Fala pessoal!
My name is Josh Plotkin AKA the Brazilian Gringo
I first came to Brazil while I was backpacking around South America, looking for a new place to call home.
When I first came to Brazil I didn’t know anything about the country. I knew that they spoke Portuguese, that the capital is Brasilia, that Carnival is a big party they have every year and that Brazilians are known for possessing above average soccer skills.
Having spent the previous 6 months traveling around Spanish speaking Latin America, I figured that Brazil wouldn’t be too different from other countries in the region.
Boy was I wrong.
My first challenge in Brazil was dealing with the language. I spoke fluent Spanish, having studied the language in school for several years, then refining my skills through total immersion. I figured that Portuguese would be similar.
What I quickly discovered is that while Spanish and Portuguese come from the same root language and might look similar on paper, they are completely different spoken languages.
It was a huge challenge for me to learn Portuguese, but I realized it was necessary if I wanted to immerse myself in Brazilian culture.
After spending my first week in Brazil in Manaus in the Amazon jungle, I spent the next two months in Vitoria, the capital of the small state of Espiritu Santo, which is just north of Rio de Janeiro state.
During those two months I didn’t speak any English. I didn’t meet any other foreigners when I was there and most of the people I met didn’t speak English. Very rarely I would meet someone who spoke English well enough to converse, and after a brief chat we would switch back to Portuguese so that we didn’t exclude anyone else.
Whenever I wanted a break from speaking Portuguese I would call up my friend who spoke Spanish and hang out with her. It seems kind of strange to take a break from speaking a foreign language by speaking another foreign language, but it made sense at the time.
Aside from these brief reprieves I was completely immersed in Portuguese, sometimes for as much as 10 hours a day.
The result of being around the language so much is that I was conversationally fluent in Portuguese after two months.
I couldn’t articulately debate geopolitical issues, not that I wanted to anymore, but I had no trouble communicating with people wherever I went. I could get around the city, talk to people at shops and restaurants, explain my life story and ask people about theirs, and even make jokes in Portuguese.
But all good things must come to an end.
After spending two months in paradise I had to go back to the US for familial reasons. When I got back home I was depressed. I had gotten so used to speaking Portuguese that it was a huge shock to me to be speaking English all the time.
Even more shocking to me was American culture. Brazilians are a very social people and place a lot of importance on relationships with friends and family. Americans are more individualistic and don’t treat each other in the same warm and open way that Brazilians do.
Every day that I was away from Brazil I was morrendo de saudades. Saudade is a Brazilian word that doesn’t always translate well into English that is often used when people are away from Brazil. It means that I had a profound sense of longing for my adopted home.
I resolved that I was going to go back to Brazil and stay for as long as I could. And this time I was going to put my training as an English teacher to good use.
Looking online I didn’t find much information that would turn out to be useful in my job search. From what I found online it seemed like there weren’t any English teaching jobs in Brazil.
But I knew this to not be true. Brazilians desperately want to learn English and there is a huge demand for English teachers. I decided that I would go back to Brazil and try to figure things out when I got there.
First I went to Rio.
I liked the city, but I worried that I would never improve my English if I was in an environment with so many foreigners. There is also a lot more competition in Rio in the English teaching market, and I wasn’t able to find a job by looking online or walking into schools. To get a job in Rio it’s really important to know the right people.
Next I went to São Paulo.
I had an easy time finding work that paid well, but I was spending more time that I liked running around on buses. I didn’t want to spend 4 hours a day stuck in traffic so I went somewhere else.
From the very first moment that I stepped into the city, I was captured by Belo Horizonte. There was something special about the place that I could just feel in the air. I knew right away that I wanted to make it work in BH.
I started hitting the pavement to find a job, going from door to door and leaving my resume with English schools. I didn’t have much luck in finding a job this way.
That first week I went to Real Life English, a party organized by English teachers to give their students the opportunity to use English in real life settings. It was there that I got my first lesson in how business is done in Brazil. I left the event with my pocket full of business cards, and I started teaching that following Monday.
More importantly I joined on the Real Life English team and helped to expand the Real Life English vision to a wider online audience. The most effective path to fluency is to incorporate language learning into activities that you normally so that it becomes a natural part of your life and not some lifeless set of rules that you beat out of a book.
I stayed in Belo Horizonte, teaching English and growing Real Life English’s online presence until my father passed away and I returned home to the US for a while.
While I was in the US people would ask me a lot of questions about Brazil and teaching English. I realized that a lot of people must have these same questions so decided to start this website to help people who want to teach English in Brazil.
I even made a parody of Gangnam Style, Brazilian Gringo Style to promote teaching English in Brazil. The video was a lot of fun to make and I look forward to creating several more.
[media url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-ySsrtRrzs” width=”600″ height=”400″ jwplayer=”controlbar=bottom”]
I don’t teach English anymore as most of my income comes from online sources, but I still think of myself as an English teacher. Once an English teacher, always an English teacher.
I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities here in Brazil and ways that I can help improve the situation in the country. As I learn more about Brazil I will continue to share what I learn here.