Dinner with Luane and Barbara

Jen and I help teach English every Tuesday and Thursday with Julianne. In our adult class, Luane is one of the star students; she practices the lessons at home, does extra work and always helps her peers understand the lessons. Her daughter Barbara, is in the kids English class and though she may be a quiet student in class, she certainly became a whole new person when we were invited to their house for dinner.

Luane and Barbara are moving from the warm and sunny small town of Jericoacoara to the wet and cold southern Brazil where Luane is receiving a scholarship to go to school. As a thank you for teaching them Jen, Julianne and I were asked over to enjoy one of their few nights left in Jeri with them. Luanes' mother helped cook and Alex and Paulo who are also in the adult English classes joined us for a delicious pasta meal. Along with dinner was appetizers of bread with either a mussel dip or pesto. Barbara, with the help of their Italian neighbour, made the most delicious pesto from scratch.

My Portuguese only consists of a few basic phrases which were easily covered in the first few minutes. After that, Luanes' basic English and Juliannes' fluency in both languages got all of us by. However the true entertainment was brought by Barbara's boldness which I had never seen before. She was teasing Alex and Paulo while taking all sorts of funny pictures of us and rapidly chatting away in Portuguese. She even convinced her mom to pop the top of their champagne, although much to her dismay, Barbara was only allowed to drink Coca-Cola.