Festa Junina 2013

Many hours were spent behind the sewing machine before I could proudly take this picture of Leila in her own dress for the festa junina, based on Coline's most favorite every day dress. The joy of wearing this dress and dancing with it makes it totally worth the hours of work and the km of ribbons, even though while in the making I was convinced of the opposite. 

On Saturday June 22nd we took part in Leila's school's festa Junina, which included folkloric dance presentations by Leila's pre-school fellows and no crying at all, as opposed to last year. In this respect I agree with the director of the school who told me on our first visit that this is a happy school. 

There was also lots of bouncing on a pula-pula and an inflatable castle, helium balloons, a fishing game, and a break for a confederation cup match on a big screen that insured that the parents actually attended the event. After weeks of an almost vegetarian diet to accompany Cristiano the girls had a feast with roasted meat skewers. I was going to allow them to eat their weight in meat as long as they stayed away from all the transgenic corn of the "traditional" festa junina food. 

The day ended with a bonfire, lit with the help of more than one bottle of alcohol, as they do it here, which almost made me regret the smell of firelighters. I felt warm and soft remembering the many fires I warmed myself by in South Africa, in the house on Helderberg mountain, in La Colline, at the many campsites we have been to. We now are hosting visitors from South Africa and will soon meet up with some friends from there in France and the fire reminded me of all this.