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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An hour of pure conversation that wandered exactly where good conversation does: thirty-eight degrees in Porto and Alexia's swim before Pilates, why your skin and hair behave differently in Brazil, beauty and body culture there against Portugal, Spain and Italy, LED masks and rosácea, family doctors and the two Portuguese health systems, her father's heart surgery, haircuts and fine hair, the gap between inveja and ciúmes, how you've actually been studying this week, your father correcting you on the phone, and Foster coming on camera to answer your question about his own accent.
Two things worth naming. First, you said eu estava fazendo isso nos últimos três dias without reaching for it, and Alexia stopped the class to point at it. That's the imperfect continuous arriving on its own, three days into the repetition work, which is fast. Second, the honest one: you still hand a good number of words straight to English mid-sentence, and Alexia typed almost every one of them into the chat as it happened. Jealous, obstructed, linked, out loud, layers, thick, paws, book, definition. That list is the gap, and it's short. The focus before next class isn't new material. It's the recording and repeating you already started, plus the eclipse story.
🔥 Trinta e oito graus e a Air Fryer
Um calor desgraçado — brutal heat (strong and very common in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Friends, not work.)
Trinta e oito graus — thirty-eight degrees
Eu vou mergulhar — I'm going for a dip
A água tava gelada — the water was freezing
Compensou — it was worth it (compensar. Valeu a pena is the other way to say it.)
Eu tô mais tranquila agora — I'm calmer now
Alexia woke up, went to Pilates at nine, and since the studio sits near the beach she went straight into the sea afterwards. The water was cold, the air was thirty-eight degrees, and it evened out. Her one condition is wind: come out of cold water into wind in Porto and you never warm up again.
You asked whether European heat is worse than Rio, and she said much worse, because it's dry. Her line for it is that she feels like she's inside an Air Fryer. In Rio there's humidity instead. Here she washes her hair and it's dry in thirty minutes. In Rio the same hair takes two hours, and the clothes don't dry either.
💧 A pele, o cabelo e a umidade
Minha pele — my skin (pele is feminine, so minha. You said meu pele and caught it yourself.)
A umidade — humidity (no H in Brazil, and the u is pronounced. Portugal writes humidade, still with a silent H. Default to the Brazilian spelling.)
O eczema — eczema
Os nutrientes — nutrients
É menor — it's less, it's lower (you said o sabor é menos. Menos is a quantity, fewer or less of something. For flavour, size or degree, use menor.)
Está correlacionado — it's correlated (correlacionar. You reached for correlates and this is it.)
Especificamente — specifically
Eu cresci — I grew up
Da minha família brasileira — from my Brazilian family
Elas não participam — they don't take part (you said elas não participei, which is I took part. Third person plural: participam.)
A namorada dele — his girlfriend (namorada is feminine, so a, even though the person she belongs to is male.)
Alexia gets eczema in Porto and never had it in Rio. Her hair is fuller and better in Rio, which she puts down to the water here. You came at the same thing from the other direction: you feel and look better every time you go to Brazil, and you wondered whether food is part of it, since fruit and vegetables in England taste of less and, you reasoned, probably carry less. That chain of reasoning was yours, start to finish. Correlacionado was the only word missing from it.
💉 Corpo perfeito: a cultura estética
Botox preventivo — preventative botox
Eu morro de medo de agulha — I'm terrified of needles (morrer de medo de is the everyday way to say terrified.)
Fujo de qualquer tipo de procedimento — I run from any kind of procedure
O turismo médico — medical tourism
O implante capilar — hair transplant
Dois amigos que fizeram isso — two friends who had it done (you said que fez isso. Two friends is plural: fizeram.)
A acessibilidade — affordability, accessibility
Alexia's position: Brazilian dermatology is among the best anywhere, and that's both a good thing and a symptom. Good because there's real care about eating well and moving. A symptom because walking into a gym in Brazil meant being looked up and down by every person in the room, and because women in their early twenties are sold preventative botox. Her objection isn't to botox itself. If it helps someone, fine. It's to selling it as prevention, which she doesn't think is a real thing.
You mapped it geographically: not much of that in Portugal or Spain, more in Italy, though there it's about clothes rather than faces. And you have both versions inside your own family. On one side your aunts, classical musicians, very tall, who never fit the image of a Brazilian woman and never took part in any of it. On the other side your uncle's Brazilian partner of twenty years, who you grew up around and love, who goes back to Brazil largely for procedures, who exercises and eats well, and who still always needs one more thing. The hard part, you said, is watching someone do all of that and not seem happier for it.
What's changed, in your reading, is the geography. It used to be far more visible in Brazil than in England or the US, and now it's everywhere, partly because it got cheaper. Alexia added the traffic going the other way: Europeans flying to Turkey for implante capilar.
🔦 A máscara de LED e a rosácea
Obcecada — obsessed (obcecado for a man, obcecada for a woman. Note the c, not an s.)
A rosácea — rosacea
A espinha — spot, pimple (acne is the condition, espinha is the individual spot.)
Cem — a hundred (cem on its own, cento when something follows: cento e vinte.)
Eu uso, você usa — I use, you use (you said eu não usa o quente. With eu it's uso.)
É uma mentira — it's a lie
Vale a pena — it's worth it
Alexia goes to her dermatologist once a year because her father has had skin cancer twice, and she's going in early September. This year she has a specific question, because she admits she's obcecada with LED masks and can't stop researching them. She wants to know which one suits her, since they're not all the same, and then buy on Black Friday if the answer is yes.
You bought one two weeks ago, around a hundred pounds, the best of the cheap ones. You've used it twice and cautiously, because everything says start slowly and no more than twice a week. Reddit says the whole category does nothing. Your friend with the same skin says it helped. Alexia's understanding is that with rosácea you first get the skin used to it, and then it becomes a daily ten minutes.
She also told you her method, which is worth stealing: she takes Foster's questions to the doctor and presents them as her own. Foster has rosácea, so she'll ask about the two of you in one appointment. You asked her to report back if the dermatologist says it's all mentira.
🏥 Médico de família: público e privado
O médico de família — family doctor, GP
Que sabe o seu histórico — who knows your history (you said uma pessoa que saiba. Saiba is for hypotheticals. This doctor really does know, so sabe.)
Os erros — mistakes
Marcar uma consulta — to book an appointment
Sem esforço — without exertion
Your frustration with the NHS isn't the care, it's seeing a different doctor every time. Everything gets written into the computer, but move between places and errors creep in, and nobody is holding the whole picture of you.
Alexia's version of the alternative is Doutor Paulo, her father's family doctor, who became hers over time simply because she kept going along to the appointments. She can ask him about something on her arm mid-consultation, and because he knows her he can either wave it off or tell her to marcar uma consulta and look at it properly. Not every doctor allows that, so it depends on the doctor.
Then the structural piece, which is specific to where she lives. The North is the only region of Portugal where the public and private hospital systems talk to each other. If she's in a public hospital and they don't have the space, the doctor or the specialty, they send her to the private one and she pays nothing. It runs in the other direction too.
❤️ A cirurgia do coração
A cirurgia — the surgery
O cirurgião — the surgeon (you said cirurgia when you meant the person. Cirurgia is what happens, cirurgião is who does it.)
O duplo bypass — double bypass
O cateterismo — catheterisation
A lista de espera — the waiting list
As artérias estavam obstruídas — the arteries were blocked (obstruído. You reached for obstructed and this is the word.)
Conectado — linked, connected
Ele vai ter um infarto — he's going to have a heart attack
Deu tudo certo — it all went well (dar certo is one of the most useful verbs in Brazilian Portuguese: deu certo, vai dar certo, não deu certo.)
Caminhadas leves — light walks
Alexia's father is eighty and diabetic. Sitting down, his heart worked perfectly. Any effort at all, walking or standing, and it didn't. By the public system's rules that didn't count as urgent, so the lista de espera for a double bypass and a catheterisation came back at a year and nine months. Privately it was one week. Her answer to the year and nine months was that a heart is not the organ you wait on.
Two of the arteries, the main one and the one on the right, were ninety-seven per cent blocked. Nobody wanted to touch him, given his age and the diabetes and the whole situation. Dr. Amorim said he'd do it, without drama. The surgery took six hours. Alexia sat in her father's hospital room the entire time, and the surgeon rang her at half past eight that night to say deu tudo certo. At the post-op appointment she thanked him for saving her father's life, and asked when he wanted to see him again. His answer was never.
That was over a year ago and her father is a different person. You picked up two things she hadn't said out loud: that reaching eighty with no symptoms beforehand is remarkable in itself, and that the diabetes and the arteries are conectados. Before the surgery his protocol was caminhadas leves, supermarket and back, pharmacy and back, sem esforço. His response was to announce he wasn't going to move at all.
✂️ Cabelo preso, cabelo longo
Cabelo preso — hair tied up (from prender. Cabelo solto is the opposite.)
Cabelo longo — long hair (cabelo is masculine, so longo. You said longa.)
As camadas — layers
Manter — to keep, to maintain (mantener is the Spanish. Portuguese drops the e: manter.)
Feliz com o corte — happy with the cut (com o corte, or com o estilo. You said feliz como o style.)
Grosso — thick (for hair. Fino is the opposite.)
Encaracolado — curly
Quebra fácil — it breaks easily
Alexia thought you'd cut your hair. You hadn't, not since a month or so ago. What changed was that last time it was preso. Short hair looks low maintenance and isn't: two weeks and it's already grown out and changed shape, and it's one more thing to think about. You get three perfect days after a cut, when the style does exactly what it should, and then it's different every morning. You still prefer it to long.
Alexia has found a machine that makes waves without you holding anything hot against your head. It takes the section in, you press a button, it wraps itself, it beeps, it lets go. You've been avoiding heat entirely because your hair is fine and quebra fácil, and the overnight wet-hair method just leaves you bagunçada. Fine hair is its own conversation and you both have it. Your boyfriend's is thick, and saying so in English is what set up the next section.
😒 Inveja e ciúmes
Eu tenho inveja — I'm envious (of a thing: their hair, their holiday, their weather)
Eu tenho ciúmes — I'm jealous (of a person, and of your place with them)
Tô com inveja de você — I'm envious of you
Tô com ciúmes de você — the same thing, in casual use (only when it's a situation, never a person)
English uses jealous for both and Portuguese splits them. Inveja is wanting what someone has. Ciúmes is about a person and a perceived threat: tô com ciúmes do meu namorado com aquela pessoa. Much heavier, and you spotted the weight difference before Alexia explained it.
The overlap she flagged is the useful part. In casual speech, tô com ciúmes de você, você tá na Inglaterra agora means exactly what tô com inveja de você means. That usage is completely normal, and it's one she and Foster trade on WhatsApp. The moment the object is a person rather than a situation, the two words separate and ciúmes stops being light.
📖 O livro, a lista e a leitura em voz alta
A definição, as definições — the definition, the definitions
Acompanhar — to follow, to keep up with (a story, a conversation, a series. Seguir is following a person or a path.)
Essa lista — this list
Ajudou muito — it helped a lot (this is the one to fix. Ajudei is I helped. When the list or the friend or the class is what did the helping, it's ajudou. You said ajudei three times today.)
Em voz alta — out loud
No gravador do meu telefone — on my phone's voice recorder
Eu estava fazendo isso nos últimos três dias — I'd been doing that for the last three days
Você falou — you said (você falei is I said. Third person: falou.)
Na minha página — on my page
You've been reading the book by your father's friend, O Velho, and it's still working for the same reason as before: the stories are short and nothing in it is complicated. You look up a lot of definições, and you can acompanhar. That's the right level, so stay in it.
The list is doing more than the book. You read it em voz alta into your phone's recorder, leaving a gap after each phrase, then play it back and repeat while you're walking or making dinner. Three days so far. You were apologetic about the three days, which you don't need to be, because of what you said next.
Eu estava fazendo isso nos últimos três dias. You produced the imperfect continuous without reaching for it, and Alexia stopped the class to tell you so. That tense wasn't in your speech before. Three days of repetition put it there, which tells you what thirty days will do. One small thing on the preposition, since you'll want it exact: nos últimos três dias is the natural pairing. Pelos is the English "for" showing through.
You also worked out the real reason it's working, which Alexia agreed with immediately. The list isn't material to understand. You already understand it. It's material to hear and repeat until it comes out without you.
📞 Seu pai, as correções e a confiança
Desmotivante — demotivating
A confiança — confidence (and also trust. Same word does both jobs.)
Anotar — to jot down, to note
Sem interrupções — without interruptions
Ele é bem crítico — he's quite critical
You and your father now speak only Portuguese on the phone, which he'd said wasn't possible and which is now just how it goes. He stops you and names each mistake as it happens. It helps, and it's desmotivante, and you can feel the difference afterwards: after a call with him, learning Portuguese feels like it will take forever. After a class it doesn't.
Alexia's fix is practical. Ask him to open the Notes app while you talk and anotar the mistakes instead of interrupting, then send them over when you hang up. That's exactly what she does with you, and it's the reason this page exists. Give him the reason as well as the instruction: you need the conversation itself to stay motivating, and you'll take the corrections afterwards, when you can actually use them.
The principle underneath it is Foster's, and Alexia quoted him on it. Nobody is anybody else's teacher. Not a father, not a mother, not a partner. What you can ask them for is a conversation in the language sem interrupções, and that's the whole request. She lives on the other side of the same thing. Some mornings she wakes up speaking the worst English of her life, thinking in Portuguese and producing English, and Foster just lets it run.
You named it in one word, which was the best sentence you built today: é uma coisa de confiança.
🔁 Fazer o switch: pensar em português
Quando eu estou no Brasil — when I'm in Brazil
Aos poucos — little by little (you kept saying pouco de pouco, which is the Spanish poco a poco leaking in. Portuguese uses aos poucos, or pouco a pouco.)
Quando eu comecei a escutar — when I started listening (começar a plus the infinitive, not the gerund. You said comecei escutando.)
This was the other thing worth keeping from today. In Brazil, day by day, you start thinking in Portuguese, and that's when your Portuguese actually moves. In England you're switching: thinking in English, then translating. So you've started spending an hour before class reading in Portuguese, to make the switch before the class rather than during it. That's a genuinely good instinct and it's why you arrive warmed up. Keep it.
Alexia sees the same thing from the inside. Foster spends a full day in English with her for no particular reason, then has to teach a Portuguese class and can't find the gear.
🇧🇷 Como o Foster aprendeu português
O sotaque — accent
Eu diria — I'd say
Demorou — it took (demorar, for how long something took: demorou quatro meses.)
Então — so (the Portuguese one. Entonces is Spanish.)
Tem — there is, there are (the Spanish is hay. This is one of the last things to leave a Spanish speaker.)
You asked how long it took him, because when you first started listening to the podcast you assumed he was Brazilian and it was a while before you found out otherwise. He came on camera to answer.
Spanish came first: six months in Guatemala, then a stretch living in Madrid. Alexia's point is that Spanish to Portuguese is not the shortcut people assume, because the hard part isn't learning the new language, it's getting the old one out. Entonces wanting to be então. Hay wanting to be tem. She banned both from the start and it still took a while.
Then Rio, during his master's, with the degree taught almost entirely in Portuguese and a carioca to live with, so it was twenty-four hours a day. He puts it at roughly four to six months before he could hold a real conversation, and he's the first to say his accent isn't as good as you think it is. What actually pulled him in was Brazilian music. The first song he learned in Portuguese was a capoeira song, Marinheiro Só.
🐶 O crossfit do Buddy
As patas — paws (animals have patas, people have pés)
O biscoito — biscuit, treat
O corredor — corridor, hallway
Gastar energia — to burn off energy
Too hot to walk him outside, too much energy to skip it, so Foster throws biscuits up and down the corridor and Buddy runs after them. They call it his crossfit. Your joke about it needed one word and patas is that word.
🗓️ Marcar a próxima aula
Marcar — to book, to schedule (marcar uma aula, marcar uma consulta, marcar um horário)
Trinta minutos a mais — another thirty minutes
A aula ao vivo — the live class
You'd agreed to run longer than half an hour today and netball got in the way, so there's half an hour still owed and you'll find a slot for it. From now on, when you marcar the class in the calendar, send Alexia a line on WhatsApp saying whether it's thirty minutes or the full hour.
On live classes: everyone is away, so Alexia is holding off rather than running one to an empty room. Likely the last week of August or the first week of September, once people are back.
📚 Homework
1. Keep the recording and repeating going
This is the main one, and Alexia was clear that it's already working. You started three days ago and it showed today. Same method exactly: read the phrases out loud into your phone's recorder, leave a gap after each one, then play it back and repeat while you're walking or cooking. Don't add anything to it and don't make it cleverer. Just keep going.
2. Rebuild the phrases around your week
Take the same phrases and swap in what actually happened to you. Your heat, your book, your netball, your haircut, your LED mask. Same structures, your life inside them, which is what makes them stay.
3. The eclipse story, written, recorded, sent
Write a short story about the eclipse. Then record yourself reading it and send it to Alexia as a WhatsApp audio. This one ties everything together: it's the simple past from last class, out loud, landing in the WhatsApp habit that's meant to be running between classes. Don't polish it. Send it.
4. The words you handed to English today
Alexia typed nearly all of these into the chat the moment you reached for them. Say each one out loud a few times, then put it in a sentence about your own week.
A inveja — envy
Obstruído — blocked
Conectado — linked
Em voz alta — out loud
As camadas — layers
Grosso — thick
As patas — paws
Marcar — to book
Manter — to keep, to maintain
A definição — definition
Acompanhar — to follow, to keep up
Desmotivante — demotivating
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