Playground

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Last night was the first time I have ever worried that I might be thrown out of a park.

I was also worried for a brief time that I would be thrown off of a bus, but that was a different matter. The issue with the bus was that I found myself on the bus without a bus fare.

The problem in the park stemmed from the fact that they had super cool playground activities but a limited faith in their strength. With the exception of the climbing tower that wiggled the entire time I climbed on it, all of the structures appeared to have been built 15 years ago out of construction grade metal. And based on the height, it would sem that they were made for the 8 and over crowd. So we took advantage of that.

Serapio and I went on the see saw (with him scooting up and me scooting back, we managed to balance each other out fairly well) and we went on some cool swings that reminded me of a tricycle (only suspended and backwards) and some other cool swings that looked like benches and then the coolest swing of all: Imagine a see saw hanging down with seats for 4 over a central bar. There were five of us on our adventure and while there were only 4 seats, we didn't let that stop us. All 5 of us climbed on and we'd spent quite some time on it when out of the corner of my eye I saw a secuity guard aproaching us. We all dismounted in a hurry. I'm not sure what the guard said to us because he was speaking Portuguese and those on the adventure who spoke Portuguese did not speak English. But basically we were told we were too big. Such a shame.

But fortunately, that wasn't the end of our fun. Serapio found a super cool tree to play Tarzan with (Question: which would you trust more a) a 15 year old swing set made from construction materials or b) a tropical tree with a root system that begs for Tarzan?) We found a pole to limbo under, a cement block to give political speeches from, two men doing the African slave's fight-dance (we had a great view until they realized we were watching), and a stream of walkers and runners heading towards us (we didn't see any thing to indicate a one way track).

I'm glad we didn't get kicked out. Maybe if we wear different clothes next time we can do it all again.

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