Yesterday I got asked a question for which I've waited for quite a while. I got into a taxi and asked to be taken to a specific address: “Such and such number on such and such street, right after Shopping da Gavea.” In a minute a two the taxi driver said: “May I ask which part of the country you are from?” Ah, the question that melts the heart of a foreign language learner. In case of Brazil, this may be an easier target since Brazilians speak Portuguese in quite a few different ways. But still. (The taxi driver then actually melted my heart once again when it turned out that he knew that Vladivostok is in the southern end of Russia’s Pacific coast, rather than in the north, as everyone tends to think.)

It’s a tricky milestone, though, since it marks the beginning of rather difficult terrain. Increasingly, I find myself having to deal with higher expectations. When your accent and pour grammar make it obvious that you are a foreigner, you get credit for trying (not as much as in China, but still). Once you pass a certain point, however, people seem to expect you to speak well. Suddenly, you turn from a smart gringo who speaks well (impressive for a gringo, that is), to a Portuguese speaker who stutters and for some reason screws up some verb tenses. It tends to not be so much of a problem face-to-face, but more so on the phone when calling people I don’t know. I can occasionally feel that the person on the other end is thinking “Is this guy a few pork ears short of a feijoada?” Until I mention explicitly that I am from CA, that is. Then everything is fine.