[brazil, week 5] My friend has a physical calendar with pictures of Snoopy on it

03 Apr, 2026

My friend has a physical calendar with pictures of Snoopy on it

, and I adore it. So much. In my hour break between finishing work and having my bass class, I coincidentally ran into her when looking for a place to sit down and eat some quick food. We chatted, sang a teeny bit, laughed at the lyrics of Trem das Onze, made a teeny bit of the differences between Norway and Brazil before we both had to get going.

Before we got going there's a concert or something we have to write down the date of, and she takes out of her bag the cutest Snoopy-calendar I have ever seen. It's a book, circa A4 and not so thick since it's grouped in months and not in weeks/days. The pages are pastel with drawings of Snoopy snuck in here and there.

Another friend of mine who lives here, makes her own calendar and hangs it on her wall. It's beautiful and has such a personality and expression which simply cannot be matched. It's amazing, and kind of makes me consider using a physical calendar myself. At least having an extra one at home. I do actually have one when I think of it, I just don't use it.

While nothing can beat the practicality of my digital one (especially when it comes to rapidly changing schedules), I can't say I'm not tempted in using a physical one as well.

Especially one that I can put stickers on.

I can (almost) communicate now.

After about a month of 6hrs/week with language classes, I can almost communicate now. As in, I can finally have conversations for most things required. I'm somewhere between A1 and A2 now, and could probably approach (not reach, approach) B levels within a month or two, especially if I start using my flash cards and stuff again - after all, remembering and learning new words is currently my biggest hurdle. It's not like I need to find even more immersion that what I get from living and working here.

In the past weeks I have:

Gone to a book store and asked for + bought a book by myself while having a conversation with the shop owner
Had my first proper conversation about learning language with my boss at the library and only having to switch to English for four words
Done small talk with the people working at the gates of the conservatory over a cup of coffee, only to be told that "[I] learn very rapidly. [She] understands everything I say."
Translated a full song lyric with very little help, only having to look up a few words. Not a long lyric, but still a lyric.
Had a proper conversation with another student about choro-music and exchange, using very little English. It did require some effort from both of us, but we almost understood everything from eachother.

I have little doubts that I will get close to street-fluency if I continue like this, and really look forward to when I'm able to just read without any second thought.

I kind of want to change desktop from GNOME now.

Not because it's bad, but because I just want something that looks less modern. I recently looked at pictures of early releases of GNOME and KDE and they just filled me with a specific sense of joy that I don't get from modern design. Am I jumping on the nostalgia-for-a-period-i-didn't-experience-train? Definitely. But it also leaves now at 11 and if I miss it I can't take another one before tomorrow morning. I don't know what I would move to though. I don't reaally want to use xorg again (even if not directly opposed to it) and tbh I'd probably miss the modern features that comes with a fully featured desktop like GNOME really quick, but it's just-

Look!!!!!!

windowmaker