[Huawei Nova/Nova Plus Guides, News, & Discussion] Vinnom:
Sorry, I posted it and then forgot to update you guys. Things got back to normal, I think on tuesday from last week. The government agreed to cut down diesel prices (in R$0,46 which represents almost 12% of diesel price). Gasoline and ethanol (ethanol is used a lot here - don't know if in your countries too) didn't change, but maybe their prices will go up. Well, after prices being down, drivers went back to work. For now everything is ok. But this year is an election one and things could go bad. We are frustrated with our government (I know, most of the population in the world is)... The president is part of a scheme that resulted in an impeachment of the former and our congress and senate is just s#it - House of Cards is just a kid's joke compared to this and I mean it. Lets see what will come from this year elections. I'll update you guys on that.

About companies paying the fuel, well they don't. They pay for the trucks which are their own. But there is a lot of drivers who works as freelancers (I think this is the best word to describe how they work). In fact, the most part of the drivers work like that. For them, the company hire them and pay the fee for their work. From this fee, they will have to pay for the fuel, sometimes for the toll and the eventual fixes in the truck. The amount they was paying for fuel was around 42% from what they gain. That is why they decided to be on strike.

hahahahaha this is so funny! I already listened to a podcast about cognition and language learning where the guy who was the specialist on th field said that this is just normal when we're learning new languages. As for your kid, he is learning a lot of new things, so probably in his head must be just a beautiful chaotic mess of words hahahah

I can say that I already experienced some situations like that. It happens a lot to me lol. I'm talking - be it with my students or friends - and then I want to say something but I can't remember the word in portuguese, just in english or even in russian. Sometimes I just spit it out the way it comes to my mind and most of the times it isn't even a real word lol

You know, brazilians can be quite an enjoyable people. Above all if you're in Brazil, you can expect people being really pleasant to be with and to talk with. We are quite the funny guys too, so probably we (can't exclude myself from this) will ask you to say funny things, but just to kid a bit, nothing serious. But if you say "I'm from America", some people will just freak out. We call this "síndrome de vira-lata" not sure how to translate that haha. It is when people think less from themselves. I can see two possible outcomes from this: 1 - they try to not draw attention, so they don't expose themselves; 2 -they try to make other people feel bad, so they can "balance" their feelings. The latter is probably what happened in your case.

You see, I had this teacher called Linda. She was an american who lived a long time in Brazil. When she said to us in the class "I'm an american", one of the students asked her why the americans say they're from America, not United States. I think she was already familiarized with this kind of question after living and teaching for a long time here, because she gave us a swift answer: "We say that because we are. Each one of the others countries of the american continent didn't do it from their own prerrogative". I liked this answer, because is true. And it isn't like it changes much. So I really think that those people who verbally attacked you were just suffering from "síndrome de vira-lata" lol I'm really sorry =/

About helping people who are struggling to communicate with you, in a language that is not they mother tongue, I totally agree with you. Come on, it is really hard to talk to people, even in our own language, sometimes we can't find the right words or the right tone (I know that in chinese, tone is really a thing - But I know nothing of chinese though... maybe I can count to ten, because of wushu training xD) and people ends up misunderstanding our point because of that. So if this person wants and is trying to talk to me it feels good to help them ^^

PS: xkcd about communication xD