Capitulo 32 - Recife and Wisconsin, Together.

When you are an international student what is the best thing that could happen? Well, now that I think about this question I can actually make a gigantic list of wonderful things that [international] students want to happen in their lives... However, let's just pretend there's only ONE amazing thing we're always expecting to find: some kind of representation from home even when we are far away.

Even the most independent traveler would agree that deep in his heart it's always comforting to find the flag of his country, a restaurant or random stores selling goods from his culture, during his trips. If this traveler is lucky enough to meet compatriots, it certainly means a 5-minute celebration of his heritage with people who back at home would be, ironically, mere strangers.

Today when I went to my Rationality of Terrorism class I was surprised to find a guy wearing a shirt from Recife, my homeland. He was giving his opinion on the chapters we started studying this week, and I must confess I totally lost track of what he was explaining, and focused all my attention on the picture of a shark on his shirt. For a second Recife and all its culture and inside jokes came to Appleton, this freezing small town in Wisconsin. The shark was saying "Te pego na volta!", which means "I'll get you when you come back!". Even if you understand Portuguese, and you're not a person from Recife, it would be hard to figure out why a shark would be saying that to someone who had visited [specifically] Recife.

Back at home we started having serious problems with shark attacks, and whoever visits Recife gets scared when finding those lovely sharks warning signs along the coast of some of our main beaches. Some [stupid] courageous people challenge those signs, go swimming, and lose a leg, or maybe an arm, to our hungry sharks. One needs to be very 'tough' to visit Recife, actually, and if you're a tourist nothing better than a "I've visited Recife and survived" type of shirt that my fellow classmate was wearing to prove his superior courage to everyone else.

I was very glad to find someone bringing Recife to my class, which made my day. I even talked with that boy, who at another circumstance would just [or PROBABLY NOT] look at me, smile with his eyes, and recognize that at some point in his Lawrence life I took a Government class with him. This type of recognition actually goes both ways. But now everything will be different, because we both know the meaning of the shirt he was wearing, and even if after today we don't find more reasons to talk with each other, we will always share the same cultural knowledge: if you ever visit Recife, READ THE SIGNS!