Se você pode ler esta, não abri-lo!

A big blue box with non-English writing atop it. (English translation: If you can read this, do not open it!)

 

This box opens to reveal three smaller boxes labeled 1-3.

One contains three small bottles labeled 1-3.
Two contains one medium sized bottle.
Three is locked with a combination lock.

The three small bottles contain a piece of paper with non-English words on them and dots. (English translation: 21, 3, 25).

The medium-sized bottle contains a picture and more writing. (English translation: This is how the box opens up).

By using the three numbers from the small bottles, the combination for box #3 is 21, 3, 25. This opens to a small wooden box.

The small wooden box has writing on it (Natal, RN - Natal, Rio Grande do Norte (a city, state in Brazil)). Inside can be seen part of a QR code, but the code cannot be scanned with the small portion that can be viewed.

When using the diagram from the middle-sized bottle, and holding two diagonal corners of the right-hand side of the box, the inside of the box slides out...

revealing the full QR code!

And when that QR code is scanned it takes you to the Brazilian-Portuguese portion of livemocha.com, a free online language-learning site.

When the box was opened in class I did not expect it to be so difficult to decipher. I had truly forgotten about the internet, so the language itself was quickly discovered, and a collaboration of knowledge about italian, spanish, etc. helped my peers to understand the letters for the combo. To be honest, when I had first received the small wooden box, I could not open it by myself; I had to be shown how. Even though I had labeled the boxes in what order they should be opened, it didn't make a difference that both 1 and 2 were being looked at simultaneously, which only provided more of a group effort to solve the box. I was pretty excited about my box, so I was glad that the class seemed to enjoy it as well, (considering it is basically an interactive advertisement for livemocha.com). 

If I could do it again, (or make a "real" version, seeing as this is just a prototype more or less), I would have a nicer blue box. In fact, the box would be green! I was trying to imitate the Brazilian flag's colors. So the large box would be green, small boxes 1 and 2 would be yellow (as they are, but not lego-boxes), and box 3 would be blue. I really wanted to catch all of the senses that I could, so inside the small bottles is bath salts that smell good, and I had tried to soak the blue box in a "Carnaval" scented air freshener, but that didn't really work as well as the salts. I would have liked to have when the box opens, that Brazilian songs being to play softly, just to entice the opener and help them better hear the language and connect it to the written words. My goal was to inspire people to learn Brazilian-Portuguese by providing a fun way to introduce the language, giving them the means of learning it (from the website), and have them take it from there. I'm very happy with my project, and that's saying a lot because I usually don't like what I create for class assignments.