We had a good day today, the organising was done well by a dutch guy called Jonathan, he did a really good job, and made it much easier for us all to work in. We had a fun time, the kids were lovely (yes, a bit naughty at times, Dave was in a group where 2 boys had a fight and one ended up with a bleeding head), some of them were incredibly cute. There was about 160 of them. Everything seemed to run very smoothly, I managed to speak enough Portuguese to be understood by the children. Some of the really strange things were.....
a.) the kids not having to be checked out at all, you just have to make sure they all leave and not worry about who they go with.
b.) there's no 'safe to grow ' policy, if you see a child on their own you need to go to them (rather than think 'oh dear I musn't be alone with a child'). The reason for this is that otherwise they might steal things.
c.) there's so much physical touch, lots of hugging and rough and tumble, between children and adults.
It's all very different, but I imagine we can get used to it. It really is in the chatting to children that you start to use the language.
We are hoping to post some photos soon