Change the World Wednesday – 31st Oct

It’s Halloween tonight.

Happy Halloween!

Not that it bothers me, I don’t do Halloween and it’s not that popular in Brazil, some places have Halloween Parties.

I hope you all recycled your pumpkin guts… oh, I love that expression.

Nice to have Small Footprints back; it seemed strange without the weekly CTWW.

My posting has been a bit irregular over the past three weeks. Haven’t been 100%, but that is over now.

I couldn’t find anything to ‘moan’ about on Monday, Tuesday I did the things I was supposed to do on Monday, and this morning I am running late because of a visit to the dentist. I had a wobbly front tooth removed (ouch! I am such a coward at the dentist) and fitted with a partial plate. But the joy is I can bite without wincing when I forget the ‘tooth.’

This weeks CTWW, is a difficult one for me, but I guess I win again.

It’s all about preparing for the holidays. I assume it refers to Thanksgiving (which we don’t have) and then Christmas.

This week consider the upcoming holidays and suggest Eco-friendly, Waste-free gifts, gift wrap and decorations. These might include handmade gifts, recycled materials for gift wrap and natural decorations. The idea is to come up with a list of ideas to help everyone have a “green” holiday.

 

Or …

If you don’t celebrate the holidays or would simply prefer to do something different, then your challenge is to suggest ways in which we might help those around us. This might include giving the gift of food to someone who needs help or donating to an organization which provides meals to families in need. It could also include helping a neighbor with recycling, composting or starting a garden … or giving your time to someone who could use a “listening ear”. The idea here is to come up with a list which will help us give in an Eco-friendly, meaningful way.

I’m a contracted teacher, I don’t have holidays, I don’t do Christmas, I just keep working. So I have to look at the second part of the challenge.

Each year I buy more than a half dozen panetones (Latin American Christmas cakes) and give them to some of the kids who frequent our little praça (park). Many of them come from poorer families that don’t have enough money to buy such luxuries; Dad has enough money for beer, so the kids miss out.

They come in a Christmassy box with a Christmassy wrapping and ususally cost around R$8 (USD4) for good ones. There are cheaper, there are more expensive, but the cheaper ones are a case of you get (or don’t) what you paid for, and I don’t have the money to splash around unnecessarily for more expensive ones.

Also at Christmas I don a Father Christmas hat (recycled for four years) and a red T-shirt and dish out sweets (candy) at the bar to passing kids. I have the white beard, I have the paunch, most of the kids call me Papai Noel (Father Christmas in Portuguese) anyway, so why not play the part for one day of the year. Many of the local parents bring their kids along for photos, so it’s all a bit of fun. There is also the litter side, any kid who drops his candy wrapper on the ground, gets the message from Papai Noel.

So this Christmas shouldn’t be any different from past Christmases.