improve my portuguese

My sweetie got me Pimsleur Instant Conversation Brazilian Portuguese and the Langenscheidt Portuguese/English dictionary for Christmas, so it’s time to kickstart getting back up to speed with this.

Ten years ago, I spent six months in Brazil working on a software development project, and I picked up some Portuguese in the process. Now, as I joked to friends, I wasn’t able to discuss things like “politics” or “philosophy” intelligenly, even after six months, but ordering food – that I had down in less than 24 hours.

And that, such as it was, was after regular exposure ten years ago. I’ve made attempts at picking up languages properly that haven’t gotten traction yet; Portuguese (due to Brazil) and German (due to high school) are the two where I have some real foundation to build from, so I’m working where I have a head start.