Transportation Dictionary by Ju

cah-oh = carro

tu-gu-da = pickup truck/delivery truck (from "agua e gas chegou")

bah-eekee = motorcycle

tah-too = tractor

ao-ão = avião

tuh-ka-tuh-ka = helicopter (from the "sound" we make for the propellers spinning)

"bee bee" - baby (said earlier today in reference to my fat gut; he seems to think there is a baby in there)

About a week ago Ju was "baptized" as Bahian, or so it has been called:

We spent the afternoon at Porto da Barra with some friends and decided to stop by Dinha for an Acarjé and a beer on the way home. It was a rather large group of us, five adults and four kids of various ages, so we sat on the outer ring of tables and got several plates of Acarajé, Abará, Vatapá, and camarão to split amongst us. Along with the quantity of food came a small plastic cup (think Jell-O shooters) of "pimenta" or very strong pepper sauce. I have never tasted this stuff (for food allergy reasons, for those of you who don't know), but every Bahian claims it is the hottest hot sauce that exists, that eating it proves your manhood, and all sorts of related claims.

O Maridão was nice enough to take the Dinha shift as the Ju lap, so I was able to relax a bit while eating. Ju ate boiled peanuts and raw tomato from the Acarajé plates and seemed quite satisfied with his food. As a habit, he always wants to grab and examine everything on the table, including beer bottles, trash, peanut shells, etc, and I saw that he was eyeing the small plastic cup, but he didn't reach for it.

After about an hour, I decided it was time to pee. I got up and informed the table and then debated with O Maridão as to which bar I should do the honor of peeing in. Ju seized this opportunity to investigate the cup, and although I caught him in mid swallow, the damage was done. He screamed bloody murder and all the surrounding tables turned our way, most immediately realizing what had happened and yelling suggestions like "make him drink water!" which we were already trying to force him to do. We managed to get water in and out of his mouth to wash it out a couple of times, but then he refused to open it (I suppose because water doesn't actually help this sort of thing, but rather acts in moving the offending oils around the mouth and actually making it worse - but try telling that to any one around here...). Normally a piece of bread or a glass or milk would be ideal in this case, but there was none to be had in the middle of a bunch of outdoor bars.

Then came the suggestion to get a cup of sugar and feed it to him. Ju resisted at first, until I managed to force a fingerfull into his pursed lips, and then immediately fell silent, allowing me to finger feed him most of the cup until he took over and ate ever last grain. He would have been a good ant target by the time we left, but he seemed to have recovered okay. That is until we tried to take the little cup of sugar out of his hands.

So let this be a lesson to you all. Of what, I just don't know right now. I have had enough trouble getting him to eat right this entire break, made worse by irregular schedules and vacationing nanny, now we have introduced little cups of sugar into the mix as the "cure" for something. At least he still eats pure wheatgerm...

Tan = fan

Bah-ee-kee = bike or motorcycle

Today he also kept saying "teem" which I think was in reference to "building" but I can't be sure, as he hasn't used it in other contexts.

Mah-oof = mouth - this is in reference to tongue actually, and I only made this connection when he referred to the "licky" emoticon as "mah-oof." He also calls the "evil" emoticon gato, I think because it has "ears."

Dah-it-ee = light

Meh-eesh = mess

Now we have a real sentence - "mee mee, assee cah-o" = "filme, assistir carros" - movie, watch cars. So cute.

Pah pah-o = "chapéu" - hat

Puhm = plumb (did I post this already?)

ahm = food, something to eat - not sure, but I think this is in relation to the noise I make when I want him to take a bite of something.

(and thanks to Rio for pointing out the mistakes)

Just after Xmas, two huge boxes of my things I left to be mailed to me over two years ago arrived. The delay here is for various reasons, but mostly due to my inability to accomplish things I meant to and leaving them for others to take care of. Anyway, so finally, most of my things are here, and this house is actually looking like me - lots of little nick nacks about, pictures, books....

In the last two and a half years I have lived here, various books have been sent to me, due to my plea for English reading material. O Maridão was always aggravated by the contiuous entrance of new dust collecting material, since I would usually plow through the book in about 2-3 days and then it would sit on a shelf in case I wanted to read it again. With this new box arrival, I finally decided to remove the books I have read to be donated to the Pan Am library. This is about 100 books of various sizes. A great wieght has been removed from our selves. But only to be replaced with more.

A great bulk of the weight in the new boxes was the books I moved about with me throughout college- many of them required readings for classes I took and were the $10-$20 novel or small paper back book that I would never get more than $1.50 back for returning, so I never bothered to do so. Most of them I never really read, yet managed to pass the classes anyway (what does that say?).

So now I am settling down to read them, actually read and digest them, trying to remember what it was they were supposed to teach me. At the time I was supposed to have done this, I was never able to stay awake or pay attention to the words on the page. I had attributed this to the lack of sleep, going out and partying, immense pressure kind of problem that happens to all of us during college. But I am finding that when I open them and begin, the same thing is happening - read a page and ... wait a minute, what did I just read? Incredibley boring, page long rants about German-ness, individual histories with the author, why he/she is important for history to recognize.... What was the point of that? It's gotten so bad that I am simultaneously reading three different books right now, and I cannot really remember what is in any of them...

So really what it comes down to is - why do they pick such horrible boring things for us to read in college? I mean, there must be something out there that is both entertaining and educational at the same time. They do it all the time for kids, look at Sesemae Steet, and really any program on PBS. Experts wonder why my generation doesn't read more now adays, blaming it on television and the internet etc, but I think what it really comes down to is that the only reading we have time for for several years is the most dry and horrible stuff you can imagine. And now out of some guilty feeling of having gotten credit for a class I never did the work for, I am trying to figure out why they felt this is worthwhile. Is it possible anyone enjoys these books anymore with so many more interesting things to read? I know the classics have got their place, but they were classics because they were so interesting at the time, so different, such a great message, daring etc... Surely there must be some way to update this curriculum....

Ju is officially making two word sentences. The first one is "pum de papai" - "fart (of) daddy" or daddy's fart. You can see the kind of encouragement he gets at home; must be a family trait.

Mee-ão : Camião = truck

Ju is making more and more associations. When he watches his car movie, he plays with his cars. When he watches "Fly away home" he plays with his penguin.

ee-ais : rice (sounds kind of like "yes" when he says it)

New Ju developments:

Ju has some kind of mania with pink/peach crayons. Every time he gets the crayons out, he finds all the pieces of them and carries them around with him. It's only that particular color. Very strange.

There is apparently a large influx of ghosts in this apartment. Ju says "taow taow" and waves bye bye to no-see-ums about 10 times a day. No idea who they are.

During his daily "Cars" watch, he imitates different sounds and repeats "no, no" when ever the characters say "no."

When you remove a wet diaper, he says "shee shee" and makes a "it stinks" sound and waves his hand in front of his face. He also does this action for a poopy diaper.

Ju thinks farts are really funny. If he hears a fart or makes one himself, he will come and tell me "mamãe, PUM!" and laugh about it.

Tan: crayon

bahee-kee : bike

Ah-oh: Hello (when the phone rings)

Ju is imitating words left and right. Consistently he seems to be following the Brasilian English tendency to add "ee" on the end of "k" sounds (bikey, cakey).