4/5/2014 Brunches and Visitors bearing Portuguese Poetry

A beautiful day today - the only thing I had on the calendar was breakfast with friends, including my friend Debbie - she is at 1 month out from her anterior approach total hip replacement, and doing great!
She is still on some medication, and has a few other physical issues, but it looks like this was after the worst of the lot! She looks great and happy, and is naturally losing weight, and feels terrific! No pain, no cane! we had a grand time with three other good friends - we have been missing each other, and it was great to be together.

I came home, took a nap, and puttered around, tidied up a bit.
Then, talking with a dear friend on Facebook, we decided to have an impromptu get-together to discuss a wonderful poem he has written, part of it in Portuguese (My part - the poem has three voices, and we are putting together a reading with another friend reading the third voice).
He has been on a long holiday, and it was a true delight to see him. Terrific evening- he's hte best conversationalist I know. we worked hard on the poem - both translating it into English so I can be solid on what I am saying, and his coaching me - syllable by dipthong by tripthong through the Portuguese pronunciations.
Dialects and the sounds of other languages usually come easily to me - as an actor, it's one of my interests. There are many languages I can't speak, but I can pronounce like a native-speaker.

Portuguese is not one of them. I love this language, I find fascinating and very beautiful. The Portuguese music, Fado, is wonderful, and I have worked on trying to at least get the basic rules of it down - I would love to sing Fado one day (my friend's Portuguese friends just shake their head). Well...  not so much, on getting the pronunciations!
I have a few rules figured out - one or three - but there are SO MANY - and they are complex, and they change. They have nine vowels - and multiple diphthongs and triphthongs... and I am used to Spanish pronunciations, which are gauche to use in Portuguese.  So much work to do!!
But our work paid off pretty well this evening, and I got the pass on each line pretty much, eventually.

Off he went home after a great evening. Very Energizing!
He is very knowledgable about things physical, body mechanics, etc., and has been very very supportive and incredibly helpful to me through this whole process. I came smoothly and comfortably down the stairs toward him, and he said, "Now, *that* impresses me!". It has been almost two months since he has seen me, and I have come a long way.

I am falling asleep - but YAY for a good day - full of sunshine and good people.