Friday, May 2, 2008

Labor Day Holiday May 1

Yesterday was Labor Day. First off, all holidays in this country are celebrated only on the day that is designated as the holiday. So if Christmas is on a Sunday - you don't get Monday off.

So yesterday was Thursday. May 1 is Labor Day. All stores, schools and businesses are closed for the day.

The celebrations started on Wednesday night for most folks. The music is very loud here on weekends and holidays. We have been in Santarem for almost two weeks and we have celebrated two holidays.

Ed went investigating for the location of the music so he could take photos. He came back and said there is a huge block party two streets over. Betty, Dean and I went back with him. Dean was carrying his frisbee. I just had my water bottle.

We got to the block party and there is a large swimming pool, with hundreds of kids - absolutely no lifeguards - swimming with noodles tied around their waists as life preservers, sliding down plastic backyard toddler slides into the baby pool, kids diving and jumping everywhere. We were there for two hours and didn't hear of any accidents. I didn't stay around to life guard though - too stressful for me.

There was a large dance area with couples dancing. Speakers playing really loud music. I don't know if there was a band playing or just a sound system. But it was sooo loud, just thinking about it makes my head hurt.

There was also an empty soccer field. So Dean and I go out and we started throwing the frisbee. As soon as we got on the field, a few kids came out and wanted to play with us. The crowd grew until we had about 20 kids playing. It was sooo much fun. We learned their names and we just played for about an hour. Dean gave the frisbee to Pedro, a boy who spoke a little English. Pedro looked to be about 11 or 12 years old.

Dean and I got half way back to FE, when the boys came around the other block. They just wanted to talk to us about the US. They asked if all of the US was like Las Vegas. They only know what they see on TV. We must have talked with them for about 30 minutes on the city street. Stevie and Mike came walking down the block. They had been coming to look for us. Mike had a soccer ball in his hands so we all walked back to the soccer field. There were another 15 or more boys on the soccer field. Mike split the boys up into two sides: skins and shirts. There were at least 40 kids on the soccer field. They proceeded to play soccer for an hour- all 40 at the same time. I filmed for the first 30 minutes, then I sat down just to watch. The boys ranged in ages 8 - 16 and their soccer skills were out of this world.

Not one of them played with shoes on. The shirts won. :-)

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