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Showing posts from April 13, 2014

Summer Heat and Exotic Curry

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It has been hot and humid. We usually get some breaks in the heat and humidity in the summer. Not this year. The relativity humidity barely edged below 60% in the last month. We don't get dew on the lawns. We got heat instead. I think the heat and humidity is why I got a summer cold. I am mostly resting this weekend. One of the things we do when we travel is get flavorings and spices. We broke into some curry this past week that we obtained in a market in Turkmenistan last year. It was good. It was made in Russia and distributed out of Belarus. They translated into Kazakh and Armenian. I liked the taste and the label.
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I am home in Duluth doing the domestic stuff, yard work, car work, cleaning, painting, blah blah blah, all the stuff that makes life "normal". I had quite a trip in Brazil. It was over a year since I had last been in Brazil. I had studied quite a bit of Portuguese in that time. Although I have a ways to go, it was quite a thrill to have a much better understanding of what folks are saying. My speaking was much better even if I was politely saying "I didn't understand" in Portuguese. In these situations they would rephrase or I could perhaps read some Portuguese to get it. Actually, it is a simple "thrill of alchemy" to look at people in the eyes say something and have them understand without hesitation, or embarrassment (mine or theirs), and overall have the ability to articulate in THEIR native tongue. Too cool, in Portuguese, "LEE-Gow". I remember watching a movie in high school intended to motivate studying foreign languages. It was a lot ...