Every boy needs a good scar. Right? Boys get banged up. Well, little kids in general get banged up (I know, I am a teacher).

Yesterday we spontaneously decided to walk around Carnaval. No, Carnaval is not the cause of the scar. We had gone to all the trouble of going to Porto da Barra to go to the beach, and since all the Trios were leaving from there shortly after we had decided to leave, we walked up to the Farol to see what was going on. It was early and not too crowded and we met some Aussies that were hanging out the front of a pousada. Ju liked the experience but wasn't fond of the noise and asked to go home, so we headed back to the car.

We decided to stop for Acarajé on the way home in Rio Vermelho. For anyone who knows Brasil, you will be familiar with the side walks made of pieces of rock to form patterns. While waiting for the Acarajé, Ju stood up on one of the benches and fell off head first onto the sidewalk, getting a big gash across his forehead and scaring the living shit out of everyone there. The beer guy gave us some ice and the Bahaina tried to give us advice, and Ju was screaming his lungs out with blood pouring out of his head.

We sped off looking for first aid station (there are several up because of Carnaval) but didn't find one that was open, so we went to the hospital by our house. Their emergency room was open, but they don't attend children, so off we went again (with a quick side trip to the house where we picked up my insurance card since we didn't have Ju's yet) and ended up at Aliança Hospital, which is easily the nicest one here. We went strait to the pediatric emergency door, where we were told that they didn't have any doctors on duty that night (why does this place exist and stay open???). We ran across the complex to the regular emergency area in a completely different building where there were doctors. By this time Ju had stopped crying and almost stopped bleeding and was kind of just passively wondering what all the fuss was about and asking for his Acarajé.

In the emergency room he got five stitches (by the father of one of my former students, although I only found this out at the end) and was very well behaved. Another mom from my school who's son is in group 2 came in to see what was going on and I chatted with her a bit too. (Not sure if this was good or bad for my career as a rich kids' teacher, but whatever) All said and done and Ju was fine and still asking for his Acarajé and Gustavo decided to go make a formal complaint to the "pediatric emergency room" that had no doctors, after which we went back out to the Acarajé place to get Ju what he wanted and to let them all know he was okay. There was a kid there about his age dancing to some kind of DVD performance of some artist of some kind who told Ju he should not dance because he had gone to the doctor and had a boo boo. It was pretty cute.

Today he is totally normal, except that we can't let him get his head wet for another day or so, so he still smells like blood and iodine. We told him he's going to have a Harry Potter scar now (he doesn't know what Harry Potter is really, except that mommy has books about him that have lots of pages he can turn and pretend to read), and he seems to think it's not such a big deal. In fact, on some level I'm sure he's enjoying it because of all the extra attention he's getting, having ice cream for dessert after lunch, and getting to watch Bob the Builder and play and make lots of messes. I still won't let him eat candy though.