My Friend from Brazil
January 2018
We went on a cruise on the Holland America Zaandam from San Antonio, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the cruise I met a girl in the pool named Laura. Laura is eleven, just like me. So, happy
to find the only other 11-year-old on the ship, I started talking to her, a lot.
And that’s when I figured out that Laura could not understand anything that I
was saying because she was just learning English. That made me want to talk and
get to know her better even more. Laura and I did lots of laps in the pool and
we played Marco Polo, which I lost at every single time. I was helping Laura
figure out words by her acting out what she wanted to say and then telling her
what the words were, it was a blast. Then Laura started teaching me words in
Portuguese… Let’s just say that her English is much, much better than my
Portuguese. The first really, hard Portuguese word that I came across (I have no
idea how to spell but I will try) was Paralelepepedo - now try saying that! For the
first couple days I could not say it and that was really, frustrating. Then
once I figured out how to say that word she gave me a much harder one that I am
still trying to say today. The problem is she says the word and then I say the
word it and to me it sounds exactly like what she said but she says that I didn’t
say it right. Now what I did to fill my sorrows was shooting her with
relatively hard words in English like argumentative. She said that perfectly.
Then I told her to say flabbergasted - I gave up after that. When we got tired of
the pool and playing Marco, Polo we went in the hot tub or as they say in
Australia, The spa. When we got tired of the hot tub we went back in the pool
and did hand stands for a while. I started doing the YMCA instead of a regular
hand stand sadly Laura did not get what I was doing. Then Mia came in to the
pool a 13-year-old from Australia. She had brought monofins with her on the
trip. If you don’t know what a monofin is it is a mermaid tale that humans can
use. Now one of Laura’s favorite movies is The Little Mermaid and she had never
seen or heard of a monofin. When she saw what it was she loved it. Laura had a
bit of trouble at first using the mermaid tale and needed help, but she got
really, good at using it. Then I put the mermaid tale on and I understood why
Ariel wanted legs so much. When we were all done using the mermaid tale.
Laura, Mia and I got out of the pool and I found her Dad who speaks great
English and asked him if Laura went to the kid’s club at all and he said no.
That night she went to kid’s club with me and we had a great time. She went to the kid’s
club a lot more in the future.
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