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How I Learned English

A Tale not yet finished by Jose Celso

Part I – The Early Years

Once upon a time, last millennium I believe, in a city surrounded by blue mountains called Belo Horizonte, there was a boy called by many names, but lets stick with Celso. I was born in the sixties but it was no flower power in Brazil. We had a military coup and my generation kind of did not like the American way of life. It was the cold war and the support that the American government gave to the non-democratic government in Brazil helped my generation not to be interested in English. But when I went to high school things got serious and I started to become interested on learning English. I love music and my first teachers were The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Back on those days, with no Internet or cable TV, English was available only on expensive Private Courses and Exchange Programs (yeah, right). So I had my big stereo to play my songs and I would sing along. Believe me I still have those records. It helped me to acquire some vocabulary and “catch phrases” such as the title of my page. But it wasn’t enough. In 1988 I began studying linguistics at UFMG and I had for the first time in my life a little multimedia to help me on the difficult task of learning a second language. By the early nineties, the mountains of Belo Horizonte seemed like a prison. I had to get away from that, so I decided to live in the United States. But that is on the second episode of the trilogy. Stay tuned…

Part II – The American Years 1992/2003

Ok, I went to a beautiful city called Charlottesville located in central Virginia. It is a small place, birthplace of Thomas Jefferson and where the University of Virginia is located. I lived there for two years and while I was there, I worked as a waiter and I also worked in a Country Inn called

Clifton. I was a handyman, a do-it-all employee and it was crucial for my language acquisition. The people there were very patient and I acquired most of my oral skills with them. I still miss them a lot. On my free time I was a pizza delivery man and it help me to use the telephone, take orders and to learn directions. I can’t count the many situations that I lived delivering pizza on all those fraternities and sororities at the university. However, after two years I got tired of Charlottesville and decided to move to New York.

New York is a magical place and there I had a chance to go back to school. After I took the toefl test I managed to enroll at Hunter College as a part time student. College in the US is very expensive and I only took eleven classes mostly about literature and writing. I was working as a waiter at IHOP, a breakfast house where I improved my negotiation skills and also learned that there are 16 ways of preparing an egg. Meanwhile I became a father and the years passed too fast until the attacks on the World Trade Center changed my mind about living in the US.

I lived most of the tragedy. It was sad to go to ground zero and se the pile of debris, pictures of missing people pasted in lampposts. The magic of the city turned into sorrow. The sadness of the American people turned into hate and after that came the paranoia about a chemical and biological attack, I feared for my family welfare and added to it I missed the blue mountains. Thus in 2003, I packed my bags and returned to Brazil. This is the end of part II. Do not go away because the last part of the trilogy is coming after these messages.

Part III – Back Home

It was good to be back home, go camping at Serra do Cipó and have a beer at Mercado Central. I went back to UFMG and started working at private English Schools. At UFMG I learned a lot about how to teach a second language because not everyone had the same chance that I had and learning a L2 in Brazil is very different. A teacher’s life is not easy and the paying is far from fair but I am happy doing it.

The Future, who knows? I am graduating this semester and looking forward to my masters. After that, maybe I will be back on the road again…

A piece of advice? Follow your dreams.

Be Happy

zecelsobarbosa@yahoo.com.br