Hah, that's something that always amazed me: I lived in Brazil for 7 years (coming from Argentina) and became fluent in Brazilian Portuguese in the process. Funnily enough, I don't have any problem at all understanding most Portuguese people, whereas my wife wouldn't be able to understand half of what they said. How does that work? :)
Having a few Brazilian friends, I would say they have some hard time getting our pronunciation, whereas foreigners seem to be more open minded, kind of.
I have lived this experience with French. I have less problems to understand French Canadian than my French friends.
