Yesterday, in a fit of boredom, I went to Goodwill to dig through the used books. The pickings were slim, but I did score an English/Portuguese dictionary printed in Brazil. It's a welcome addition to all my other foreign language dictionaries. I've got English/French, English/Spanish. English/German, English/Italian, English/Latin, English/Greek, English/Danish, and now English/Portuguese. It's a pity I can't actually read any of these languages. Actually I can read a little Spanish and a little more French because I did study them in school, but I don't know them well enough to actually converse or read a book.

My usual way to test how comprehensive a dictionary might be is to look up curse words. Most of my foreign language dictionaries don't include curse words, thus rendering them somewhat useless in certain situations. I breathed a slight sigh of relief when I found out the English/Portuguese dictionary I got yesterday has fuck in it (relações, in case you were wondering). This dictionary isn't quite as comprehensive and useful as I'd want, though. There's plenty of useful, important words not in here. Where's fellatio? The king of the useful foreign language dictionaries is, in my opinion, the huge unabridged one put out by Harper Collins. (I'm sure there's others, but this is the one I happen to own.) No matter how depraved your trip to [insert the name of any Spanish-speaking country here] is you can find the words you need for your "unique" situation. It's all here: sex, drugs, violence, etc. So, if you find yourself in Montevideo needing to buy some heroin, find a transvestite prostitute, and hire a hitman, this is the book that you should use for reference.

Last year I signed up for a class in spoken Chinese. On the first day of school I went to class and waited for someone, anyone to show up. No one ever came. I went to the main office and found out I was the only one who had signed up for the class.