I think my students teach me more than I teach them...

It is amazing to notice the subtle similarities that exist between cultures. This past week I explained the concept of "pet peeves" to my students and after giving them some examples, I had them come up with their own. We reached the conclusion that every country has those annoying people that talk through entire movies, the student that feels the need to click his/her pen during tests, the person that licks their fingers to turn the page of a book, the people that stop in the middle of the sidewalk to talk, and the person that parks in two parking spaces.



After watching "Eat, Pray, Love" and noticing that the Brazilian man sounded nothing like a Brazilian should sound, I have realized that I am beginning to become an expert at recognizing the Brazilian accent. Brazilians have the most trouble with the letter "t." It is common for Brazilians to pronounce "t" as if it is "ch" and for "tea" to sound like "chee" and "to" like "chew." In addition, some words that I would have never thought sounded alike, often sound exactly the same to them. Last class we spent about ten minutes repeating the words "said" and "sad."

I sympathize with my student's trouble pronouncing English words, because no matter how hard I try, I still cannot pronounce the "r," due to my inability to roll my tongue, or "ã" due to my inability to sound like I always have a head cold.

I have come to the conclusion that any discussion purely in English is beneficial to the students, so I have taken it upon myself to ask the students questions that interest me. As a result, I am becoming an expert on Brazilian culture. Some weeks we discuss sports (aka soccer), other weeks food or popular customs and traditions. But this week the topic was politics and controversial issues.

After describing the different American political parties to my students, trying my best not to be biased, I asked them which party they thought I might belong to. They knew right away.

Being raised in New York and attending university in New York City, many modern controversial issues seem like a no-brainer to me and many of my peers. But in Brazil, a country where religion plays a huge role in everyone's life, I found my student's views to be much different than my own.

One student tried to convince me that nobody in Angola was homosexual, because it was not in the genes there (interesting...). What followed was one of the most interesting discussions I have ever had about prostitution, drugs, abortion, euthanasia, animal research, and health care...I hope they learned something, because I sure know that I did.