Class #3 with Alexia, July 27, 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
This class was almost entirely conversation, which is exactly where you should be right now. We started with the days of the week and why quarta-feira keeps turning into Friday in your head, talked through how the Live Classes actually work and who you'll meet there, and then landed on Buddy and how he chose Alexia during the 2020 lockdown. From there it went somewhere neither of us planned: your infection in Trindade when you were fifteen, vaccines and the mark on the arm, dengue and mosquito allergies, and finally snakes, moose, wild boars, and why Alexia will never go camping.
Two things worth naming. First, you told two complete stories in Portuguese today without being asked to, the snake and your ex, and the infection at your dad's campsite. That is a real jump. Second, the correction that kept coming back all hour was the past tense, so that is your one focus before next class. Everything else is holding up well, and the range of what you can talk about is widening fast.
📅 Os dias da semana
Segunda-feira — Monday
Terça-feira — Tuesday
Quarta-feira — Wednesday
Quinta-feira — Thursday
Sexta-feira — Friday
O sábado — Saturday
O domingo — Sunday
Here is why it feels off by one. Domingo is the first day of the week, but instead of calling it primeira-feira the name domingo stuck, so segunda is the second day. Your brain counts segunda as number one and everything slides. It isn't you being slow, the system genuinely skips a number.
In speech almost nobody says the feira part. Na segunda a gente se encontra. Na terça a gente se encontra.
É o meu problema — it's my problem (not minha. Problema ends in -a and is masculine, the same trap as sistema and programa from last class.)
Vou estar no trem — I'll be on the train (estar for where you are, not ser)
Eu vou tentar participar — I'm going to try to take part
🎥 Como funcionam as Live Classes
Os níveis — the levels (o nível in the singular)
Menos de três pessoas — fewer than three people
Não vale a pena — it's not worth it
Gostoso — enjoyable, nice (you used this about the Live Class and then doubted yourself. You were right. It works for an experience, not only for food.)
Membro do CC Club — member of the CC Club (membro stays membro regardless of who you are)
Se eu tivesse começado com um grupo grande... — if I had started with a big group... (you said "se eu comecei". This is the form for something that didn't actually happen.)
When there are twelve or eight people, the class opens with a general hello, then splits into breakout rooms, one group with Alexia and one with Foster. Each group talks around a prompt, and everyone comes back to the main room for the last ten minutes to share what came up. So even a big class feels small.
Grouping is sometimes random and sometimes chosen, with more beginner students placed with Foster and more intermediate with Alexia. Somehow Jamie lands with Alexia every single time, chosen or not, which has become a running joke. And Mike is worth meeting: an older gentleman in Alabama who grew up travelling the world because his parents were missionaries, then became a military man, learned German in Germany and Portuguese in Brazil, and is the opposite of everything you'd assume.
July and August are quiet because of school holidays, so classes with fewer than three people get cancelled. It picks back up.
🌡️ Calor, frio e casas sem preparo
O aquecimento — heating
O aquecedor — heater
O ar-condicionado portátil — portable air conditioner
Consomem muita eletricidade — they use a lot of electricity (consumir, not comer)
O proprietário — the landlord, the owner
Fazer obra — to do building work
As minhas costas — my back (always feminine, always plural, so never "os costas")
Porto has the same problem as the south of England right now. Old buildings with no air conditioning and no central heating, so indoors is always hotter than outside in summer and colder than outside in winter. New builds come with heating and allow air conditioning to be installed, but in an old rented flat that means asking the proprietário to do obra, which is not happening.
🐕 Buddy: raça e caça
O cão de caça — hunting dog
Eles apontam — they point (they find the bird and freeze. They don't kill.)
A mosca — the fly (the only thing Buddy actually hunts)
Ele tem seis anos — he's six
Muita energia dentro dele — a lot of energy in him
Buddy is a Brittany Spaniel, essentially a smaller, more compact version of a setter, bred that way on purpose so hunters had a dog that was easier to handle. Like setters and GSPs, the breed points rather than retrieves.
One small correction on the other breed Alexia mentioned: the one you were both reaching for is the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, known as a Duck Toller.
🦠 Buddy, o lockdown e a ninhada da OLX
A ninhada — the litter
O filhote — the puppy
Castrar — to neuter, to spay
O colo — the lap
Ele expulsava todos do meu colo — he pushed everyone else off my lap (expulsar, to drive out)
Fecharam o espaço aéreo — they closed the airspace
Ele me escolheu — he chose me
O mais louco de todos — the craziest of them all
A OLX — Brazilian and Portuguese classifieds site, roughly the equivalent of eBay
The timeline: Alexia and Foster moved to Porto in 2019. On 9 March 2020 Foster flew to the US for a family funeral. On 11 March the airspace closed, and because he didn't yet have Portuguese residency he couldn't come back. He was stuck there for nine months.
A few months into that, Alexia said she wanted a dog and Foster agreed. Buddy's litter turned up on OLX, which was strange for a breed people usually want, so she messaged to understand why. It was an accident. The family had been about to spay the mother and didn't get there in time, and they weren't trying to make money from it.
Alexia and her father drove out, masks and all. She sat on the floor, the mother came and lay in her lap, and then the puppies swarmed over and Buddy pushed every one of them away so he could have the lap to himself. The owner's father looked at her and asked if she was sure, because he was the craziest of the lot. She was sure.
Portugal had a real lockdown, unlike England, but there was an exemption letting anyone with a pet walk in the street. Buddy came home at three months. Foster met him at six.
🩹 Trindade, a ferida e a cicatriz
A ferida — the wound
A cicatriz — the scar
Está mais clara — it's lighter now (claro and clara for lightness of colour, escuro for dark)
As veias — the veins
Um acampamento — a campsite
Eu visitei ele por duas semanas — I visited him for two weeks
Ele estava mordendo muito — he was biting a lot
Feridas contaminadas — contaminated wounds
Trindade is a beach near Paraty in Rio de Janeiro state, very hippie, and Alexia knows it well. There is also a Trindade in Porto, which is why she paused.
Your story: you were fifteen, your dad was living at a campsite there for a few months, and there was a puppy that bit constantly. You went in the sea every day with the bites open, the wound got worse and worse, you could see the veins, and by the time you got back to your grandparents in São Paulo the doctor found a bacterial infection in your blood. Another month and it could have caused permanent damage.
Alexia's point, which she wants you to remember every time you're in Brazil: not with an open wound. Sea plus sand plus puppy is a bad combination. The same bacteria causes urinary infections, abdominal infections like diverticulitis and appendicitis, gallbladder infections, and contaminated wounds.
Barco a vela — sailing boat
A lagoa — the lagoon (the Lagoa in Rio, which Alexia has fallen into, fully conscious of what she was falling into, when a sailing boat capsized)
💉 Gripes, vacinas e a marca no braço
A gripe — the flu
O resfriado — a cold
Gripe A / gripe B — flu A / flu B
Os sintomas da doença — the symptoms of the illness
A vacina contra a gripe — the flu vaccine
A vacina contra a pneumonia — the pneumonia vaccine
Desinfetar — to disinfect (o sol desinfeta)
As minhas primeiras memórias — my earliest memories (not "as minhas memórias mais early")
The mark you both have on your arm is the BCG vaccination scar. Brazil ran famously good national vaccination campaigns, so it identifies a whole generation of Brazilians instantly. Foster doesn't have one, which is exactly the point. Your English friends don't either, but your mother's generation does, and she grew up somewhere warmer.
Alexia's first winter in Portugal flattened her, because flu vaccines are formulated differently in different parts of the world and she'd only ever had the Rio one. Her honest words on the flu shot: this is Alexia in July, let's see Alexia in November and December. You made the same promise. Neither of you should be trusted.
Also worth knowing: in Portugal the public system offers annual flu, Covid and pneumonia vaccines, which surprised her, since in Brazil the pneumonia one is largely private.
🦟 Dengue, mosquitos e a UPA
A dengue — dengue
Água parada — standing water (where mosquitoes breed)
As doenças — the illnesses (a doença, singular)
Quando um mosquito me morde — when a mosquito bites me
Reação alérgica — allergic reaction
A rede de mosquitos / o mosquiteiro — mosquito net
O repelente — insect repellent (in Brazil everyone says "passar off", after the brand, the way English speakers say Band-Aid)
Your aunt has had dengue twice. You can catch it more than once, and the third infection is the one to worry about. There is now a vaccine. She lives near a park with standing water, which explains a lot.
UPA, Unidade de Pronto Atendimento — a walk-in urgent care unit in Brazil's public health system
Not a hospital and not a GP surgery. Usually a small building with doctors and nurses, free, and it handles high fever, asthma attacks, cuts and fractures, infections needing immediate assessment, and severe pain. Essentially triage outside the hospital: they treat you there or send you on.
Febre alta — high fever
Crises de asma — asthma attacks
Cortes e fraturas — cuts and fractures
Dor intensa — severe pain
The story behind it: a Portuguese friend of Alexia's went to Rio for the first time with her carioca boyfriend, slept with the windows open and only a fan, and woke up with her legs so covered in bites she couldn't put her feet on the floor. UPA, injection, fine by evening, and that is how she found out she is properly allergic to mosquito bites.
🐍 Bichos, medos e acampamento
O sapo — the toad
A privada — the toilet bowl
A aranha — the spider
A cobra — the snake
O machado — the axe
O jacaré — the alligator, the caiman
O esquilo — the squirrel
O alce — the moose
O urso — the bear
O javali — the wild boar
Uma praga — a pest
A caça — hunting
Acampar — to camp
Fazer trilha — to hike
Um ex-namorado — an ex-boyfriend (you said "uma namorada passada", which changes both the gender and the meaning)
A cobra tentou atacar — the snake tried to attack
Ele não levou mordida — he didn't get bitten
Your story, which is a keeper: camping in the southern US with an ex, he went to pee in the bushes and did it directly onto a snake, it struck at him and missed, and you were hours from the nearest town with no phone signal. You drove six or seven hours through the night. This is exactly the kind of story to have ready when you meet new people in Brazil.
Alexia's position is that hiking is wonderful and camping is madness, because look at me, they will see me, that's such a nice snack. Glamping is acceptable, on the grounds that there is a structure between her and the wildlife.
On the javali: it is the only animal that can legally be hunted in Brazil. They break into fazendas and attack cattle, and there are so many of them that they're classed as a praga.
And in South Carolina, where there are a lot of snakes, Foster's mother will kill one with an axe if it gets inside her garden. Alexia's response to this is to lock herself in the bedroom.
🕰️ O passado
This is the one thing to work on before next class. Alexia corrected you into the past tense repeatedly today, and you already know it's the gap, so let's make it concrete.
Eu falei — I spoke
Você / ele / ela falou — you / he / she spoke
Nós falamos — we spoke
Eles falaram — they spoke
That pattern carries across regular -ar verbs, so drilling one gives you hundreds.
From today's own class:
Na sexta-feira de manhã eu fui para o norte da Inglaterra — on Friday morning I went to the north of England
Eu dirigi muito — I drove a lot
Eu entrei no mar — I went into the sea
Eu voltei para São Paulo — I went back to São Paulo
Eu visitei ele por duas semanas — I visited him for two weeks
Your father was already drilling falei, falou, falamos with you the other day. He's right. It's repetition, not understanding, that fixes this, same as the masculine and feminine work from last class.
📚 Homework
1. Relisten to this class and count
Alexia's own suggestion. Play the recording back and count how many times she corrected you into the past tense. Seeing the number is the point.
2. Record one story as an audio
Choose the snake story or the Trindade infection story, tell it out loud in Portuguese, and send it to Alexia on WhatsApp. You forgot you could do this. You can, and you should. If you'd rather say it out loud in the next class instead, that works too, but the audio is better.
3. Drill the past tense on your walks
You already walk a couple of hours a day. Eu falei, ele falou, nós falamos, eles falaram. Then swap the verb: eu andei, eu visitei, eu entrei, eu voltei. Out loud, not in your head.
4. Check the email about August and September
Alexia sent one about scheduling. It's a confusing stretch for them, so have a look and reply, and ask if anything isn't clear.
5. Live Class on Wednesday
Try to join from the train if the connection holds. If not, the following Wednesday.
Next class Alexia is telling you about Bonito, in Mato Grosso do Sul. What she did, what she refused to do, and why she thinks you'd love it.
Want more homework or have any questions? Message us on WhatsApp anytime.