I’ll admit that when I first got my housing assignment for this summer, I was a little wary. The sheet of paper said that I was to be living with a 76-year-old woman named Josenir. I didn’t have...
There’s an expression here in Brazil: “Tudo acaba em samba.” Translated literally, the phrase means “Everything ends in samba.” That is to say, no matter what disagreements, differences or...
Cafune. I learned this word in a translation class when I was 17. That day’s lesson was on idioms and phrases that have no exact English equivalents. We learned age-otori, the Japanese way of saying...
Feeling nervous, I climb onto the back of a motorcycle driven by a man I have never met before. He hands me a sweaty helmet worn by countless prior passengers and before I’ve had time to completely...
