@!#$%

I'm having a bad day, and it's made me realize that living in a place in which you are not fluent in the language can serve to exponentially increase the badness...

Every Friday there is an outdoor fruit and vegetable market on my street. The market also includes a few stalls that sell food and set up their plastic tables and chairs directly in front of the entrance to my building, leaving only a small corridor that dead ends at the gate. Today, at the end of my walk with Kuma, as I was about to navigate the corridor (which is no easy task while trying to control Kuma around all the people and their food) I noticed that it was being blocked by an elderly woman who was hovering around the lunch time crowds in the hopes of being offered some left overs. As soon as she saw Kuma she scowled and tried to get away from him, not knowing that her escape route was a dead end. Once she realized this, she turned back and began telling me that it was a dead end. "Yes, I know it's a dead end, now get the @#$% out of my way so I can go upstairs!" was not in fact what I said, as I don't know how to be mad or curse in Portuguese. Instead I stood waiting for her to slowly inch out of the thin passageway that once a week allows me access to my own place of residence, while all of the people having lunch stared at us. Luckily, the security guards who work for my building saw what was going on and opened the gate to the garage (which is farther away from the food stalls and thus not blocked), allowing me to finally get home.

Yes, all of this could have been avoided had I been in a better mood. And, even if I did know how to curse in Portuguese I would not have actually yelled at the woman and her irrational fear of the kindest, gentlest dog in Sao Paulo. But, something about not knowing how to say the things I wouldn't even have said anyway manged to make my bad mood worse and my homesickness all the more acute.