Class #10 with Alexia, August 19, 2026
note: this is a recording of your private coaching session with Alexia. No one will see it except you, Alexia, and Foster 🙏
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Session summary
Alexia's verdict at the end was that this was a very good class with a lot of new vocabulary and almost no pronunciation corrections, and the hour earned it: a week without Hannah in the house, the two Brazilians already booked to arrive after her, how many Brazilians actually live in Cincinnati, the Brazilian pianist who played three hours of Disney, jazz and bossa nova under your Art Déco ceiling, fire extinguishers and the vigilância sanitária, why the café doesn't push anybody to buy anything, a heat index of ninety-five with the humidity to match, Alexia's Barbour jacket and her entirely fraudulent hunter aesthetic, her Pilates teacher climbing a tree to escape a stampede of buffalo, and the week you spent at a primitive skills camp learning to skin an animal and make mead.
Two things worth naming. In Class #9 Foster told you to use the café, because Portuguese comes out faster with Brazilian customers when the stakes are low, and today you reported back that you're meeting more Brazilians there, one of whom you've now booked to play piano. That's the homework doing its job. The other is what you did with the primitive skills story: you had almost none of the vocabulary for it, and instead of switching to English you described your way around every gap until Alexia handed you the word. Esfolar, couro, pomada, hidromel, cesta de palha, all of them arrived that way. The single focus before next class is the one Alexia named: isso. It's the only pronunciation note she took all hour, and she's sending you sentences to drill it.
🏠 Uma semana sem a Hannah, e mais dois a caminho
Já faz uma semana que ela foi embora — it's been a week since she left (fazer for elapsed time, and the sentence starts with it: já faz uma semana que...)
Ir embora — to leave, to go away (stronger and more final than sair)
Você acha que ela volta em breve? — do you think she'll be back soon?
Em breve — soon
Resolver — to sort out, to deal with (ela tem muito que resolver na vida dela no Brasil)
Que vai vir — who's coming (tenho outro amigo brasileiro que vai vir)
No dia 2 de novembro — on November 2nd (dates take no dia, and the number is plain: dia dois)
Acho que talvez outra brasileira vai ficar na minha casa por 6 meses — I think maybe another Brazilian woman is going to stay at my house for 6 months
Sinto que ela foi embora já faz um mês — it feels like she left a month ago
That last one was the sentence of the section. You were reaching for the English "it feels like she's been gone a month" and you got there: sinto que ela foi embora já faz um mês, mas foi só uma semana. Alexia's reaction to the full picture, one friend gone, another arriving November 2nd for three or four months, and a Brazilian woman who speaks no English moving in for six, was that you don't need anything else in your life. She's right. That's an immersion schedule most learners would pay for.
🔢 Quantos brasileiros moram em Cincinnati
Alexia looked this up live in the middle of class, which turned into an accidental numbers drill. These are estimates she pulled up on the spot rather than official figures, so treat them as practice material first and trivia second.
175 — cento e setenta e cinco (the city of Cincinnati)
314 mil — trezentos e catorze mil (the population of the city)
542 — quinhentos e quarenta e dois (including Kentucky)
5000 — cinco mil (all of Ohio)
800 a 1200 — oitocentos a mil e duzentos (Greater Cincinnati)
Que inclui — which includes
Habitantes — inhabitants
Reading numbers aloud is one of the last things to become automatic in a new language, so this was worth the five minutes. The one to sit with is mil e duzentos, not "um mil duzentos." And note catorze, which is the spelling you'll see most in Brazil, though quatorze is also correct.
🎹 O pianista brasileiro e a decoração Art Déco
Ele foi na cafeteria com a esposa e o irmão dele — he came to the café with his wife and his brother
Está visitando do Brasil — is visiting from Brazil
Tocar piano — to play the piano (tocar for instruments; jogar is for sports)
Se apresentar — to perform
Músicas da Disney — Disney songs
A decoração da cafeteria — the café's interior design (decoração, not "design de interior")
Art Déco — Art Deco (said the French way in Portuguese: ar-de-CÔ)
Não é uma franquia — it's not a franchise
Só existe ela — it's the only one of its kind
You'd known this man from the café long before you started learning Portuguese, and then one day you were waiting for him, he arrived, and you started speaking Portuguese to each other. Weeks later he came in with his wife and his visiting brother, played your grand piano, and you booked him for a set. Three hours last Saturday: Disney, jazz, bossa nova, popular songs, a bit of everything. Alexia's question about whether people who don't normally listen to bossa nova enjoyed it got a yes.
The Art Déco detail is the one she liked most. Jazz under an Art Déco ceiling is, as you put it, perfect.
🧯 Inspeções, extintores e a vigilância sanitária
Vocês passam por muitas inspeções? — do you go through a lot of inspections?
A inspeção — the inspection
Inspecionar — to inspect
O extintor de incêndio — the fire extinguisher
O incêndio — the fire (the destructive kind; fogo is fire in general)
Os bombeiros — the fire department, the firefighters
A vigilância sanitária — the health inspectors, the food safety authority
A auditoria — the audit
A capacidade — the capacity
E o número oficial é de 100 e alguma coisa — and the official number is a hundred and something
Cem e alguma coisa — a hundred and something (cem when it stands alone, cento when something follows: cento e setenta)
Seventy people seated, a fire department capacity somewhere over a hundred, extinguishers inspected roughly every six months, health inspections twice a year. Alexia's read was that all of it sounds fair, and then she told you why she has feelings about it.
Her father owned restaurants his whole life, so the vigilância sanitária was a permanent source of stress in her house. In Rio it operates as something close to a racket: restaurants pay to have inspectors show up on a convenient day rather than an inconvenient one. Her father never took part, which meant he dealt with inspectors who wouldn't sign off unless they were paid on the side, even when everything in the restaurant was in order. And you can't report it, because you don't know who's connected to whom.
🪑 A filosofia da cafeteria
Mesmo que as pessoas estejam de férias, sempre tem pessoas na cidade — even if people are on vacation, there are always people in the city
Eu nunca sinto a cidade vazia — I never feel like the city is empty
Cheia ou vazia — full or empty
Ir de férias — to go on vacation
Nós não motivamos as pessoas a comprar — we don't push people to buy
Queremos facilitar um ambiente acolhedor — we want to create a welcoming environment
A longo prazo — in the long run (no accent on the a here, since prazo is masculine)
Se sentir confortável — to feel comfortable
Ser bem-vindo — to be welcome
Quase nunca temos problemas com pessoas que não conseguem achar lugar para sentar — we almost never have problems with people who can't find a seat
Um balanço — a balance (you reached for the English balance and landed on balanço, which Alexia took straight away)
Start with the grammar, because mesmo que as pessoas estejam is the best structure that came out of the whole class. Mesmo que means "even if," and it always takes the subjunctive: mesmo que ela venha, mesmo que seja caro, mesmo que você não queira. You built it correctly with Alexia's help and it's worth owning outright.
The philosophy itself you explained in one long stretch with no scaffolding: nobody gets pushed to buy, somebody can sit all day and buy nothing, and in the long run that person comes back and does buy something. É um balanço, and the room is big enough that seating is almost never a problem.
Alexia's counterpoint from Porto: plenty of cafés here ban laptops during lunch hours, and others require you to order something if you're going to work. She thinks that's fair. She also admits that the least interesting answer, a Starbucks, is often the best place to actually get work done, and that as far as she knows there are only two street-level ones in all of Porto.
🌡️ O calor, o vale e a estufa
Que que é terrível? — what counts as terrible? (the doubled que is completely normal in speech)
O quanto? — how much?
Estamos no vale — we're in a valley
Aí vira uma estufa — then it turns into a greenhouse
Virar — to turn into, to become
A umidade — the humidity
A onda de calor — the heat wave
Insuportável — unbearable
Neva — it snows (from nevar; Porto doesn't get it, the interior of northern Portugal does)
A prova d'água — waterproof
Ninety-five with heavy humidity, which Alexia converted to thirty-five, and your line for it was that you can swim through the air. Cincinnati sits in a valley, so it vira uma estufa, and the same valley is why the tornado from Class #9 almost never reaches you. Alexia's summary: when it's cold it's very cold, and when it's hot it's very hot.
Porto had two days at thirty-eight this week and was back down to the low twenties today, having missed the heat wave that hit the rest of Europe. The genuinely strange part is that for the first time in decades the sea in Porto is warmer than in the south of Portugal, which the whole city is talking about, since everyone who went south for the summer now has the colder water. Porto doesn't get snow because it's on the coast, but the cold arrives with rain, which is why people from Oregon apparently find the weather here familiar.
🧥 Blundstone, Salomon e o Barbour
O cadarço — the shoelace (um tênis sem cadarço)
O tênis — the sneaker
A bota — the boot
O casaco — the coat
O capuz — the hood
Encerado — waxed (from cera, wax; the jacket gets re-waxed before winter)
Os caçadores — hunters
Os pescadores — fishermen
A caça — hunting
Escocesa — Scottish
O bolso — the pocket
50 dólares — cinquenta dólares
This started as a practical answer about waterproof winter gear and turned into Alexia's favorite subject. Everything she owns for winter has to be a prova d'água: the coat, the boots, the gloves, the backpack. Blundstones two years ago and she says she'll never buy another boot. Salomon sneakers with no cadarço for Pilates. And then the Barbour.
She'd wanted one since she was small, back when she'd tell her parents that if they ever lived somewhere cold she'd want a Barbour. It's a Scottish brand, expensive, waxed, hooded, covered in pockets, and originally made for caçadores and pescadores. You buy it once and keep it for life, and you send it back to the shop to be re-waxed before winter for about fifty dollars. Hers was a birthday present, and she calls it her baby.
Her own verdict on all this: her boots are hunting boots, her coat is a hunting coat, she does none of it and is against hunting entirely, and her style is nonetheless hunter. Your reply, that she's ready if the opportunity arises, was the best line you've landed in a while. She has no gun, but she has legs to run with, so it's fine.
🐃 A Aline, os búfalos e a cobra coral
Indígena — indigenous (Alexia told the story using índia, the older word you'll still hear in speech; indígena is the current and respectful term)
A mata — the forest, the bush (ela cresceu na mata)
A fazenda — the farm, the ranch
O búfalo — the buffalo
A cerca — the fence
Atravessar — to cross
O barco — the boat
Trepar numa árvore — to climb a tree (subir numa árvore is the everyday, safer version and the one Alexia used first)
Se agarrar — to hold on tight
A sanguessuga — the leech (one word, and Alexia typed it wrong the first time herself)
A cobra coral — the coral snake
O jacaré — the caiman, the alligator
Caçar — to hunt
Letal — lethal
Alexia's Pilates teacher, Aline, grew up in the Amazon, the daughter of an indigenous mother who married outside the tribe. She learned which plant helps a stomach ache, how to kill a snake, how to hunt caiman, and her family eats the meat.
The story of the day was the buffalo. Her uncle's farm has a river running through it, so the buffalo get loaded onto a boat to cross to the other side. As a child Aline and her cousins would sit on the cerca throwing water on the buffalo to cool them down, and the uncle's signal to open the boat was seeing the children climb down. One day the cousins climbed down and Aline didn't. He opened the gate anyway. She ran, climbed a tree, held on, and listened to the herd pass underneath her with her long hair moving in the draft.
Then the leeches in the river at her grandmother's farm, completely routine, pull them off afterward. Then the coral snake next to her during a picnic, which she killed with her knife on the spot. Alexia's reaction was that her own biggest worry growing up was being hit by a car.
🏕️ A conferência de habilidades primitivas
As habilidades primitivas — primitive skills
A gente tava acampando — we were camping
Acampar — to camp
A tenda — the tent
As suas calças com a pele do animal — their trousers made from the animal's hide
A pele — the skin, the hide
Esfolar um animal — to skin an animal
Fazer couro — to tan leather
O couro — the leather
A pomada — the salve, the ointment (English "salve" has no direct equivalent; pomada is the word)
Cicatrizante — healing, wound-closing (from cicatriz, scar)
Curar feridas — to heal wounds
O hidromel — mead (mel is honey, and hidro is water: honey and water fermented)
Fermentar — to ferment
Fazer cesta de palha — to weave a straw basket
A cesta — the basket (canasta is Spanish; in Portuguese a cesta is the basket and a cesta de basquete is the one on the court)
A palha — straw
Pescar — to fish
A receita — the recipe
This was the section that broke Alexia. She said outright that she didn't even have the vocabulary for it in Portuguese, and she's a native speaker.
You started by calling it a conferência and then corrected yourself, because you were camping for a week: closer to Girl Scouts for adults. Two workshops a day, chosen each morning. You took one on skinning an animal and one on tanning leather, and there were people there wearing trousers they'd made from hides. Then the gentler ones: a salve for cuts and burns, mead, straw baskets, fishing. People with names like White Eagle. Your summary was that it was a reality very different from your own, which is exactly what Alexia had just said about Aline ten minutes earlier.
Alexia's position: she's out on the skinning, but she'd genuinely love to learn the pomada and the hidromel, and she would not last a single day of camping. Her aloe vera plant at home is her current version of the same idea, and she wants your recipe.
🗣️ Isso: a única correção da aula
Isso — that, this (the double s is a sharp, unvoiced S, never a Z sound; i-SSO)
Aquilo — that over there (the more distant one)
This is the whole pronunciation list for the hour, which tells you something about how the class went. Alexia asked you to repeat isso many times and to build sentences with isso and aquilo, and she's sending you sentences to work with.
📚 Homework
1. Praticar isso e aquilo em voz alta
Alexia's assignment, and the only pronunciation note she took all class. Repeat isso until the S stops drifting, then put it into full sentences alongside aquilo. She's sending you a set of sentences to use, so watch for those.
2. Fazer uma lista do vocabulário novo desta aula
There was more new vocabulary in this hour than in any class so far, and most of it came in fast while you were mid-story. Skinning, tanning, salves, mead, baskets, fire extinguishers, health inspectors, waxed jackets, leeches. Write them down while the stories are still attached to them, because the story is what makes the word stick.
3. Continuar falando português na cafeteria
This was Foster's ask in Class #9 and it's already working. You're meeting more Brazilians there, and one of them has now played a three-hour set on your piano. Keep going, and keep doing the thing you did today: when the word isn't there, describe it instead of switching to English.
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