I wonder what else we didn’t learn

From The Everywhere Girl Diaries – a work of fiction

First week of January, year one

Dear Diary,

This is turning out to be an OK and interesting vacation.  Aunt Beth is cool.  In the evenings, we go to fancy restaurants, both downtown and on the Avenue Paulista. Next weekend we’re going to the Museum of Modern Art.  I’m going to see a Monet, a Picasso, and a Van Gogh! We’re also going to rent bikes and tour Ibirapuera Park.

During the day she apologetically has to work, but it allows me to sleep, email back and forth with Mr. Mallard (more on that later), and lounge by the pool, trying to brush up on my Spanish.  I want to be ready when I meet the family in Mexico in a couple of weeks.

I thought I’d be able to study by picking up some books or magazines when I got here.  That was, of course, until I discovered that they speak Portuguese and not Spanish in Brazil.  I was mortified that I didn’t know that.  I mean how embarrassing.

Unwilling to accept the fact that I might not have been paying attention in class the day we learned that bit of information, I have a theory.  In the seventh grade, when we were studying South America, there was a big budget crisis.  The voters voted down a school levy and we had to end school a week early.  I bet that was the week that we were supposed to learn about the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil in 1500 and the fact that it is the only Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas.

I wonder what else we didn’t learn.

I suppose I could study Spanish online, but I really don’t want to take my computer down by the pool (even though everyone else does). So, I’m using a book called Mapas Mentales that someone left on a bench outside the hotel. Spanish does seem to be spoken here and there, perhaps as a second language.

As far as I can tell, it’s a book about something called mental mapping.  It’s supposed to help you be more organized.  Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.