Reading...and trying to understand...

I see my friend Maria about once a month. She is Portuguese and speaks perfect English. It's hard for me to try my Portuguese with her. I feel very shy about it for some reason. So, we speak in English. Last week, we met for dinner. We stopped in a bookstore, (Lisbon is full of bookstores - the Portuguese seem to really value books ), and she bought me her favorite children's book. The name of the book is : A Menina Do Mar, which means something like "The Girl of the Sea". The author of this book, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, is a very famous writer and poet. My Portuguese teacher Rui brought our class some books by Portuguese authors and he was kind enough to lend me one of her poetry books. Her son is also a writer (Miguel Tavares). My friend Shelly lent me his novel Equator, about the cocoa plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe , which was very interesting. Anyway, Maria had mentioned this children's book before and I was surprised to see who the author was. She is so famous here in Portugal, people just call her "Sophia". Here is some information about her:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_de_Mello_Breyner_Andresen 

http://storberose.blogspot.pt/2012/06/pursuit-of-real-poetry-of-sophia-de.html

So, now I am reading A Menina do Mar, and trying to understand it. It's not easy reading for me. In fact, I haven't even finished the first page. There is a lot of new vocabulary, and grammar. It's so different to read a long text in authentic language rather than something in a textbook. But, I'm trying, slowly, to read and understand some of it. Now I know how it feels for my students to read in English. You have to have a lot of perseverance ! (Meaning: keep trying...) Thank you Maria !