this morning we had our final day at NAC with the kids... i danced the long-awaited and much-hyped quadrilha dance, which is essentially an old-school square dance...
oh, i had a good chuckle when i remembered the olden days when they made us square dance in the gym during elementary school... it was completely akward having to choose a partner--or having one chosen for you by the coach-- and we usually squaredanced on rainy days during winter... the banjo/fiddle combination of music playing, someone calling out the "grab your part-nah, doe-see doe!" my complete lack of spelling aside, for some reason, that's what i remember about squaredancing as a kid.. i guess we had run out of all the other 'rainy day' activities when our coach thought, "i've got it! let's make them SQUAREDANCE!!!" at least that's how i think the advent of squaredancing in elementary school came about... lol
me and carozinha and sister and mom
festa juninha, on the other hand, actually is a tradition in the farming communities in brasil that coincides with the saint's feast days and harvest days... there is a patron saint of crops, harvests, of farmers, etc., and when it was time to harvest the abundance of crops, the people would have a celebration to give thanks to the patron saint for caring for the crops... so, that's how the tradition started...
nick, me & kids (bianca, brian & taynara)
nowadays, people dress like stereotypical hillbillies and do stereotypical countryfolk things... still, it's fun to go to and observe and participate... i did find out today that dancing the quadrilha is much like dancing the squaredance... you do complicated turns, dance in circles with partners, kick up your heels and everyone pretends to be a cowboy for a day... it was awesome! haha it was a bit akward, though, dancing with a little guy [read: one of the kids] because at last minute the dance coordinator thought it would be funnier if all of the americans danced with the kids instead of pairing us with other adults... and so it was.
me and my little guy dancing
my little guy was hilarious, he puffed out his chest like a peacock because we got paired up and we actually made it through the dance ok... i've got some pics, too, which i'll upload soon...
there were games that you could play to win little prizes like the fishing booth, shooting boxes off of a ledge with a slingshot, and a ball toss... there was also a place to buy traditional festa juninha food like canjica, caldo de mandioca and canjicinha... yummmmmmm.
one of the things i was not looking forward to was saying goodbye to all of the kids today... our last day at NAC came all too quickly and i will honestly miss making the long trek from wherever i'm living at the time to catch bus #4802 to boa vista, getting off at the last bus stop on rua calma and walking [mostly trudging] up that hill to the creche... i knew it would be hard saying goodbye, but i didn't know it would be that hard.
on friday, i went to downtown and bought 100 little gift bags, lots of candy and made 100 copies of the 4 of us BIP's at our first brasilian world cup game... we are all decked out in green/yellow in front of a tv with 'belo horizonte' written on it... we are smiling and happy and having a good time... that is the experience in brasil that i wanted the kids to remember of us... turns out the pictures were a hit and tons of the kids came up to us asking for our autographs... so cute. :)
we came, we ate, we played, we danced, we took TONS of photos with the kids, and we said goodbye. as the party was wrapping up, one of the kids, kairo (who has two brothers who also go to NAC), said it was so sad that we were leaving and that they would miss us so much... and i couldn't handle it, my eyes started tearing up, then one of the girls sees that i'm starting to cry, so she starts crying, then one of the other BIP's sees that we're crying, so he cries, too... it turned into a big crying hugfest for a little bit, and when we all calmed down, we hugged it out and left each other smiling.
me and some of the kiddos--a tearful goodbye!
i think i understand the term "saudades" now...
finally, before we left NAC, i was able to leave a donation collected from family and friends for the benefit of the kids i would be working with in brasil... i spoke with the directors during the first couple of weeks about their needs and what they thought might be the most beneficial way to utilize the funds and they said their first priority was to raise enough money to buy puzzle-piece wrestling mats for their dance studio upstairs... as it turns out, leo, the dance instructor, is also a judo and karate instructor and he will begin teaching classes once they have the proper equipment at the creche... i'm happy to say that with the support of my family and friends back home, NAC will be purchasing the mats they need to give these kids a chance to experience an art that they wouldn't otherwise be able to experience on their own.
from the bottom of my heart, thank you to my family and friends for supporting my mission this summer... these kids deserve to be loved and looked after and cared for... thank you for loving complete strangers enough to be willing to give out of your own pocketbooks. thank you.
me and ruilani
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