Brasil, being a Catholic country, has many National Holidays that are holy days of obligation in the Roman Catholic church. That being said, I feel like they have National Holidays for just about everything else in between as well. In fact in the 3 months my CoETA and I have left in Brasil there are four holidays…all of them happen to fall on a Tuesday or Thursday meaning we have four four-day weekends coming up (and that doesn’t count the one in November the weekend we leave).

We had planned on three four-day weekends because of holidays in September, October, and November. However, there was no listing for the holy day of obligation in August as a national holiday on any school calendar. Imagine the surprise we had when we were trying to plan a meeting for Monday so that we could teach on Tuesday, just to find out that everything will be closed on Monday and there is no class on Tuesday.

I feel like that about sums up our time here in Brasil, random last minute long weekends because of something we weren’t expecting. Some people wonder if we ever work…and sometimes I question it too…although I do miss the structure of an everyday job and I really wish I knew about these holidays in advance so I could make the most out of them!