Children's day and Teacher's day

More posts! I was briefly researching on the holidays of October 12th to tell a little about it to my ibunka friends, and I found such interesting things, that it might be worthy sharing with you all (by saying this, it seems thousands people visit my blog, which is certainly not the case, at least for now ^-^...but you that visit it, this is just to let you know how important you are!). So let's start with Children's day: here in Brazil it is celebrated on 12th October. It was "invented" by a politician (Galdino do Valle Filho) in the 1920s. However, it really started making success in th 1960s when a Brazilian toy factory promoted the event with advertisement. Nowadays all Brazilian children get plenty of toys from their relatives on this special day and many schools take the whole week off. Brazilians just love holidays...=)
October the 12th is also an important day because we celebrate "Nossa Senhora Aparecida", patron Saint of Brazil. This saint has a quite interesting story: in 1717 some Brazilian fishermen were fishing in the Paraiba river, but they were out of luck: they kept throwing the nets in the river, but when they got them back, there was nothing. Once, at getting the nets back, they found an image of a saint, but without the head. They kept "fishing" and they found the head of the saint. They went on fishing and a miracle happened: thousands of fish were coming up with the nets. This is considered her first miracle. A curious thing about "Nossa Senhora Aparecida" is that her skin is black. If you want to know more about it, go to: http://www.portaldafamilia.org/datas/criancas/diadascriancas.shtml
Finally, I recently found out that on 15th October we celebrate Teacher's Day. Everything started back in 1827, when, on 15th October they created the first "General Law" for the elementary school. In this law, some issues concerning the teachers were also dealt with, and this is why the 15th October is now remembered as Teacher's Day. (For more info you can access: http://www.sabido.com.br/artigo.asp?art=1383). On this day students should give presents to the teacher, OF COURSE ^-^! And I can't complain because my students took a great "focaccia" to my class =) Sometimes being a teacher really pays off...=)