You know you're an American in Brazil when...

This is something that another exchange student found and posted, and I enjoyed.  I took the ones most relevant to my exchange life, and re-blogged them for your entertainment.  

1. You go to a restaurant, read the menu, and wonder, "X-salad? X-burger? X-chicken? X-bacon? X-WTF?" ("X" sounds like "shee" in Portuguese, and it means cheese is added to the sandwich.)

2. You're afraid of escova progressiva (a popular hair-straightening process that uses chemicals known to cause cancer).

3. You ask for "pau" in a bakery. ("Pão" is bread but without the nasalization, a sound that's difficult for foreigners to make, it means "wood," which is also slang for "dick.")

4. You can't read "kkk" without thinking about a racist group. (Americans laugh "haha," but Brazilians laugh huahuahua, hihihi, rsrsrs or kkk.)

5.You discover that people from Rio think they're better than people from São Paulo, people from São Paulo think they're better than people from Rio, and people from Rio Grande do Sul refuse to accept they're Brazilian.

6.A friend tells you that the party starts at 7 p.m., so you arrive at 7 p.m. And no one is there. (Time is relative in Brazil.)

7. You're given a nickname based on your skin color, and you think that's racist. (Brazilians don't view race in the same way that many Westerners do, so it's quite common to encounter nicknames that translate as "Little black guy," "Little Japanese girl" or "Ghost girl.")

8. Now when you go to an American beach, you think the other women look like they're wearing diapers. (No, Brazilians don't typically wear thong bikinis, but bikini bottoms are considerably smaller.)

9. You were almost hit by a car when you entered the pedestrian crossing because you trusted the drivers would stop.

10. You feel guilty about having a maid.

11. It took you a while to realize why there was a small trash bin next to the toilet, and by then, you needed a plumber.

12. You wonder, "Why aren't there any seatbelts in the backseat of cars? Does a magical forcefield protect passengers?"

13. You forget what it's like to live in a country that follows laws and learn to embrace the "jeitinho." When you return to the US, you try to bribe a government worker and are arrested.

14. Your friends ask you to bring electronics back from the US.

15. You think it's strange to put corn, mayonnaise or mashed potatoes on a hot dog.

16. You don't understand why a lot of Brazilian women will wax their bikini line but bleach their thigh hair.

17. You make a lot of mistakes in Portuguese, but no one realizes because they make them too.