In November 2009 my wife and I travelled to Brazil, partly because November in the UK is grim but also because I had still yet to meet her parents.

Now, meeting the in-laws / your partner’s family can be a little nerve-wracking at the best of times, but seeing as I only knew survivor Spanish (not very helpful in Brazil) and they knew zero English (or so I thought), I was feeling distinctly edgy.

Would meeting the in-laws be different in Brazil?

The nerves gradually increased as we landed in São Paulo and then caught a taxi – the destination being our in-laws’ apartment.

My disposition was not helped by the taxi seeming to take an age to wind its way through the city’s notorious traffic. Whilst this gave me plenty of time to rehearse my introduction (“Mutio prazer” – Nice to meet you), it also meant that I had even more time to ponder how it was all going to go wrong and I was going to make a complete tit of myself. Continue Reading