Thursday, November 17, 2011

Study Abroad, Part 2



Okay, another course in my University of Life:

Brazilian Culture 101: (Specifically focusing on the State of Rio Grande do Sul)
The richest cultural experiences we can have (in general) often focus around holidays or special events. Something that I wasn't expecting when we moved to Brazil was how many holidays and special events we would have.  Maybe it's because we tend to celebrate both American and Brazilian holidays in our family whenever we can, but it's easy for me to lose track of when the next special occasion will be, as there are so many! Not that we celebrate with all-out full-blown parties for every occasion, by any means, but generally Holiday = Day off from work! Which, from the mom perspective, means “Daddy is home to spend more time with us!!! Yay!!” So, just for fun, I decided to list some of the days that we have celebrated (or at least honored by not working!) this year as part of Brazilian tradition.

March 8 (or about 40 days before Easter) = Carnaval! Probably the Brazilian celebration most commonly recognized world-wide, for better and for worse. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this one. Here's the thing about Carnaval: There are certain places that you probably don't want to be during this celebration, and certain channels on TV that you may decide to flip through more quickly than others, to avoid seeing too much human flesh. There is a huge parade with scantily clad women dancing Samba, which is probably the most famous event associated with this holiday. But really, everyone has a different way of celebrating, and the Brazilians friends and family with whom we associate remain fully clothed and did not even dance one Samba song (that I know of).  For us, this year it meant time off from work for a family beach trip! Which was quite nice and relaxing.

April 21 = Tiradentes. This day commemorates a national hero of Brazil who lived in the 1700's. I don't know his full story, but apparently he is important enough to get a day off from work. I guess it is comparable to President's Day.

March/April/May ? = Paixao de Cristo & Pascoa (Easter Weekend). The biggest difference I noticed in how it is celebrated here is the size and type of Easter eggs children receive here! It is also a tradition for many families to leave out carrots and water the night before for the Easter Bunny, and then in the morning he will have left a 'nest' of eggs for the children to find. We really enjoyed keeping some of our previous traditions from the US, as well as learning some new ones here! And we ended up with about a 2-month supply of chocolate eggs afterwards. :)

 

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