Festas da Praia

Living overseas gives you a unique opportunity to learn about other cultures.  One event central to Azorean culture is the town festivals. Each town on our island hosts a festival at least once per year.  The biggest festival of the year is Festas da Praia – held this year from July 29 to August 7.  It features parades, food booths, concerts and other forms of entertainment.  Nearly every night this week, I have been downtown until at least midnight, sometimes much later, enjoying the festivities.

On Tuesday night, the American band Hoobastank played in the Deam Zone, a giant plastic tent used for concerts and DJ’s. I joined members of the CGOC (Company Grade Officers Council) to carpool to the concert. We arrived around 9:30pm, found food and drinks, then made our way to the Deam Zone for the 11pm start time. Yes, you read that correctly! The concert was lots of fun. My friend Paula took lots of concert pictures and was kind enough to let me use them here. Thanks Paula!!

The concert ended at 1am! Needless to say, I slept in on Wednesday. On Thursday evening, I joined a friend for dinner and a picture taking date. We had to wait quite a while for a table, so we played our new favorite game - Romper Spotter.  There were lots of rompers to be spotted (Portuguese women are a little obsessed).  Some looked much better than others.

Once we were seated, we enjoyed some traditional food from Madeira (another group of Portuguese islands). The main dishes weren’t that great, but the fried corn and sweet potatoes were awesome!

We also enjoyed some Puncha, a drink made of citrus juice, rum and honey.

After dark, we wandered around taking pictures of the parade route, walking streets, and the Dream Zone.

We eventually made our way up to the hill overlooking the town of Praia da Vitoria.

Our final adventure for the night was getting out of the parking lot. The Portuguese really know how to cram cars into parking places. The problem is that their cars are really small and easy to turn, and our American cars are really not! Everyone made it out unscathed, but there were several really close calls!

I am headed out tonight for the last night of the festival. It’s been a fun week, but I can see why it only comes along once a year. I don’t know if I could keep this pace up any longer!

In totally unrelated news, I had my first open water scuba lesson today. I was a little panicked on the surface, but as soon as we were underwater, everything was wonderful. I even got to touch a star fish – so cool!

There are lots of new pictures in the pictures tab.  Go check them out.  There are puppies.  :)  I know you all love the puppies.