Gum = chiclet

Daniella took me to a restaurant with her friends that had a buffet of food from Minas Gervais (a Brazilian state) which had spectacular food. They had a spicy sausage appetizer that was amazing. I could have eaten just that continuously for lunch and been happy.

She and her friends speak english very well. I am really impressed by them. They told me their english was not good but it's like 10000% better than my Spanish so I think they're being a bit hard on themselves. I spoke some broken Spanish to them and used whatever Portuguese I knew as well (almost nothing).

I tried really hard to listen and decipher some Portuguese when they talked to eachother, but I didn't get too far with that. They tried to translate most of the conversations into english for me, which was something they didn't have to do at all of course. I don't like making people have to work that hard. It's my own problem if I'm in a country and I don't understand the local language.

We finished the meal, and afterwards Daniella pulled out some trident gum and asked me if I wanted a chiclet. When I saw that the gum was trident and not chiclet, I realized that they use the word Chiclet to mean gum. I asked Daniella and she confirmed. Chiclet was the first gum in Brazil and so the name brand stuck like kleenex did for tissue paper in the states.