So what exactly am I doing in Brazil? I like to think of it as studying abroad from my study abroad program. I am actually here to enroll in an intensive Portuguese class at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, in which I will take six credit hours of Portuguese in one month. This is equivalent to a year’s worth of study at IU, so my plan is to knock out my two 300-level Portuguese requirements this month. There are only four or five students in the over 200-person group of international students who are only doing the intensive program and not staying for the semester.
For our first day at PUC (pronounced poo-key), we had an extensive orientation. The woman leading the session told us about life in Rio, the academic system, and our intensive course. Some of the information was not relevant to me, as I am only staying for the month-long intensive course, but I patiently sat for all three and a half hours with everyone else. As lunchtime was approaching, they dismissed all the boys.
Unfortunately, Rio is a city where women are not always treated fairly, and I agree that having a talk with just the girls about certain safety precautions is probably (and regrettably) a necessity. However, the way the staff at PUC went about doing it did not sit well with me. They distributed a pink booklet with some recommendations, like don’t walk around with lots of money or expensive electronics. These were obvious and good practice for anyone, but some of their advice was not thought through. For example, one recommendation was not to wear our hair in ponytails because it is easier for someone to grab. If someone is trying to abduct you, they can grab your hair in or out of a ponytail, as well as grab your entire body. The way they went about this talk was needlessly worst-case scenario-y (sharing fairly specific stories about former students). I have already lived in a large South American city for five months and know enough Portuguese to communicate, and I left feeling unsettled and unsafe.
After lunch in the cafeteria, we had our Portuguese speaking evaluation. As I am only staying for the month-long language intensive and not the full semester, I had not already completed the written exam, because for some reason they weren’t letting the intensive-only students do it online. First I took that exam (mine was all fill-in-the-blank while the other students who got to take it online had a multiple-choice exam; not fair), and then had my oral interview. I explained my current language predicament—I came directly from speaking Spanish for more than five months and not practicing Portuguese. I also have taken two years of university-level Portuguese and have been pre-approved for Level 3 by the Portuguese department at IU.
I learned a great deal about Brazil in the fight to get in Level 3 of Portuguese. I was first put in Level 2 (equivalent to 200 and 250 at IU), a class I had already taken. On the first day, I talked to the teacher, who informed me that there was another test to verify our level that we would be taking that day; to advance, I needed to get 90% right. I sat down to take the exam, and I recognized all the material—pronouns, use of the different types of the subjunctive, irregular verbs, and direct and indirect object pronouns. The problem was that I could not remember how to form the verbs. Next to many of the sentences where I did not remember how to conjugate the verb, I wrote what verb tense it should be (past subjunctive, preterit imperfect, etc.). When I got my exam back the next day, I got about 50% of the actual answers right, but I was almost all correct on labeling the verb tenses. I sat through class from 8:30 – 1 incredibly bored—we were reviewing material I had already learned. I knew there was no way I could do this every day for a month, especially keeping in mind that IU would see my work in Level 2 as a repetition of courses I had already taken and not give me credit for it.
Still determined to get to level 3, I went to the international student office (I arrived at 1:03 after class, but they were closed for lunch from 11:30-2 p.m., of course), and found the highest up person I could find and explained the situation. This man explained that the only people who could help me were the Portuguese teachers; I asked where their office was, but he said they had already gone home for the day (it’s 2:10 p.m. at this point). Very discouraged (and a bit teary), I went to my specific program’s office, where Matt, the director, helped me locate the right person to talk to on Friday and coached me through what to say. The most important thing, he cautioned, was not to question their evaluation system and never put any blame on the evaluations.
At 8:12 a.m. Friday morning, I found the classroom where the head teacher, Adrianna, was supposed to be. She wasn’t there because there was a staff meeting, so I wandered over there and asked for her, saying I had an emergência acadêmica. She came out of the meeting, and I began to explain the problem. Adrianna, in true Brazilian fashion, began to say how awful the American university system is for putting such strict limits on the courses we can take and how PUC’s courses measure our true levels. Thinking quickly (this was not what I prepared for), I started tearing up from frustration, doing my best to explain in Portuguese how I came for the intensive to specifically take Level 3, how it was a course I could not take in Argentina, how I was not going to be able to get a Portuguese major without this class, how I would not be able to graduate with a Portuguese major in four years, and so on. It was clear she understood the situation, as she gave me a big hug and told me she would talk to my Portuguese teacher.
This scenario further solidifies my theory that in South America, if you find the right person and cry, you will get what you want (within reason of course). My Portuguese teacher pulled me out of class to say I was moving to Level 3 and gave me a big hug and wished me luck. The new class was much more appropriate for my level; I will need to study extra this first week, but I feel challenged instead of bored. I talked to the new teacher during the break explaining my situation, and she said that she had lived in Buenos Aires for six years and knew how speaking Spanish messes with your Portuguese. I felt so much better knowing she understood what was happening with all the languages in my head.