Day 11: Rain rain, go away

 So it has been raining here a ton yesterday and today, though it cleared up for our little party we had out at CCJ with the kids.  Here are some photos of a bus going through it.  It only floods certain parts of the street though, but it was fun.
     Speaking of busses, yesterday they had a bus strike and they were demanding like a 25 or 27% raise.  Luckily it was only a 24 hour strike so they were up and running again today, but they are supposed to find out today what the government will give them, and if it is not enough then they might go on another strike, this one for an indefinite amount of time, and last I heard the government was only offering them a 4% raise, so it will be interesting to see what happens.  Apparently strikes are pretty common things here though, if it is not the busses, then it is the taxi drivers, the subways, the guys selling icecream on the beach...it apperently happens alot, but is quite an inconvinience.  That would be hard though if you are the government, I mean, you

can´t just give in and give them what they want right away or everyone will think they can get away with whatever they want.  Then again, you have to give in somewhat because busses and other things are necessary to the city, so what do you do?  Tough choices.



Then we went to our little party, it was fun, there were a ton of kids there and they were having so much fun.  Here are a few photos.

 This is Joe doing a magic trick for the kids, you know the one where your finger gets `cut off`that dad used to do to us.  They loved it and had a ball trying to figure out how to do it!

 These next two photos come from us teaching them a game.  It is the one where you have your right hand on top and your left hand below your neighbors hands, and then one person starts by using their right hand to reach over and clap the upturned hand of their neighbor and then it is like a chain reaction, they take that hand over and clap their neighbors.... You go on for a little bit and then whoever it lands on is out of the game.  It usually goes to `Down by the banks`but today we did it just counting down, first in Portuguese, then we started doing it in English to try and help them learn it.

This picture was taken during the quadrilha, it is a kind of line-ish dance that they do here.  I might have mentioned it in another post, but there is one person that calls out directions and everyone else dancing according to those directions.  In this one I think they did it more as a skit, that all the dancers were at the wedding of these two, cause in the middle of it they had them come forward and then someone acting like the brides dad kind of gave her away, and then a kid acting like he was drunk came out and was the pastor guy that married them, it was really cute.  Another fun part of the dance that I haven´t seen before was when the announcer called out `snake!`and all the girls scream and jump into the arms of the guys they were dancing with.  Only if you can´t tell in this picture, the bride is a little bit bigger than the groom, so he jumped in her arms, and it was hillarious!  Fun times, dances here are great!