Carnival !!!

Since Spain has a strong religious following (theoretically, although I'm not sure how many actually practice) Carnival is a huge celebration here. It's kinda a mix of our Halloween, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It's celebrated to prepare for the season of Lent in the Catholic faith. The weekend before Lent starts there are lots of parades, parties, etc. and EVERYONE dresses up! You can dress up as whatever, and there are more costumes in the stores during Carnival than during Halloween. Throughout the entire weekend we saw kids and adults just walking around in costumes, and especially at night everyone was dressed in costumes. (Maybe this is how they get the idea that Halloween costumes must be scary... in order to differentiate them from Carnival costumes?) The school of course had a celebration for Carnival as well. Tuesday afternoon there were no classes, but the kids paraded around and then danced around for awhile. Everyone, even all of the teachers, secretaries, etc were all in costumes. Most of the grades had a theme, for example 1st graders were clowns, 6th graders were doctors, 5th graders were business men/women, 3rd graders were lumberjacks/lumberjills, 4th graders were chefs, there was a wizard of oz class (although one kid in that class was dressed as spiderman- didn't know he was in the wizard of oz!?), and 2nd graders could be whatever they wanted. One of the 6th grade teachers was "Dr. Jaus" House, but with a J since we're a bilingual school- we all found that pretty hilarious!! Another tradition at Carnival is to burn a sardine. On the sardine you write bad things that are going on that you want to disappear/good wishes and when you burn the sardine the bad things are supposed to go away. It was interesting to watch them burn a giant paper sardine in the middle of the schoolyard with everyone watching. All of the parents were lined up along the outside gates of the school to watch the parade, burning of the sardine, and then the dance fest that lasted for a good 30min or so. It was a really fun day at school and it was neat to see how even though it's a religious holiday it's celebrated in a public school and all over the country, and even though we celebrate this holiday in the states (New Orleans mainly) it's still celebrated in different ways in Spain. Definitely a fun cultural day!