Dylan wears a dress and other fun things...

August 17th is Independence Day. The entire city is awash in colorful banners and red and white flags and there are dozens of activities going on. Almost the entire month is devoted to celebrating. A week and a half ago we joined our neighborhood on a Sunday morning walk. Everyone met at the school yard across from our house at 6:30am and joined in a half hour of calisthenics to warm them up for an hours walk through the streets around our neighborhood. We ended up back at the school where there was entertainment and a prize raffle. We only stayed until 9:30, but could hear them partying well into the afternoon:)

Today we got to join in on some more activities held in honor of Independence day. This afternoon we again met at the school yard with the neighbors and watched while the children participated in a poetry reading contest.

a Tug of war

...and an eel carrying contest. The kids were split into two teams and they all had to grab as many eels as they could from this bucket and carry them to their team bucket. The team with the most eels after a certain amount of time won.

Raquel wanted to try, and made me come with her. It took her quite a while to actually get an eel out of the bucket as they are slippery little buggers and very squirmy. Here she is almost to the other bucket when it squirmed out of her hand. She wanted me to help her pick it up, but I politely refused. The kind gentleman below came to her rescue and the eel was successfully placed in her team's bucket!

One of the funniest events was for the women. The balloons hanging on the rope have flour in them. The women were blind folded and given a stick with which to pop the balloon. Hilarity ensued. The lady in the red pants was the last one with an unpopped balloon. She was crazily beating the rope, but to no avail. She finally gave up and the balloon was saved:) Raquel was sad because they were popping the balloons and she wanted one.

After the women were slightly humiliated, it was the men's turn. They played a game of soccer... in SKIRTS:) This is a video of our pembantu's husband helping Dylan into his sarong.

They played mostly barefoot using a kickball and whenever music was played over the loudspeakers they had to stop playing and dance to the music.