Cultural Spotlight: Snack Food

One of the best parts of traveling to another country is trying out all the wonderful new food. In particular, I’ve really enjoyed Brazilian snack foods. My favorite Brazilian snack is called Pão de Queijo , which can be literally translated to “Cheese Bread.” I tried some the moment I arrived in the airport in Brazil, and I’ve snacked on it most days since. It’s a snack, palatable nearly any time, and one of my favorite Brazilian foods!

Nearby the hospital, we’ve found two Brazilian snacks that make for the perfect break from work. Vitamina de Acaí (Acaí Shakes) are delicious, but my personal favorite snack are called Churros (I personally prefer the Dulce de Leite flavor – shown below).

Finally,  I couldn’t possibly do Brazilian snacks justice without mentioning Pastel! Pastel is a fried snack filled and stuffed with a variety of delicious ingredients. There are lots of varieties of meats, cheese, vegetables and even desserts that you can have put in your pastel – it’s definitely something to try when in Brazil!

Cultural Spotlight: Learning Portuguese

Learning a foreign language is tough, and the learning curve with Portuguese hasn’t been easy. I came in with a strong Spanish background, and I’ve found that after paying a lot of attention to systematic differences in the language, I can assimilate most of my Spanish into Portuguese, which really helps. Keys for Spanish speakers learning Portuguese to pay attention too:

• the letter “r” when starting a word or in a “rr,” is pronounced as an “h” in englihs.
• the ã sound is completely unique to me – worth paying attention too!
• words are often shortened. “Obrigado” becomes “brigado” or “está bem” becomes “tabem”
  • If you badger the people you’re with about the phrases you hear most often, you can start to tease these apart, but it’s something that involves a lot of conversation, not something too easy to find in a portuguese learning book.

Once you start to get a sense for these regular differences, Spanish experience can really help with learning Portuguese – a lot of the vocabulary is very similar!

That being said, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since being here is how far a simple smile can go in bridging the language barrier. It’s definitely worth it for any global health student to put some effort into learning the language, but I’ve found that friendly smile can often do a lot more than you expect.