Oi Vida!

A quick photo update of some of things that have been going on in my life lately: 

In honor of Dia da Trabalhadores (Labor Day, sort of) the community center that I've been working at celebrated with a weekend camping trip. We set up camp in an abandoned restaurant right on the beach and from Friday to Sunday we ate, drank, danced, swam and laughed. It was a very good weekend. 

People set up a table to play cards. The waves were literally breaking around them.

Saturday morning they killed a pig. No parts were wasted. It fed us for the rest of the weekend and was delicious. In this photo, Mimi is blowing up the pig intestine which was later stuffed with pig inners to make chaurice (sausage).

Helping slice up the pig - I'm not sure what part of the pig I'm holding.

In honor of Earth Day, I, in conjunction with SOS Tartarugas organized a recycled trashcan building competition at one of the local elementary schools. All 4th-6th graders participated and each classroom was given the task of creating a trashcan out of recycled materials. After a week to prepare, there was a presentation of all the trashcans and the best/most creative were given an award. I was so impressed by all the entries. We saw trashcans made from old fruit crates, water bottles, an old suitcase, milk cartons, etc.

All the students (600+) gathered in the school's courtyard for a presentation of the trashcans.

One of the winning trashcans. A cardboard inside decorated with rolled up magazine pages. Each trashcan was supposed to have an environmental slogan on it, this on says, "For a clean and healthy environment - no trash on the ground."

Another winning trashcan, chosen because it encourages separating waste. Gold Star! Each class had a representative come to the mic to present their work.

One of our friends here runs a basketball association and one of his projects is teaching young kids basketball skills ("Mini-Basket"). On Easter weekend they took a trip to the beach and Holly and I tagged along to help out. The scheduled bus that was supposed to take us to the beach never showed up so we had to rent out a couple Hiaces (Astrovans) instead. We packed about 20 kids in each van.

Beach at Murdeira

Lining up for lunch!