Let’s Learn Portuguese…Primeira Lição

In high school, my friend Ali started teaching me “useful” Portuguese phrases that I would need to know when/if I ever got to Brazil. She would draw little cartoons with Portuguese captions like “Please help me, gypsies have kidnapped me and stolen my liver.” Since I lack fine drawing skills, I decided to cheat and translate a photo caption from a blog I like, Depois dos Sonhos. Here goes:

“We fall in love because of the other person’s mannerisms, their way of being. Not because he cites Camus, nor because she has blue eyes (ahem): it’s his way of saying the lines in a loud voice as if he himself had written them just for us; it’s her way of slowly blinking her pretty blue eyes, as if she was in slow motion. 

It’s their way of walking. It’s their way of wearing their shirt untucked outside their pants. It’s their way of passing their fingers through your hair. It’s their way of sighing at the end of each sentence. Their way of kissing. Their way of smiling. Try to explain that.”