Unfortunately my 2 and a half year old son Daniel did not wake up misty headed. Instead he woke up with his usual exubrance despite not really knowing what Christmas was. He laughed and shouted for about 10 minutes before he noticed his carefully wrapped new skateboard lying on the floor.
Upon disrobing it of its' paper his eyes lit up and my previous thoughts that we were likely to spend this Christmas in hospital were starting to look more like reality. We watched him fall off many times as we sat and ate our breakfast.
At around 10am it was time to head over to Cristina's aunt Delma's house for the Christmas dinner. We promised Daniel that there would at least be one other child there as he trundled along on his skateboard behind us. We were the first to arrive however and Daniel felt justly mistreated, but it wasn't long before Cristina's cousins arrived with their other halves and children. In total there were eight adults and three children once all the troops had arrived at the barracks for the day. As seems to be customary in Brazil the men stayed in one room watching the TV as the women did the cooking and looked after the children. In the mens' camp there was the usual banter regarding homosexuality, and this time Cristina's brother (Ed Carlos) mentioned to everyone that I had a razor that vibrated. He implied that I obviously used this as a toy for my rectum. I mentioned that as he was the only person who had ever implied this it would be safe to assume it was probably a fantasy of his. This type of conversation carried on for a good two hours.
With lunchtime fast approaching everyone descended on the table. The feast today was chicken stuffed with farofa and side portions of potato salad, greens, and rice. It was delicious. Everyone was duelling with their cutlery to get the piece they wanted. Fortunately they had taken my sensibilities into account and decided that this time they would avoid cooking the chicken feet and laying them on the table in a first come first served sort of way. The food was finished and once again the genders split apart. The men stayed at the table, and the women went to sit on the veranda with the kids. It wasn't long before Ed Carlos, and a few other men decided that it may be a good idea to go and buy some beer. When they returned they were carrying a crate of twenty-four 600ml bottles of Antarctica Boa beer. This roughly equates to 25 pints by my calculations. They were promptly popped in the freezer as we opened the first beer. We carried on drinking until between four of us we had polished off around about 8 bottles of the stuff. It was at this point that Daniel started to get particularly whiny as it was close to his bed time. Ed Carlos confessed that he also needed to put his girlfriend to bed so we all decided to regroup back at his house. We left Delma's with the usual festive exchange and returned to Ed Carlos' house expecting everyone to be there waiting and gasping for a drink. To our surprise they weren't. Because of this Ed Carlos then laid down the challenge of finishing the remaining 16 bottles between us. I gratefully picked up the gauntlet, and this was how we spent the rest of Christmas day (and in truth the early hours of boxing day): drinking beer, listening to music, calling family, and watching amusing clips on youtube.
Despite being a very enjoyable day, the thing that strikes me as most odd is that no one gave presents to anyone else. Also, with the shops still open people were working on this 'holiday'. It didn't really seem in touch with the festive spirit that I'm used to, but what do I know? I'm just a homeless Brit!
No comments:
Post a Comment