how to speak the language I so loved, I decided to be a teacher and enter a “Letras” course. I also worked as an English teacher in an English school for one year and a half and in a UFG’s project called “Centro de Línguas” for one semester. Due to my two jobs I learned a lot of English, becoming a much better speaker and getting sure I would like to be a teacher for as long as I can.

Up to now, my life as an English/Portuguese-speaking Brazilian has been it. This week, on the 13th (Friday the 13th O.O) I’ll be travelling abroad again under a Capes/Fipse program, hoping to improve my English and to have loads of fun!

( Ps: I wrote this text as an English assignment for my class with Dilys at Letras, as I found the text interesting i decided to post it =D)

Keep on accessing my Blog for more boring things about me! =D

Diary of a young traveler

Hello Folks,

First of all, I should start this journal telling my dear readers who I am and why I decided to write this diary. My name is Danilo Neves Pereira,and as the title implies, I'm 19 years old. I was born in a small city called Goiânia and in a few days I will be moving to the United States. I work as an English teacher in Goiânia and study "Letras" at Universidade Federal de Goiás.I love what I do, and because of that I was approved in a contest and won a scholarship to study English and Literature in Alabama.As I will spend a couple of months away from home, a very nice friend and student of mine advised me to write a journal so that everybody in Brazil could keep track of my trip and get to know what I'll be doing in the USA. In sum, I will write this dairy so that you guys can have a little fun based on my experiences abroad.

Yours Sincerely,

Danilo Neves Pereira.