Uma peça de teatro (A Play)

Last night I went to see a play called "A Bofetada", which means "A slap in the face". It was a comedy and was playing at one of the English schools that also has a theatre in their building. I went with Pissica, his girlfriend and 2 daughters. I went because I thought it would be cool to check out another play (culture=good) and to see if I would be able to understand more of the dialogue than I did at the first and only other play that I saw here in Salvador. That play was called "Josefina, cantora dos ratos" (translation: Josefina, singer of the rats) and I saw it back in October. I understood probably about 50-60% of the dialogue and thought that was pretty good given where I was with my language development at the time.

Well, last night I think I understood about 25% of the dialogue. I left feeling kind of bummed out about my language skills. I start to feel really confident like, "yeah I´m fluent", and then something like this happens. The same thing happens to me when I watch movies that are in Portuguese. I have been to 2 Brazilian movies since being here, "Tropa de Elite" (Elite Squad) and "Meu nome não e Johnnie" (My name isn´t Johnnie). I spent a good portion of both of these movies whispering in Vilma´s ear, "what did he say?" and "I don´t understand what is happening!" I´m sure it must have been slightly irritating for the other people in the theatre around us, but at least I walked out of both films understanding the story and the general idea of what happened.

At the play I sat next to Pissica´s daughter, who is 15. She was cracking up the whole time and I didn´t really feel comfortable asking her what was happening, especially since the theatre was totally sold out, the action in the play happened really quickly, and our previous interactions have been limited to "good morning", "how are you?", and "is your father here?".

So I basically sat there the whole time, was able to pick up on individual words, and a few general themes. Then was happy when it was time to go and eat crepes at this cool restaurant down the street. Yay for shrimp crepes!