E Campeao!!

I saved the best news of all for last.

Driving back from Cabo Frio, putting up with bad traffic at the end of the national holiday, we listened to the points allocation of the samba schools in Rio. I never realised how intricate it all is.

There are two levels of samba schools. The first grade and the second grade. Each group has around 14 schools in it depending on the city. Each year the top two schools from the second grade with move to the first grade and the two worse skills in the first grade will move down to second grade. Like everything in life you always want to be in first division.

The parades down the sambadromo are in stiff competition to get as many points as they can to be the number one school in the city for a year. For each category of points are three judges and there are many categories from how the flag queen can wave her flag, to how long it takes for all of the paraders take to samba down the track, how well the theme matches the song etc, etc.

All of the points are announced at the same time after all of the schools are finished at the end of carnaval, kind of like the announcement of the Magaery (sp?) medal in Australia. Over an hour it takes to announce each point for each school for each category in an immensely tense time and winners changing nearly every category.

Every category we got more tense as Vila Isabel was 8th or 9th then in 4th place, 3rd and 2nd and then back down again. Then finally with the last category to count we were in front but .1 point. Our key opponents Grande Rio... 1 judge votes, still in front, 2nd judge votes, still in front, 3 vote counts...... Grande Rio gets more then us and our points are even!!!!

Did we win, did we lose? A minute of silence hits everywhere... in our car and on the radio.

We Won


We Won


We Won


Somehow we won on count back. I'm still not sure how, it's all too complicated for me.

Viva Vila Isabel,we are the champions!

A perfect ending to a fantastic weekend.