| Spectacular Loulé Carnival
Louls Carnival processions have begun and the main event is on Tuesday February 20. It is also a Public Holiday throughout Portugal. As the British custom of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday marks the beginning of Lent, similar traditions exist throughout the western world and in many places Shrove Tuesday is marked by Carnival. Originally the expression was Carne Vale, taken from the Italian meaning, farewell to meat. In Portugal the most lavish carnival happens in Loul when a stream of floats carrying musicians, dancing girls and huge caricature figures, process around the town. Holiday visitors joining in with the proceedings are made very welcome; most agreeing that outside of Brazil, this is the nearest Europe gets to Mardi Grs. Louls ability to organise such a spectacular carnival has more than a hundred years of history.
A woman of faith deals with online dating
I'd certainly never thought of myself as a pin-up girl. In fact, to the best of my recollection, I spent three years studying to be a minister without getting asked out on one date. It wasn't until much later when I started dating as a single mom that I realized some guys really had a thing for women in uniforms. The 10 years after graduation were basically a relationship wasteland. Looking back, the reasons are probably not hard to identify; running a senior citizens transportation service or acting as the vicar of a Philadelphia blue-collar parish on life support were not the best ways to meet eligible men. By the time I married in my mid-30s, I was convinced that being an ordained female was as incompatible with sex appeal as Windows was with Netscape. Twelve years later, older but perhaps not wiser, I began to ponder the possibility of posting an online dating profile.
In Brazil, a Trend Away From Super-Young Models
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, vans and buses full of aspiring models brake to a stop here in front of the unmarked offices of the Daphne Agency. Coming from small towns scattered across the Brazilian countryside, the hopefuls have spent hours on the road, often accompanied by the local scouts who first spotted them. The other day, an angular assortment of arms, legs and oversize sunglasses spilled out onto the sidewalk from one of those vans -- six teenage girls and one boy, all of them full of runway dreams and a few well-worn facts about Brazil's modeling industry. .
LifeFiles: The Nanny Dating Game
Finding someone to care for your child when you go back to work is eerily like dating -- the word-of-mouth recommendations, the chatting via e-mail before you meet, the nerves before the first get-together ... It's enough to make you want to hide in the corner and swear you're never going to go out again. I encountered this scenario last summer. Ten weeks after I had my son, I decided it probably was about time I found some child care for when I went back to work. I weighed all the different options available. Day care, relatives, friends, neighbors -- a nanny seemed best suited to my family's lifestyle. So we decided to jump into the game of nanny-finding, hopeful of finding our perfect match but realistic about our prospects. I wondered how long it takes to find a nanny and how one actually goes about finding one.
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