Débora from Brazil

[Debora from Brazil]

Dear members, since this is my first post I hope I'm doing it right. I was born in the South of Brazil, but I also lived in Scotland for a couple of years for I have a British husband. The reason why I've joined this site is because I too am a heart patient and I think I'll find the support and information I need here. I also hope I can be of help to you and I'll soon post my whole heart story so that you can read it and get to know me better. Although English isn't my native language, I think I can get by. By the way, I wonder if there are more people from other countries on this board. I should soon be posting my avatar as well and you'll be able to see what I look like. Well, this was only a brief introduction. Hope to see you around,

Débora from Brazil

[Sarah]

Re: location ... Location ... LOCATION!

Debra,

Welcome! I'm glad you found us.

I highly recommend you start yourself a new thread with your introduction in the in the General forum so more people can "meet" you better that way. Not everyone will find you posted tucked down in a thread under a different topic.

Be sure to use the search function on the site too, if you want to look up topics like medications or treatment options as many of these have been discussed before (and will be discussed again) but it gives you some insight on what others have gone through. THe search link is in the block of red links at the top of the page.

Take care--and yes, we have people in China, Italy, UK, I think Portugal and a few others, too.

Sarah

[Burton Borrok]

Re: location ... Location ... LOCATION!

Hi Debora,
Welcome to the boards – and I mean you really are welcome here. We are a congenial group, ready to help whenever we can. I think you’ll find lots and lots of information here, plus you will probably find some of us ready to give you personal experience information on just about anything you may face, and lest we forget, Lisa Salberg our founder and president, has a wealth of information she is more then willing to share.

I don’t know – for someone whose primary language is Portuguese, you certainly do a very good job in English. I shutter to think what would happen if I tried to communicate in Portuguese.

We do have some people here from various places around the world – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the West Indies, from time to time someone pops up from Europe, we have a woman on her way back to teach in China, and I’m sure there are others I can’t recall at the moment but who I do not wish to slight - - and now we even have a contributor from South America.

Everyone is welcome here, but frankly it’s a lot easier all around if they can communicate in English – even if that means sitting with a translation dictionary and picking out words one at a time. So again, welcome. We look forward to seeing more posts from you soon.
Burt

[Debora from Brazil]

Thank you so much!

I'd like to thank you for your very kind replies. I'm sure that I will find my way around the site eventually and being able to count on you lot to guide me, makes me feel more confident. I was going to write my heart story here, but since I have it all ready in my Home Page, here's the address so that you can go there and see it for yourself if you like. From there you should also be able to view my yahoo photo albums. Here you are:

http://uk.geocities.com/deboraginastewart1/

Yes, Portuguese is quite a difficult language to learn, but if you have already got any notion of Spanish, then you should find it easier to understand . By the way, thanks for the compliment regarding my English , it's very encouraging. I have been speaking it for over 20 years now and some people have even said I've got a Scottish accent!

Débora from Brazil

[Virginia]

Re: Débora from Brazil

Hi Debora,

I am still new too. I just wanted to welcome you and also echo that Lisa is a wealth of information.

Sorry to read about your several surgeries. Hopefully with the progress the medical community is making, it will not be so invasive. (robots)

It is nice to talk with someone from another country.

[Burton Borrok]

Re: Débora from Brazil

Debora,
You know you have arrived when you can joke in a second language. Bravo. I notice that you speak American with a slight trace of English/Scottish. I can’t tell if you have a brogue from here, but I wouldn’t doubt it.

Reminds me of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and the confusion between the spoken Orphan and often. As I’m sure you are aware English is a conglomerate language, taking pieces from many other languages, and generating variations on multiple themes. For every rule there is an exception.

I remember in college English we had an instructor who tried desperately to preserve the language in the exact form in which he learned it, and fought bitterly against the changes that go on constantly. One evening a student (we were all adults going to school after a day of work) mentioned that he had a bagel with a smear (pronounced schmeer). (This is a term that was common in the New York area at that time.) The instructor became red in the face and announced in strident terms, “The one rule in the English language that is inviolate is that ‘S’ is never pronounced like ‘SH’.” He no sooner got the words out of his mouth, but another student raised his hand and called out, “Are you sure?” The class fell into hysterical laughter, and the teacher broke down and laughed too, saying “I guess I asked for that.” He had forgotten we were not kids.
Burt

[Debora from Brazil]

I love English!

Hello Burton and all of you, how are you doing? ever since I was a child, I've always loved the English language even though we didn't have much contact with it in those days. I remember that when I first started really learning the language, I would stay up half of the night studying it and I was the best in my class. There was even a time when my mum said to me that she doubted I would marry a Brazilian for I would end up falling in love with someone from an English speaking country. Although I liked the idea, I thought it would be unlikely since going abroad was something we'd never even discussed. Anyway, when I was 17, I startedcorresponding with people from other countries to practise my English. I had this friend who used to be a member of the Queen Fan Club and had lots of magazines with the addresses. I then chose a few and among them was Robert's who has now been my husband for nearly twenty years. He had just turned 16 and I recall thinking that he was too young but cute.He, in turn, had been a member for quite a while and was no longer interested in writing to anybody new, but because I was from Brazil, and until then he had no pen pals from my country, he thought it could be nice for a change. After having exchanged a couple of letters he said he was in love with me, and well, after about two years, there we were. In 1984 I went to meet him in Glasgow, Scotland where we got engaged on his 18th birthday. I spent two months there but had to come back to Brazil. By that time we were already making plans to get married and 5 months later I returned to Glasgow and we made our dream come true. We now have a 7 year old daughter called Bruna who speaks Portuguese and English. While I was living in Britain, I also studied German and Spanish as well as English. I am a German decendant on my mother's side, but have forgotten how to speak it because I never really practised it. I have many relatives in Germany and I even met some of them on my trip to Gemany in 1984 too on my way back from Scotland. It was so nice and romantic waiting for days to get a letter from Robert, and yet I wonder if things would have turned out the same way if the internet had existed in those days.

Thanks for reading,

Débora from Brazil