Tea at Glenbrooke

Being Erica - A funny and cute canadian show

Being Erica is a Canadian show, ended in 2011, which quickly became my new favourite. It has only four seasons with 12 or 13 episodes. It's a good lenght for whom wasn't used to watch shows, but too bad for whom fell in love with it and didn't want to become an orphan of this great story.

Erica (Erin Karpluk) is a beautifull, smart and nice woman, but she's completely unsatisfied with everything in her life. Even with a master degree in literature and a dream to write a novel, she never worked in this field and can't even keep a job in a call center, because she is "too qualified".
Her love life is equally bad, without any serious relationship and being dumped by a candidate because he needed to work out. Nobody understands the reason why Erica doesn't have a good job and a good boyfriend. For worse, her little sister, Sam (Joanna Douglas), has the perfect life. She is a surgeon in a good hospital in Toronto and is getting married with her old boyfriend.

Did you feel something "familiar"? Erica is a tipical protagonist from chick-lit books and romantic comedy movies. The change happens at the moment she is feeling more loser than ever: She meets Dr Tom (Michael Riley), a therapist whom promises help her to solve all of her problems. On a twinkling of an eye, Erica is back to High School and has the chance of undo one of her past mistakes.

On each first season episode, Erica visits a different moment of her life in order to undo a regret. Then, she starts to discover more about herself and learn to make the right decisions. From the second season on, the episodes don't have anymore a recipe; everything can happen. The beginning of this season is a little boring, but after it becomes good and the ending is great. Third season is the best and the forth is very good too.

The best thing about Being Erica is the fact that, despite the fantastic side of time travels, it's all very real. Erica's conflicts could be mines - and, actually, there's a regret of hers that is totally my main regret in life. She goes back to the past for learn about the present and to make the right decisions in the future, so we end up absorbing all that. It's almost like doing therapy with her!

Besides, go back in time can be a bit confusing sometimes. This - and the fact that Erica is a little crazy - is responsible for some hilarious scenes. Watch this video, and I won't need to say anything else. Dr Tom is also a great character. Using in his lines quotes as diverse as Jesus Christ and Paris Hilton, he's like a father for both Erica and the viewer.

To end, I have to mention the importance of two of my favourite things have in the show: music and books. Erica works on a publisher and my favourite character is a musician. And the soundtrack is amazing!

It's good for female eyes too.

I hope I am emfatic enough to convince everybody to watch Being Erica - I mean, whose I did not convince yet, since I have a good collection of addicted friends for my sake.

This post was translated from my other blog, Free to be me. Please, forgive my English mistakes and feel free to appoint any correction.

Original post: Being Erica, uma série divertida e super fofa

~~PS: I don't like this layout anymore.~~

Miss you, guys.

Hello everyone,

I am writing to you from Camp NaNoWriMo, a virtual writers retreat where aspiring novelists from around the world gather to bash out 50,000 words of fiction in a month.

That's right! I've committed to writing a 50,000-word novel in a month. And to reach my goal, I am going to need all the encouragement I can get! It's like being on the Olympics. Pretty cool, huh?

If you, like me, have an interior Becky Bloom and love to buy things, you can find a lot of stuff and writing supplies at store.lettersandlight.org/merchandise. Let me know IF you're really interested in buying something.

Thank you so much for your support as I write my novel.
Wish me luck! (And hope that I don't get poison ivy.)

PS: I've reached the 10.000 words mark and things are getting boring now, so I'm having a little trouble to get the couple through the middle. Do you think I should send some flying ninjas to kill somebody and make the plot more interesting?

My Secrets

I wonder where you are right now

If close by among those I already know

Or if far away, living just in my dreams.

I'd like to let you know

That even when it's really hard

I'm waiting for you

Keeping all of me

To give you when the right time come,

That time I've been waiting for

Wishing for, dreaming about.

And deep in my heart

I can keep all these secrets

Nobody else would understand

About you and me.

(New York, October 01st, 2008)

PS: I'm not good at rhymes in any language, so forgive me for these clumsy lines ;-)

Christy Miller Series #1 - Robin Jones Gunn

Title: Summer promise/A whisper and a wish/Yours forever
(Multnomah, 2005. 496p)
Brazilian title: Promessa de verão (Betânia, 1996. 152p)
Segredos e surpresas (Betânia, 1996. 134p)
Seu para sempre (Betânia, 1997. 127p)
Author: Robin Jones Gunn
To by: Amazon | Book Depository | Better World Books

Fourteen-year-old Christy Miller has the dream summer ahead of her in sun-kissed California, staying with her aunt and uncle at their beachfront home. Aunt Marti loves to shop, and those surfers are cute—especially Todd. Christy promised her parents she wouldn’t do anything she’d regret later, and some of her beach friends are a little wild. But Todd and his “God-Lover” friends are giving Christy a new image of all things eternal. Can this summer live up to its promise?

A Whisper and a Wish

Christy’s family has moved to California just in time for her sophomore year of high school. But they’re not in Newport Beach, where she spent the summer. Instead they’re an hour and a half away and Christy has to start all over making friends. Despite an embarrassing escapade at a slumber party, things are going pretty well...until some midnight fun leads to a trip to the police station. Does God really hear every whisper? Does He know our every wish? Then why is it so hard to know who your friends really are?

Yours Forever

Christy is back at Aunt Marti and Uncle Bob’s house on the beach for the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s... and Todd is in town, too! The cute surfer completely captured Christy’s heart last summer, and she’s eager to spend every possible minute with him. But soon Christy and her aunt are barely speaking, and it seems like all her friends are mad at her, too—including Todd! Is he hers or isn’t he? And why would God let things get so tangled?

This was the third time I’ve read these books, but I think I can read more and more and not get tired of them. Robin is my favorite author, no doubt. I’ve read more than forty of her novels on past five years and I want to read the others too. Summer Promise – here, accompanied by two of its sequels, A whisper and a wish and A promise is forever – was the beginning of all this passion.

Although I’m now ten years older than Christy in her first summer on Newport Beach, I can still see myself on those characters. I can feel their feelings, their fears, their hopes. Looks like they’re long term friends, which I want to keep close to me forever. Forever friends, actually :)

(I wish I could write a better review, since I never wrote about these books on my blogs, but my English writing isn’t enough for this yet – as you probably can see by the mistakes I obviously made on my text. I'm learning! I'll learn.)

Soundtrack

How "Girl in Translation" made me feel

Title: Girl in Translation

(Riverhead, 2010. 303 pages)

Brazilian Title: Garota, Traduzida

(Suma de Letras, 2011. 240 páginas)

Author: Jean Kwok
To buy: Amazon / BetterWorldBooks / BookDepository

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life--like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant--a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

In my Portuguese review for this book I only talked about the way Kim would "fight" to find her place in this world in spite of everything else around her.

I didn't mention the love of her life.

I didn't mention how I felt days after I had finished this book. How I was overwhelmed by a bittersweet feeling of "what if".
What if Kim had made different decisions? What if Matt had done everything different too?
I kept thinking about it over and over and for some weird reason I just couldn't shake that feeling off. It took me a while, but then finally I was fine again.

The end of the book is a surprise. Good or bad, that's for each reader to decide. Most of the time I didn't like it, but then there's the point about how Kim starts to behave halfway through the book.
Personally, I don't think she would have done anything but what she ended up doing. She had to choose and so she did.
As Sandy Leah sings: "Vencer também traz perdas."* (Victory also brings losses). And it does. That could be the perfect sentence to translate what "Girl in Translation" is all about.

Questions: Have you ever felt a book getting to you like that? After you finished it, you couldn't forget it easily? Which one?

*Duras Pedras, Manuscrito (2010). Copyright: Universal Music.

Opening

Once upon a time there were three young Brazilian women that shared some passions. Jesus, music, books, internet, friendship, travel, languages. ~~No, they didn't share their boyfriends, thanks God.~~ Each one of them had their own blog(s), in Portuguese, their first language. But this was about to change...

Some day, one of these women, felt like creating a new blog. A blog in English! She could read, listening and even speak ~~alone~~ in English, but she wanted to write. So, as she had nothing else to do, she decided. A new blog was all she needed. Her job, her lots of books to read, her prototypes of books to write, her main blog, her rest and her social life weren't enough for such an active ~~and ironic~~ mind.

She decided to get into this with two of her friends. Those two friends, that - she was sure - wouldn't decline, as they also were always idle.

And here we are. And here is Tea at Glenbrooke, a place to talk about anything. If you like English, come with us.

Who are the three women?

Cíntia Mara: 19 years old (since 2005). Auto nominated "semi-hyperactive". The crazy mind that spent hours thinking about the perfect layout. Love music, books, chocolate, water, internet, earrings, soccer, blue, beach, nail polish and a bunch of another random things.

Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Aline Gomes: I'm the youngest and the most serious of the trio. Books are my best friends since forever, as well as music and writing. My passion for languages have come late, but rumor has it that I'm going to learn five idioms at least. When I step out of my cave I usually go straight to a roller coaster.

Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Annie Adelinne: I'm a very annoying friend. Always busy, sometimes with the wrong things. Favorite blogger of my lovely sisters. Silly. Brazilian. College student. The real 19 years old sipping the tea. Christian (and Christ follower). Law student. Full time reader. Gifted in every way.

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