Languare barrier

When I decided to come here, I certainly was fully aware that I would have to learn Portuguese to communicate with people. However, I was very surprised that even at university most people do not speak even basic English although it should be clear that this is the language of science and if you publish only in your mother tongue, you'll really reduce your chances of getting a job. 

The biggest problem is of course the lack of good training in school. Public schools are really bad and whoever can afford it sends their children to private schools. Yet, even there the children do not learn English properly and you'll have to send your child to separate lessons in the afternoon/evening.

Especially in the university city, you'll find language schools at almost every corner so I thought it shouldn't be too difficult to get one which teaches Portuguese to foreigners. 

This was my first month in Brazil and I had one of these courses for tourists with me (couldn't get anything better in Germany) and my language skills were VERY basic. So I found one language school but they required a questionnaire to be filled out ... just that the whole thing was in Portuguese. Most of the things were not too difficult to decipher so with a dictionary and a bit of common sense I completed that form specifying that I want a course in Portuguese for foreigners and sent it off. The next day I got an e-mail completely written in Portuguese where they wanted more background information about my mother tongue etc.... I could kind of manage to read it but I was a bit confused as how to answer this because I obviously did NOT speak much Portuguese (why should I take the course otherwise). So I wrote back some basic sentences with probably totally wrong grammar and I received an answer again completely in Portuguese .... This time I was getting a bit annoyed so I wrote back in English because I really couldn't understand that they couldn't find somebody to answer me in English if they offer ENGLISH classes. The answer was ... you already know it ... in Portuguese. Finally I got one of my housemates to negotiate because they wanted an interview before starting the course. So this coordinator talked in Portuguese and she translated for me and then we set up a schedule and I got a teacher who SURPRISE! actually speaks English. 

So I could actually try to learn my fifth foreign language via my first foreign language. Which is strange because personally I think you should go via your mother tongue  but I try to learn words with a German-Portuguese dictionary so that works somehow. Especially since my teacher stopped talking English to me a long time ago but once in a while I still have to ask her for words I don't know.  Apart from the starting difficulties, I am so glad that I got this particular teacher because she is just perfect and without her learning would be much more difficult. In addition to classes, she's taking me out for trips and activities and whenever there is a problem she's there to solve it.