popular misperceptions

In the mornings the kids splash in the waves while the mothers and grandmothers run their errands and sweep the sand that we bring home every day. By 1 pm the sun is unbearable; lunch is on the table when we get home. At 1:30 we're already digesting. It is essential that lunch be consumed quickly so that we can be in the water again by 4:30.

Don't follow the logic? I don't really get it either.

In Portugal it is universally held that you can only go swimming three hours after a meal -- unless of course it's fish, in which case you get a half-hour knocked off on account of the 'lighter' meal.

I've been mystified by this rule for years. In Abu Dhabi our swimming teacher taught us to wait half an hour before diving in. Now, I know that we Portuguese eat well, but are our digestive systems really that much more meticulous (or just slower?) than everyone else's?

The agony of the three-hour wait is a trial of childhood. You're six, seven, thirteen. You've beat your brother at cards, built a sand castle and played raquet ball. Sweat is pouring down your back and your face is flushed from the heat. You're running out of ideas, the cool waves are rolling up towards you -- and you're stuck under the umbrella, prisoner to the pork chop you ate two hours ago.

This gem of popular wisdom is of uncertain origins -- which I suppose is normally the way with wives' tales. The difference is that people honestly believe this very hokey rule to be based in scientific fact. People will tell you they read it 'somewhere', heard some 'expert' say it on TV, or simply that it is something that 'everyone' knows. And goodness knows that 'everyone' from 'somewhere' is always right!

I don't know anyone who was or is allowed to swim the normal half-hour or hour after eating. As I am writing this my little cousin Beatriz is bouncing around impatiently, stopping to check someone's watch every few minutes.

This isn't popular wisdom, it's popular misperception. I know that. I'm intelligent. Well-informed. After all, my parents spent thousands of dollars for McGill to make me a critical thinker.

And yet I find myself waiting for the hands to tick to six at the bottom of my watch. Some habits are beyond the power of logic to change....

8:50 AM

8:50 AM. I step off the bus, onto the pavement in front of the Faculty of Letters. It's a moderately imposing construction, built in the new imperialist style of the 1960s (a favourite of many European dictators I'm told). The facade is low and wide, with steps leading to the faux columns. Around the doors are engravings of some of literature and mythology's greats -- a rotund priest from early Portuguese satires, Hamlet and his skull, some Greek dudes I would probably recognize if I had taken that Mythology course at McGill.

I walk through the main building to get to class. It's organized around courtyards -- the one to the right has a bar/cafe and a pond with little fish. The one of the right is a leafy garden with old concrete benches. We have classes in a separate building which is known as the 'The New Pavilion' (and has been, for several decades).

8:55 AM. I stroll into classroom #8, turn on the lights, drop my bag, and open the windows. I sit in my usual spot at the corner in the square u-shaped desk arrangement. I look at the courtyard and daydream. Behind the New Pavilion is the Letters library, an actually new-ish building filled with books on linguistics and literature. It is the opposite of everything McLennan is. The shelves are low enough that you can see over them and there are plenty of windows. Although the resulting lack of claustrophobia is nice, it did make realize just how many books McGill has. For example: I continue not to know what the maximum amount of books you can take out at McGill is -- and I've had twenty-some out at once before. I found out on my very first visit that the limit here is FOUR. I had to leave the others behind for another day. And I only get these ones for a week. I can't imagine trying to pump out a term paper!

9:03 AM. Hidemi strolls in. She's been in Portugal for a year but her punctuality hasn't been totally destroyed yet. Petra is next, at 9:05. By 9:12 most everyone has arrived, with one notable exception. At 9:15 on the dot, like every other day, the professor walks in. Today he sat down, looked at his watch and apologized for the tardiness with a jolly "Sometimes, you know, it just happens!" I had to fight back laughter; I think I audibly smirked.

9:30 AM. After Walter has asked his daily question, recorded meticulously on his little note pad, we start working. We review homework, discuss articles, learn grammar.

10:45 AM. Grammar is hard work. We take a break. Some people go to check their e-mail, most of us sit at the cafe outside with coffee and treats. We sit at a table that is half in the sun and half in the shade. Sun for me, Petra, Brais; Shade for Hidemi, Fatima and the Prof. The gallant galego who says he has a hard time peeling himself out of bed finally makes it to school and throws back a dark shot of expresso.

11:15 AM. No one is terribly concerned that we are still outside. The others wander back from the lab and pull up chairs. We talk about everything from Timor to bullfights. Time passes quickly -- with the rockets, as you might say in Portuguese.

11:30 AM. If it's Tuesday or Friday, it's culture time. So far we have learned about physical geography, human geography, listened to music and seen dozens of photographs.

1:00 PM. It's gotten very warm in little un-air-conditioned #8, so we leave on time. It's not polite to keep you late, our professor tells us. I involuntarily smirk, again.

---

Next morning, 9 AM. I am, once again, alone with my punctuality.

Can't help thinking that someone else is getting the last smirk.

doing penance

On Wednesday, Lisbon got out of town. Picked up and left, just like that.

I can’t blame her. The mercury in the thermometers is bubbling towards 40 and the ocean breeze doesn’t make it this far inland.

Wednesday, you’ll recall, was August 1^st – a day revered by many Lisboetas as The Day to Skip Town for a Month of Summer Holidays. It’s a yearly migration as faithfully observed as July 1^st Moving Day in Montreal. For one month each year Lisbon is abandoned by its inhabitants, left at the mercy of the cameras and fanny packs that fill in the gaps in Europe’s Most Charming Capital!

As everyone else who could was heading towards friendlier sun and lazier days, I was trundling in a half-empty 31 bus towards the un-air-conditioned classrooms of the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Letters. Lisbon’s August visitors include a particular subset of students, of whom I am part. A hundred or so people, from places as varied as Morocco, China and India have given up their Augusts to the dangerously seductive Portuguese Language. Dangerous because her pronunciation is treacherous, her spelling deceiving and her grammar obscene. Seductive because – well, the reasons are many. Each of the eight students in my superior class has their own. Some, like the art instructor from Madrid or the German teacher from Italy, have made Portugal an annual vacation spot. A few, including a dark and handsome laywer from Galicia and a Czech girl, are on Erasmus hangovers – university students who came for a semester and never left. One girl from Macau is on a scholarship to learn the language, earn her law degree, and go back home to make sense of the legal system the Portuguese left behind in that former colony.

I’m there to do penance.

Like the other Portuguese kids in Abu Dhabi – we were only a handful – I was subject to weekly language classes. I whined my way through a decade of Portuguese lessons, through six tenses of verb conjugation (and I was getting off easy, there are more), memorization of royal dynasties (including each King’s nickname), and countless compositions (usually finished on the way to class). I finally whined my way out in grade 12, but by then enough of it had sunk in.

When my professor called roll on the first day he laughed when he got to me. Between the overflow of consonants that is Petra’s Czech name and the difficult transliteration of Hidemi’s Japanese name, my three very run-of-the-mill Portuguese names must looked a bit out of place. I have Portuguese stamped all over my face, my accent, my ID – I couldn’t pretend to be something else if I tried.

I don’t feel out of place, though. It’s all a bit déjà vu – rules I once knew, blanks I once filled, questions I once answered. Over the years the grammar I once knew has been replaced by a very hazy sense of things ‘sounding right’ – which is not always good enough. I’ve been impressed by how well my classmates speak. And they’re forcing me to stop eating my vowels and explain the bizarre proverbs and idiomatic expressions that I’ve inherited from my mother. Most of them have excellent grammar, product of university-level drills in the stuff I’ve learned – incorrectly – from the way that people speak. At the end of the four weeks we will all take the DUPLE – the universally recognized test of Portuguese as a second language. Because I have a bit of an edge, I hope to kick its butt. Then my penance will be complete.