Find out the best way to greeting in Brazil. To any foreigners one of the most different habits that we have have in Brazil is greeting with kisses and hugs even if you do not know the other person very well.  In Sao Paulo we usually greet with only one kiss but in Rio de Janeiro, for example, it is common to greet with two kisses one on each cheek.  However you can also greet another person in a different way. The young are a case in point of because usually they greet each other with a handshake in an informal way. When I was younger I used to fist bump on the hand of my friends to greet them.

We also like to do the hang loose gesture to say that everything is cool. Usually tourists think it is very funny.

Brazil is huge.  I like to say that inside of my country there are different countries. One common custom is eating beans and farofa with everything. It is not uncommon for example to see a person eating beans, farofa and pasta for example. Brazil is a country that was colonized by the Catholic Church, that’s why some families pray before eating, but nowadays I am realizing that the numbers of people that do it are decreasing.

It is not unusual to hear wrong ideas about Brazil. A lot of foreigners have misconceptions some of them think that in Brazil we speak Spanish, that the capital of my country is Buenos Aires, that everybody grew up in a jungle or in favelas – and the worst part, usually tourists only know my country because they watched movies like BOPE or God’s City then they overgeneralize that all favelas have only drug dealer and muggers. When a foreigner says something like that about my country using snobby words, mainly about favelas, it puts me off.

But I always try to explain that my country is not just it.

We have a ton of problems. Nowadays we are living through one of the biggest problems of our history because we are experiencing a coup. However it is good to see my friends and plenty of young people going to the streets and fighting for our rights because a few years ago we lived a tougher period of dictatorship and nowadays we are going back to struggling for our country . That’s why sometimes I feel let down when a person says bad things about my country, because I know we are much more than just favelas, caipirinhas, soccer and samba.

Debora, Upper-Intermediate Class