Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed...

As promised last week, here are some pictures from the two Junina Festivals (see last week's post for an explanation of these "country bumpkin" festivals) at the two projects where I volunteer. The festival at São Gabriel was Friday afternoon and just for the kids in the Shade and Fresh Water program there. The Liberdade project had their festival Sunday night on the street for the whole neighborhood.





Girls dressed up for the São Gabriel festival














The bride and groom for the São Gabriel square dancing
















Square dancing at the São Gabriel festival












Liberdade before the festival












Two American country bumpkins (another volunteer, Chris, and me)











The fishing game at Liberdade














Square dancing at the Liberdade festival







One of the coolest things about these festivals was that most of the kids wanted to dance and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was particularly impressed when I was reviewing the photos I'd taken and noticed that even the children that don't normally smile were grinning the whole time while they were dancing. I guess the point was that they were getting to be children but also to participate in a popular cultural ritual. I'm constantly surprised when I see the children here do things that American kids would think weren't cool. That's a part of the Brazilian culture that's really great--a little less of the adolescent aloofness, rebellion and age gap.

I danced in both of the square dances at the Liberdade Festival last night. The first time was with Chris, another American volunteer (see photo above), and the second time was with the husband of one of the teachers, who was sober when he was introduced to me at the beginning of the festival but managed to be drunk by the time we had to perform. Then there was the official town drunk at the performance dancing next to the children (he had to be asked to dance outside the circle) and the neighborhood dogs, who were wandering around and kept getting in the way of the dancers. It made for quite an entertaining evening...

On Saturday, I went to my first Brazilian wedding. It was outside at a beautiful "country" location in the city. I don't quite understand why, but apparently it's quite popular to have outdoor weddings even in the winter. Woman were wearing sleeveless, formal dresses, and I was freezing with a blazer on top of my dress. Most of the elements of the ceremony were the same as weddings in the U.S. However, a few things I'd never experienced before at a wedding included fireworks, part of the bridal party processing to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and the bride recessing to "I Say a Little Prayer for You." Apparently that song is quite popular here, so I heard the "opera" version performed by the singers, violin, trumpet and keyboard for the recessional and then the band played played a more traditional version at the reception. Not only were glow-in-the-dark souvenirs (bracelets, blinking necklaces & rings) distributed during the reception, but there was also a novelty photographer there with various funny hats, wigs and boas to take photos of the guests and print them out on paper pre-printed with the image of the bride and groom for everybody to take home. The bride comes from a musical family, and she serenaded her groom as a surprise, and later, her father sang several numbers with the band. The ceremony was supposed to start at 4 and started closer to 5, and when we left the reception at 10:30 or so, it was just winding down. The experience made me wonder who originally came up with the wedding traditions that we use in the U.S.

And finally, last week I forgot to mention a soccer analogy that occurred to me when I was watching the World Cup games. It's much easier to see what's going on when the game is shown from above; that might be what God's perspective is, that He can see everything and how it's all interacting. On the other hand, when they show the view from the players' perspective, it's very confusing to see exactly who is where and what is going on. That's more like the human perspective, where you can't see in more than one direction or beyond a certain limited field of vision. And like life, it may look like nothing is happening during part of the game, and then, all of a sudden, events coincide to permit a goal, which might be interpreted in life as a success or a big change.