ONE: Luciane Fortes

Luciane Fortes

A challenge I overcame: To become an individual.

A dream for my future: To become a university teacher and help in the education of professionals.

A hope for the global community: I hope that cultural differences continue existing and are respected.

Energetic, playful and song-full Luciane is another Step 1 teacher and a very multi-lingual lady indeed, speaking fluent Portuguese, Spanish, English, as well as being confident in Dutch and knowing some French.  Luciane teaches both Portuguese and English, and studied translation at university.  Her thesis was based on the translation of the English book Pygmalion written in Cockney dialect by George Bernard Shaw in the original book - when I tried to read the Cockney I had no idea what it meant, but after her months of studying it, Luciane does.  Of the two Portuguese translations she studied, Pigmalião and Pigmaleão her favourite was one that rather than attempting a direct translation, re-set the London story in Rio de Janerio and moved the Cockney dialect to Rio slang.

Luciane is engaged to engineer Amit de Boer, who's also multi-lingual with Dutch Israeli heritage, and who is currently in Holland, so they talk daily through that wonderful piece of technology Skype.  On the 30^th April Luciane and another Dutch engineer, Emile, organized an all-orange evening of drinks to celebrate the Netherland’s Queen’s Day or Koninginnedag.  In fact it turns out we were celebrating both the final year of the reign of the old Queen, and the coronation of her son as the new King.  The two stipulations for the evening were to wear as much orange as possible (funnily enough this is not a colour of the Dutch flag, but rather the colour of the Royal family) and drink plenty beer. 

We started off in a bar in town and later moved to a Samba and Forro bar where we danced until the wee hours of the morning.  Forro is a typical Brazilian style of music and pairs-dance that is danced with the bodies very close and the men using their legs as well as their arms to direct the women.  Lucicane was good for setting up both of us Europeans, Emile and I, with different dance partners throughout the night and by the end I reckon we were both getting the hang of it!

Luciane is certainly a natural dancer.  She also dances Arabain style dancing including belly dancing with a local troupe of girls and she and Rodrik have started to go to Tango classes together.  Perhpas more widely known than Forro, the other typical Brazilian dance is Samba and we watched a great film Noel: Poeta da Vila, about Noel Rosa, Rio-based poet and composer who is said to have had the biggest impact on Samba.  here's the official Brazilian trailer:

Muito obrgada por sua hospitalidade Luciane, e por a tempo dividido de bicicleta e dançando, foi muito legal conhecer a você.  Sorte com a tesis revisão, seu casamento e a mudança até Europa.  
Até outro momento em algum parte do mundo! 
:-)