Waiting in Line

"The waitress is taking forever to come back with our check," my brother quipped as my Dad guzzled down his last drop of coffee. I was too busy taking everything in to realize the tardiness. The smell of coffee and waffles danced in my nostrils as I lost myself in the act of people-watching. The comment startled me -Why are they in such a rush?  I had just come back from Buenos Aires, where people savored coffee and chatted for hours in marathon sobremesas. I couldn't believe how uptight they seemed!

But alas, after a few months home, I quickly returned to my American ways and while I didn't like how structured social events could be, I relished in the sheer efficiency of everything. Going to the bank was not a three-hour long wait-fest, no one glared at me when I tried to break a twenty dollar bill, I knew that heat and air conditioning were available and reliable, and the bus actually had a schedule that it adhered to! (People laughed when I asked if there was a bus schedule in Buenos Aires. Silly gringa, the bus comes when it feels like it!). 

And you would think that after living in Chile for five months and having lived in Brazil for one, I would have adjusted to the slower, more flexible rhythm of the South American life. But I still find myself swiftly walking past people on the sidewalk, rather than strolling at Brazilian-pace. I still remember that I'm me wherever I go in the world, and I'm a somewhat type-A person who loves structure, organization, and predictability. Well, that doesn't mesh well with Brazilian culture. Brazilians joke that they love standing in lines because there's a line (and consequently, a lot of waiting) for everything. But I try to be positive and realize that living in Brazil will be excellent patience training, which let's be honest, is something that everyone could use a little more of. 

But today was a particularly grueling day of patience training.
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After a rough morning of feeling awful from a cold, I decided to go to the supermarket to get some fruits and vegetables to make a smoothie. My Pelotas fried food and sweets diet probably wasn't doing my immune system any good. Plus, I was excited to buy beets because I had tried them and didn't like them. But with that high iron content, I was determined to find a way to cook them and hide them into a smoothie to make them tolerable. So I ran off to the grocery store, still in a haze from my cold. I planned to go the supermarket and then quickly come home to sleep off whatever bug I had caught.

So I grabbed my veggies and walked to the shortest check out line. There were only two people in front of me, but something had happened with the lady talking to the cashier. She pointed at the screen, chattering in mumbled Portuguese that I didn't understand. She swiped her card once. More conversing and pointing ensued. She swiped her card again. Nothing. All of the actions happened in slow-motion speed as people in the other lines checked out and left. I grumbled and looked at my watch. Twenty minutes had gone by. I wished that I had brought some toilet paper because my runny nose wasn't anticipating such a long wait. I rested my feverish head against a shelf. I tapped my foot. I sighed. The woman behind me commented, "You have to have a lot patience here..." Ironically, she sat her basket of groceries on a shelf and high-tailed it out of the store empty-handed. I guess she was fed up with Slow-Mo-cashier-lady. And if the situation was testing Brazilian's patience, it was sure to test mine.

One would think that after spending 20 minutes checking out one person, Slow-Mo-Cashier Lady would have a little spring in her step. But no. She rang up each item of the person in front of me as if it were floating through molasses. 

Finally, after a good half hour of waiting, it was my turn! I felt like stretching my arms out in elation like Cristo Branco himself. Yay! I could finally buy my stuff, go home, blow my nose, and SLEEP! I unpacked my basket with the speed of a professional-cup stacker. Money in hand, I was ready to go. Each item slowly passed through the molasses whirlpool of the scanner, but everything was going smoothly until we got to the fruit. "What is this?" the cashier asked me. I looked at her in disbelief, "Uhm..a mango." She reached over to the fruit list and typed in the code. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Item not found. She typed it in again. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Eventually she asked her coworker the code. BEEP BEEP BEEP. But by the grace of God, eventually the mango appeared on the screen after a serious of number punches. Okay, it's a little strange that someone at a grocery store can't recognize a mango, but I'll let it slide. Maybe she had a visual disability, or maybe she had grown up in a faraway land where mangos where some fantastical urban legend. 

"What this?" the cashier asked, holding up my avocado. I laughed to myself inside my head. Would it be like this for every produce item? I told her that it was an avocado, and the slow cycle repeated: reaching for the produce-item list, BEEP BEEP BEEPing a million times, asking her coworker for help, and then finally pushing the item through the scanner at turtle speed. Finally! The machine stopped BEEP BEEP BEEPing but supposedly the cashier had rung my avocado up as a melon. I wasn't even going to say anything. Let that cashier have her moment; why yes that's a melon if you want to believe it so!

"What's this?" The impatient people in line started calling out, "A BEET! IT'S A BEET!" The same pattern ensued for my squash, which was luckily the last produce item. A woman in another line chuckled at the cashier, "Mam, you don't really know your produce, do you? You should learn your fruits and vegetables." After a good five minutes had passed, I whipped out my bill and paid. I then rushed out of the agonizingly slow grocery store sniffling and sneezing, telling my body to wait a few more moments for a tissue. 

So I'm learning that there will be a lot of moments in Brazil that test my patience, but I'm a better person for waiting. There are moments of frustration, like when I wish I knew the word for 'squash' so that I could tell the cashier what this mystery vegetable was. Some of this frustration is outward (long grocery lines, lack of order) but some of it is inward (Why isn't my Portuguese better? Why do I still feel like an outsider? Have I done enough here?). But one speaker at orientation told us that some days, you have to just embrace the suck, which is what I did today. Today was a suck-embracing kind of day due to my cold and other mini-frustrations, but victory felt oh so sweet as I cuddled up in bed, blew my nose, and sipped on my iron-rich beet smoothie. 

(P.S. My beet smoothie has mango, avocado, bananas, beets, and yogurt. Strange combination but surprisingly good!)