[ES-EN] Mi primera fiesta Junina! // My first Junina party!

I hope this weekend is as good as mine looks like it is going to be. Today I was fixing some things in my house to improve the energy that circulates in it, this was in the morning part. In the afternoon I already had two commitments. The first one, a Junina party at the gym where I train. The second was a dinner at the dance teacher's house.

Now I'll explain the theme of the Junina party and then I'll tell you how the dinner went, which at the time of writing this post had not yet taken place. The Junina party is a tradition all over Brazil that is celebrated in June. Its origin is European and the purpose at that time was to celebrate the harvests and it was held near the summer solstice. As it was a pagan holiday, the church included the celebration for St. John, in Portuguese João, because of the proximity of the day and that is where the name of the festivities comes from, "Festa Joanina".

When the colonizers brought this celebration here to Brazil, it was well received and is still celebrated today. Of course, over time they have added things that are specific to each region. Here in the South of Brazil they added a bonfire to warm up the atmosphere because it is quite cold at that time of the year. In addition, they are usually accompanied with a lot of traditional food.

Although I have been in Brazil for 4 years I had never had the opportunity to come to one of these celebrations. During the course of the week they had already told me that they would make an arraiá in the gym, that's another name they give to the party. All at once I got excited and said I have to go. Yesterday they confirmed the invitation for today and I told my daughter that we were going to a "festa Junina" and she liked the idea a lot, because she has already been to other parties with that theme.

Something I had not mentioned before is that by tradition people dress up as "caipiras", which means peasants. Checkered shirts and skirts, freckled make-up, ripped pants and straw hats abound. The party place is decorated with the same theme, the countryside.

In the invitation they made on the gym's Instagram they alluded to the outfit, that we should dress accordingly and we could compete for prizes. A few months ago I had bought a skirt to accompany Amanda to another Junina party.

So I didn't hesitate and wore it to this first party, I paired it with a white social shirt that I'll tie at the waist and some high boots. I also paired Amanda with a plaid skirt and cute boots.

The party was very nice, the decoration was spectacular and there were many typical sweets to eat. I only ate cricri, which is peanuts with sugar and some cotufas.

My daughter, besides the cricri and the cotufas, also ate a canned food that I don't know what it was, but it was in the shape of a heart. I also had a typical drink called quentão, made with wine, cinnamon and cloves. We spent a very different time and that breaks our routine giving us a break from the day to day.