Carnival in Santa Cruz
Pictures:

• Rebecca got drenched
• Parade backup (truck broke down)
• Me just getting started
• Tribal dancers
• Comparsa
• Group Shot-we rented a riser to watch the parade
• Cristin's sweet Mohawk
• Julie and Ximena at war
  
• Picture of the night: Bob the librarian covered in foam.

Basic rules of Carnival in Santa Cruz Bolivia:

1. Don't wear anything you don't want ruined.(balloons are filled with ink)
   
2. Watch for flying objects (Water balloons get frozen and empty cans of spray get tossed)
3. Don't even think about trying to stay clean!

I just finished celebrating my first ever Carnival. Quite the experience. I'm pretty sure no city celebrates it the same so let me tell you what it is like in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

The last 5 saturday's have been carnival kick-offs. My street has closed down for mini-parades, bands and dancing. It has been fun, completely safe and relatively calm. This weekend has been anything but calm, mostly fun and the safety thing would be argued differently by everyone down here. There was a huge parade on Saturday night. A bunch of people from work got a riser along the street to watch the parade from. The way it works is the parade goes down one side of this street (think a long street, at least 8 kilometers before it turns). The center of the street is blocked off and you can rent places to sit then the other side of the street is full of people walking and venders. The parade started at around 6pm. When we left at 2am there were still about 4 hours of the parade left. I'm not exaggerating!

The parade was a mix of dance groups and comparsas, or fraternaties of people walking together all in the same outfits. It was pretty cool actually. These groups all wear the same I guess you would say smock. Some of them have floats some have bands, some just walk all together. On the side lines we, well everyone actually, was armed with water balloons and spray foam. Most of the gear we used on each other, the rest we used students from school who tried to attack us from across the street. It was a good time for sure. We all ended up covered with foam and water and by the end of the night ink, which is what people start filling the balloons up with. We had old clothes on so we didn't care but I still have ink on my arm that I'm hoping comes off by Wednesday. Aside from the foam and balloons which is all good fun it was pretty chill. It isn't until around 2am that the people in the parade and on the streets start getting dangerously drunk which is when we called it a night. By 2am I wondered how many months we would be walking around in carnival garbage, the streets were filthy!! To my complete amazement, by 10am the next morning the streets were more spotless than I have ever seen them! Pretty quick turn-around.

The rest of the weekend I haven't ventured out. I have no desire to get covered in ink. Thats is what 90% of the balloons are filled with now. It was funny driving home from the movies tonight and seeing all the kids in their smocks just covered in ink. Faces and all! I am positive that most kids from my school will have ink stains on their faces for weeks to come. Unless of course they covered themselves with baby oil which is the trick down here. You rub it all over any exposed skin and no ink or shoe polish or whatever will stick to you. Gross right? All of the buses and taxi's are covered in mud. The drivers spend all day Saturday getting their cars ready so that the ink from the weekend won't stick to them. Anyone outside is a target for carnival "fun". I don't mean for it to sound bad, because it isn't. Saturday night was really enjoyable and it has been a long time since I had that much fun with water balloons and foam. I'm just not leaving my house until work on Wednesday (ok, so I went to the movies tonight but the taxi driver wouldn't let us keep the windows down becuase he didn't want any junk thrown in his car). I will attach pictures tomorrow so you can see the fun of the weekend. I think the highlight of the parade was when the comparsa that most of our students were in walked by. We had a big teahcer-student foam and water fight. Pretty fun.

I'm thinking next year will be Oruru (also in Bolivia) which is suppose to be second only to Rio for carnival celebrations. Or who knows, maybe I'll meet Tracey in Brazil for some fun over there.