São João (St John) Festival. . .

My teacher, Luci ******* Kevin's teacher, Karin

American couples Barbara and Stan ******Aaron and Holly

FISK teachers having fun ******* Musical chairs

Silly outfits. . . even Emma dressed up!

Kevin joined in for a game of "Pop the other person's balloon, but don't get yours popped in the process". Pretty impressive, I might add!

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the park to celebrate São João (St John) Festival with the teachers from FISK. FISK is the school where we go to learn Portuguese. Nobody could really tell us the meaning of the festival, it was just a good reason to get together and celebrate. So I tried to find a little bit of information on the holiday. In honor of St. John the Baptist, the festival is usually two weeks long, depending on the area of the country. Here, the celebration was not that long. It is associated with the European mid-summer and the start of the Brasilian winter. Different traditions were brought to Brasil during the colonial days. Some of the traditions that were brought here involve the men dressing like farmer boys, with suspenders and straw hats and women wear pigtails, freckles, painted-gap teeth, and dresses. This is all in tribute to the origins of Brasilian country music and to the lives of the immigrants. Most festivals include costume-wearing, quadrilha, which is like square-dancing, drinks, food and fireworks. I'm not really sure what to compare it to, but what we attended was pretty calm compared to what I read about. Then again, Horizontina is small, so I guess it wouldn't be too crazy! Anyway, we had a good time and enjoyed seeing the teachers outside class! We also got to spend some time with two other American couples who arrived around the same time as we did. We're all learning about this culture and country together, which is really nice.