Sunday, February 19, 2006

Fireworks

We like fireworks. So when we heard that fireworks are a big part of life here in Sao Paulo, our initial reaction was..."Hey, that's great." Then one of the local soccer teams won a game. (Not the championship, just a game.) Well you'd have thought that it was the Fourth of July! Next Sunday, the same team lost, but ended up winning the division because the number two team also lost--so more fireworks. Then there was Christmas Eve. Never in my life have I witnessed so many flashes of fireworks. It went from about 10:30 until 2:00AM! Brazilians prefer fireworks that make noise to fireworks that make light, so while you see about 50 flashes every minute, you hear hundreds of the loudest pops and bangs you can imagine. Apparently, it's tradition for just about everyone to buy a few fireworks and light them off for family and friends. On New Year's Eve we were invited over to the home of some friends on our street who work at PACA. They had a dozen or so fireworks of their own. New Year's is supposed to be the biggest fireworks day of the year, but after four hours of non-stop noise and light at Christmas, it was really hard to tell that this was so much more impressive. Then, in January the Sao Paulo club team became world soccer champions and it started all over again. We now routinely sleep through fireworks as we still hear some almost every day (or night). One of the many things that makes life in Brazil so much different from life in North America.