Carnaval

Well this Tuesday we finally celebrated Carnaval at my high school, about three months after the real date. Carnaval is really linked to the christian religion and is celebrated around Easter and Mardi Gras. I'm not that sure on the real meaning of any of it, but now it's just an excuse to dress up. It was scheduled at my school over a month ago, but it got postponed because of teaches planning to demonstrate by dressing up and staging a mock olympic-torch struggle, which would really be to defend their cause against the loss of 9,000-10,000 teaching jobs across France next year.

Anyways, I didn't have class until 2 o'clock. There were a couple bands that weren't that great, but it was still nice to sit around in the sunshine and hang out. Plus there was a fashion show for anybody who wanted to show off their costume. Me and seven other guys in my class dressed up as knights of the round table, with swords, shields, and t-shirts with red crosses painted or drawn on. We had some fun blocking flights of stairs telling people they couldn't pass and that they had to go around. The best costumes of the day were:

• A friend Hugo (yes, a guy) who dressed up at Snow white with his seven dwarves
• The French version of the Village People
• A guy who put gloves on his feet, a shirt with a hanging head on his legs, pants on his torso, and shoes on his hands. He was "walking on his hands" the whole day, which was pretty funny to see. REALLY creative! I have to remember this one for Halloween or a dress-up party sometime. The only problem is finding a pair of pants that's thin enough so you can breathe, see, and talk to people during the day.

I also saw a few surprises as well. For one thing the presence of toy weapons in school was new for me. In my high school we definitely wouldn't be able to bring toy hand guns or sawed-off shotguns, in addition to the wooden swords. There was at least one Scarface... The second surprise was guys drinking been in the cafeteria with lunch. It was really for their costumes they said, but nobody really seemed to mind. The last surprise was a little less fun - shaving cream in my face as I was leaving my last class of the day. I had watched out all day as people were getting shaving-creamed or floured, but a guy in my class finally got me! Oh well, it wasn't as bad as when that happened as I was sleeping at cross country camp the summer before my junior year...