You walk into church and automatically greet another woman by giving a kiss to the side of her face.
You are trying to tell a story in English but you can’t remember the word for “grocery store”, only “supermercado”.
You just took your 3rd shower for the day, and spent most of the time in the shower scrubbing your feet.
It didn’t surprise you when the shower knob zapped you – that’s just what the electric water heater does. Zaps the water as its coming out of the shower head, and zaps you when you try to adjust it. At least the water’s not cold.
Your 4 year old often puts her English adverbs after her verb instead of before. “I liked it very.”
Your daughter tells you that she “passed” chapstick or lip gloss on her lips.
You plan to eat together with friends tomorrow, and need a quick and easy dessert that can be made ahead the night before. So you calmly grab a few passion fruit, slice them open, scoop the insides into the blender, and puree them. Add some sweetened condensed milk and some heavy cream from a box, and give the blender another spin. Throw the passion fruit cream in a pretty bowl and put it in the fridge. Pronto. And then you wonder “when did that become normal to me?”
Someone tells you “see you tomorrow” and you stare at them for the longest time trying to figure out what they are saying…because they are speaking English and you were expecting Portuguese.
It does not weird you out at all when your husband’s friend, who hasn’t seen him for a month, greets him with a hug, a pat on the back, and ruffling his hair.
You meet someone who just arrived from the US and you stand there wondering how you are supposed to greet them. “if I greet her like a Brazilian, will I weird her out? If I greet her like an American, will the Brazilians think I don’t like her?” And you are also suddenly mute because your mouth is confused and can’t figure out which language it’s supposed to be speaking.
Your 6 year old daughter inherits platform heels from her 7 year old friend who grew out of them.
You hustled the kids out the door and got halfway to chapel before you realized that you forgot to change shoes and you are still wearing flip flops. So you make yourself late by going all the way home and getting your dress shoes, because you know that showing up 5 or 10 minutes late will be LESS of a distraction than showing up in the wrong shoes.
You don’t really think anything of seeing a lizard run across the floor or wall when you walk in the room.
The handful of ragged feathers your child finds on the ground and brings home are green parrot feathers.
At night when you walk outside you look for the Southern Cross instead of the big dipper. Although, some nights you might see the Big Dipper, too.
You groan at yourself for not having got the clothes up (or down from) the line before dark, because now the termites will probably get you while you are standing out there hanging up clothes.
If your child is walking calmly across the yard and suddenly starts screaming, and you can’t see anybody or anything near him, you automatically go pick him up, carry him to a well-lit place, and check to see if a leaf-cutter ant head or termite head is still stuck in the skin.
Your husband gives a Bible study in Portuguese and your heart is flooded with pride and joy and thankfulness to the God who is giving him the language and the ability to speak.
A friend comes over to pray…and you actually CAN pray out loud for her, using the appropriate verb forms and respectful way of speaking to God in her language. Maybe you have to stop and think between every sentence…but prayer is finally something you can do together with God’s people, not just alone.
You feel at home here.
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