Festa Junina or Festa de São João
Translating literally, June Festivities or Saint John's Festivals is a celebration on the months of June and July in Brazil. It originated from European midsummer celebrations and includes some similar traditions like a large bonfire (that seems to make a lot more sense in the southern hemisphere because it happens during winter months) and also a dance derived from palatial European court balls, modified and redefined with new meaning, related to popular and rural themes and paired with brazillian "forró" or country music.
Dressing up and dances
Traditionally everyone wears plaid shirts/dresses, straw hats, painted on gap tooths, very blatant blush on cheeks and lots of painted freckles, girls wear their hairs in pigtails and boys paint on moustaches and beards. This is the stereotypical exaggerated rural look, and is more common for kids to dress this way, while in parties with mostly adults it's more common to just wear plaid shirts, a straw hat and do some make-up.
The dances are choreographed but very standard between places, with someone announcing vocal cues for specific dance steps, switching partners, doing coordinated group moves and sometimes ending in a mock wedding.
Traditional food
Now, the best part of it all, my favorite thing from this time of the year, THE FOOD!
The traditional foods are super delicious and mostly made out of corn, like corn cakes, cural, pamonha, but there's also peanuts, specially sweetened peanuts, popcorn, sweet or salted, caramelized apples, quentão, which is a warm spiced drink, that may or may not be alcoholic and is one of my favorite things.
I'll try to update the thread with some recipes later or maybe just talk more about food, but I can't promise I actually will.
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your hair and skin combo is probably ideal for laser. i have a cheap ipl and a not-cheap tria (diode laser). i've used both extensively on my face and a little on my body, but it's the tria which made the most difference. the aperture is very small and it's battery powered, so for legs etc you'd have to work in sections between recharges. a battery in good condition will do around 650 shots in 20 minutes (most of the time is spent waiting for capacitors to charge between shots). replacing the battery with a suitable power supply would probably be a very worthwhile upgrade if you're able to do so.
ipls tend to have a larger aperture and are available with power supplies rather than batteries, so you could in theory do your entire body in one session. i definitely don't have the patience for that but ymmv.
it might be worth checking out an epilator if you don't already have one? it lasts longer than shaving and will make your hair density appear lower (the entirety of the hair shaft has to grow back rather than just the part that was outside of the skin). if you decide to get a tria, you can often pick them up used on ebay for a fraction of rrp (mine was £105 GBP in ~2020 and i think rrp was ~£400). but tbh i would probably recommend professional laser if you're able to afford it. i'm very much a diy person, but none of the consumer-grade laser/ipl devices really come close to pro laser.
for ref, i have light skin and a mix of light and dark face/body hair. i had some pro laser on my face which was also around ~2020, and i've just started a second round. i'd highly recommend that you get it dealt with properly asap instead of dragging it out for years like me.
I had one professional session for my face and throat area and that already had a large impact, gonna have the next one in a month. My problem is that I have hair pretty much everywhere and I feel like using profesional laser for all of that is going to be prohibitively expensive. I used a cheap epilator from my mom once, but I would much prefer some (semi) permanent solution where I can just be done with it at some point. Probably going to take a couple months until I actually decide on anything because properly engaging with all that feels very exhausting but thanks for all the info.
yw. i hope you figure something out :)