South American Pop Culture Leaves Me Baffled (II)

After that I starting watching the TV a bit more closely but have to confess that I understood very little. I realised at this point that beginning to learn Spanish is not enough. If you want to live in a foreign country you have to learn the culture. There are some things which the locals take for granted which a new comer simply has no way of knowing.
I can’t really use the same excuse for my next problem. A few of us went to the cinema to see the film Ciudad De Dios. I have to confess that I was completely lost and told one of my friends that I couldn’t understand a word of it. He pointed out that as the film is Brazilian they were speaking Portuguese instead of Spanish. I had been so busy trying to make out what they were saying that I hadn’t even noticed the Spanish subtitles down at the bottom of the screen.
After that I tried listening to the radio but was even more lost than with the TV. Without some sort of image to cling onto I had no idea what was going on. I remember listening to a news bulletin at one point and thinking it was the result of football match. After a few minutes I realised that they were actually talking about a war somewhere and ended up being convinced that it was really an election going on. If you are going to learn Spanish my advice is to keep the radio switched off until you are pretty confident with your new tongue.