Parabens pra Voce! (A Happy Birthday Memoir)

So my lovely best friend and I were chatting on the phone the other day, and she brought to my attention that my blog boasts being about my adventures exploring my new Brazilian family…but yet, not a single post had been about them.

DUH.

So, hence forth I am forcing myself to write about them, and my attempts at learning how to be bilingual. STARTING…….NOW!

I stole this picture from: http://goyummyrecipes.wordpress.com/category/brazilian-recipes/ 

This delectible cake shown above is traditional Brazilian Birthday cake. Also known as Bolo de Brigadeiro.

It is heaven on earth. Seriously the yummiest thing I've ever tasted. We ate some at a birthday party I was at a few nights ago.

--->> STORY TIME! <<-----

The other day was my newly acquired Niece’s birthday. She was turning 10. Fabio was working so I went out and purchased a few Pandora charms to go on her brand new bracelet, and then proceeded to his sister’s house to deliver my present.

I walked into the house, and was greeted with so much kindness, and an adorable screech of “TIA GABRIELLA!!!!!”  (Mind you, TIA is pronounced CHEE-AH in Portuguese, and not TEE-AH like in Spanish.)

I’m not going to lie though, I loved how excited they were to see me, and that they all call me auntie! It really makes me feel like part of the family. J

While this was just a small gathering, myself, his two sisters, his brother in law, and his brother in law’s mother (or as I like to say it, my sister in law’s mother in law.—How is that for a brain teaser?) and then the 5 cousins, it was still a small gathering of fluent Portuguese speakers. With me being the oddball/outsider.

They are all extremely friendly, and welcoming, but never the less, I always have to be on my toes, ready to try and translate all the side conversations.

The whole point of me talking about this, is that I would like to mention a few things that happened that night…

The first being the birthday song. We sang the traditional:

“Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you smell like a monkey and you look like one too…”

—Well, that’s what the 8 year old boys sang anyways. J But then, when I thought we were done, we went into the Brazilian “Happy Birthday”, which I sung to the tune of Happy Birthday, but with Portuguese lyrics of course.

The entire time they are clapping, just like they do if you go out to eat and tell your server it’s your birthday…

Parabéns a você,
Nesta data querida.
Muitas felicidades,
Muitos anos de vida.

Hoje é dia de festa,
Cantam as nossas almas.
Para o/a menino/a _____,
Uma salva de palmas.

And then they go on, just when I thought they were done, to this weird thing where they say something that sounds like:

(Ay BIGGIE, Ay BIGGIE, Ay BIGGIE BIGGIE BIGGIE)

but is actually É pique! É pique! É pique, é pique, é pique!

Then they say something like,

É hora! É hora! É hora, é hora, é hora.

Then, Rá-tim-bum.

It was definitely interesting, and I’m going to have to learn all the words to it. It made it much more exciting than our normal Happy Birthday BS. J

Then it was time for cake. The birthday girl cut the cake, and then gave the first piece of cake to the person that have been very influential in their past year, someone nice, and that they loved very much. She chose he vovo, grandmother, but THEN I got the second piece! (Much to her aunt’s dismay.) This was a neat tradition, and I liked how she got the last piece of cake, instead of it all being about her, they make it about her loved ones.

While we were all sitting down enjoying our ice cream cake, everyone started chatting. It was really sweet, to see the 5 kids all conversing in perfect Portuguese with the 4 adults like they were all in Brazil. And then flawlessly switch to perfect English to include me into the conversation. Definitely made me want to practice my Portuguese harder so that maybe next year I can sit there and join in on the chatting!!

Espero que voce tenha uma dia maravilhoso!

Tchau Amigos! Beijos.

-Gabriella