Milestone

Sometimes the milestones we celebrate might appear minor to our friends and family in North America (and sometimes even to our teammates!) but today was a significant one for me. I went to my first Portuguese movie.

Most American movies that come out here are kept in English but have Portuguese subtitles. This has been great for us because we've been able to keep up with the new releases (especially since movies are much cheaper here). Animated films are always dubbed, that is, the original audio track is replaced with Portuguese voices. Occaisionally a film will be shown both ways- then you have to be careful you ask for the right showing!

As a result, the team's kids (because they truly belong to the whole team) have missed out on the big new movies. Robots came out shortly after we arrived. Madagascar has been widely advertised; there's even a special Madagascar playland in the mall complete with a climbing wall. We've had to explain to them that they wouldn't understand the movie so they'll just have to wait for the DVD to come out.

I knew Lauren had been dying to see a movie so I told her when Herbie came out we would go see it together. It's live action, so I figured it would surely be subtitled. It came out last week. Dubbed. I passed the disappointing news that we couldn't go see it on to Lauren. She was sad that we weren't going to get to go the movies. A day or two later, she said, "I want to go see Madagascar."

"It's in Portuguese like Herbie is," I said. "The whole thing. No English."

"That's okay," she told me. "I just want to see it."

So today we went. Lauren said she understood some of it. And I think she really did. I had to explain a lot of the movie to her, but we usually have to explain shows and movies to her regardless of what language they're in. What was awesome, though, was that I was able to explain it! I caught about 75% of the dialogue, was able to laugh at several of the jokes and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. I had been worried about seeing a movie in Portuguese but today I proved to myself that I can do it!

Good thing, too, because as we were walking out, Lauren saw a Wallace and Grommit movie poster and is already making plans...