They have “nothing else” to do

I live in a lovely neighborhood with blocks from the soviet time.

You don’t have to get tired trying to imagine that. They are ugly, old buildings that were never reformed. The old doors and windows were sealed once and never again, so you can imagine how cold it gets inside during winter.

They are made of concrete planks that were put together just like it’s done with the zinc planks in Brazilian slums.

According to the owners, this block is from 1982. So, 27 years without any substantial reform.

A couple of weeks ago, someone was reforming the stairs at the door of one of the entrances. Ok, fine. Except for all noise early in the morning. They did the same with the next one, and the next one, and the next, so I thought: “well, at least our entrance has “new” stairs, they seem to have been reformed a year ago. So they won’t really get to our door with all this noise and mass.”

Poor me!

Today, a little after 8am they started the machine to break the stairs.

Man, they have issues. They must have issues to do such thing! It’s bizzare!

Our stairs were really new, the cement was even light. The dark spots were from the rain that gathers dust over the floor.
They are so weird that they make stairs with pure cement! This means that to break it takes a lot more effort and time than if it were made with stones under, or cement mixed with stones and sand or even bricks under. I have never seen anything like that!

From 8am to 5pm they took out a small part of the stairs – of course! – even though they were using this loud industrial machine to breake it down.

It doesn’t please me all the noise early in the morning, but even less if it is “unnecessairy noise”. The stairs were great as they were. It seems like the people who run this thing has nothing else to do with the money in their pockets! Again: this is like having nose but not knowing how to use it! It’s like a kid that needs new shoes, but if they have any money, they will spend it on candy!

On the other hand, since these buildings were never reformed and they seem to have a lot of money to throw out, some SMART things to do would be to seal all the building again, to paint it – because nobody deserves this sovietic “red-yellow” colors -, to change some windows…

But they are just like the ones designing bus seats in Brazil: they never use buses, so they have no idea how uncomfortable they are!

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Long time no see…

I was bored. Nothing interesting to post here, even though many things happened during this time.

Yeah… I’ll be teaching Portuguese in two places now. At Rahva Ülikool and at the Language Centre.

My plan is to teach during these two years, so the students can have a continuous process for learning the language and the culture in a fun way. Unfortunately for now at RÜ the classes will be only once a week – damn crisis! – unless the students ask for more and are able to afford it. But this is causing me some problems. I’ll have to divide the first level in two, which means that in two years the students at the LC will have two times the knowledge of the students at RÜ. So, if you are planning to take any of these two and can take it at the Language Centre, do so!

At the LC the prospects are better. I’ll be teaching twice a week, and considering that all Romance languages have waiting lists, I hope that Portuguese will follow the same path. I can find a way to teach to everyone interested. We just need a classroom.

About my language courses, I cannot take any of the Estonian language courses. I was planning to take the first level again, but it collides with one of my mandatory courses. I should take the second, but it also collides with another mandatory course.

I considered Russian, but it is already full and my husband didn’t think that it would be a good idea: a foreigner, black, in Estonia and learning Russian?!That’s out of the line… I like Japanese, but it is also full…

Ja vel, nothing much to do then. I guess the Master’s course and the teaching are enough anyways.

Oh, I met another Brazilian here… very nice. It’s great to speak Portuguese “normally”. With slangs, my accent and hear a different accent, but that I’m so used to. It’s really good. Except when I mix some English or Norwegian words… yeah, that happens a lot! In Linguistics this is called “Code-switching*”, and it’s very interesting to experience what we read in books.

When I was preparing the teaching plan, in English, I could only remember the words in Norwegian. So, I was thinking in Portuguese, and trying to translate it to English, but getting stuck in the Norwegian that is in the middle of the way. In a way, I like that. Norwegian is taking my head by itself. That’s fun!

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Code-switching*: is a linguistics term denoting the concurrent use of more than one language, or language variety, in conversation. Multilinguals, people who speak more than one language, sometimes use elements of multiple languages in conversing with each other. Thus, code-switching is the syntactically and phonologically appropriate use of more than one linguistic variety.
Code-switching is distinct from other language contact phenomena, such as borrowing, pidgins and creoles, loan translation (calques), and language transfer (language interference). Speakers form and establish a pidgin language when two or more speakers who do not speak a common language form an intermediate, third language; but speakers practice code-switching when they are each fluent in both languages. (From Wikipedia)

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