"Curl up!"

During my trip in Argentina, I picked up a Get South Free Guidebook for independent travellers in Buenos Aires. An interesting guide for backpackers, written in English, with tourist attractions, general informations about cities around Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and hostels addresses. Nice! I used five texts from it for translation in my classes. It was awesome, because students knew some different places next to them.

While I was reading about Rosario-ARG, I noticed a curious phrasal verb. Read this: "... curl up with a book from the free library". Do you know what curl up ("cãrl âp") means? To bend your knees, legs, foots, body and arms, like a curled hair. So the guide invited me to do it on a sofa and try an old book there. 

But curling up is an act basically american. Or even european. I remember a girl from USA in a straight corridor, with her laptop, totally curled up on her own, in a limited, small space. American behaviour. I think you've already watched that in a movie: "Hey, you're invading my space!"

Brazilians do that different. We stretch out! We put our legs in a place, the body in another and the head or arms in another one. We occupy lots of spaces, often spreading ourselves over other people.

This advertise was written for americans, we see. Brazilian people like free space, instead of curling up.

Kindly tip # 5: Curl up means to bend members and turn into a ball form. Stretch out means the opposite: to spread your body along your space.

Movie tip # 3: watch The social network. The youngest people may not like this film, because we don't find trully action scenes. But the dialogs are incredible! American accent and velocity level extreme.