I thoroughly enjoyed your article and will follow!

A few notes - your experiences there to an extent mirror mine in the Philippines. Several times I've deeply embarrassed my wife and myself with linguistic mistakes, like the time I thought I was saying that I wanted more time with my wife, but the context meant I was saying "I'm not getting enough sex!" Then there was the time when I thought I was asking my sister-in-law if she was pregnant, but I actually asked her, "Do you have a hole?" I'm still grateful to her husband for not killing me on the spot.

On religion, I strongly suspect Brazil is deeply religious not because of its culture, but because it is still developing, still rising out of poverty. The poorer a nation or culture, the stronger the religious fervor will generally be. I realized this when I saw churches (or other religious meeting places) on nearly every block in Manila, and it was *very* reminiscent of the nearly-ubiquitous churches in the poverty-ridden Mississippi Delta of my youth.

Lastly, concerning the care the Brazilian women take with their makeup, in my experience, people in poorer cultures tend to strive to look better and wealthier than they really are. The same is true in the Philippines, and the same was true of the poor-as-dirt Black communities of the Delta. There's a Filipino saying that applies that goes something along the lines of "Fashionable clothing and good grooming can hide the empty belly." Bear in mind this is in a nation where a normal greeting translates, "Have you eaten rice yet?"

Oh, and I'm insanely jealous - being European, you've known what it means for international travel to be *normal*. I dearly wish it were so for Americans - we'd have far less racism and bigotry here if we spent more time overseas.