Carnaval, what a show!

So I’m a little behind on blogging, but two weekends ago (the 8th) was Carnaval weekend in Brazil. Carnaval is a huge week long (sometimes two weeks) celebration where people dress up with masks and bright colors, street parties (blocos) go on every night with music and dancing, and there is huge parade on the weekend displaying all of the hard work that people have put into this event. People stop working for this holiday event, which is right before Lent each year. Some people spend almost the entire year preparing for Carnaval with the costumes they make, the giant floats they create, and the dancing routines they perform. It’s an enormous set up, and the results are beautiful. So Friday night, the entire group went to the parade. We got there at midnight. We weren’t late, that’s just when the parade started. Midnight. And it went on until 6 am. Gotta love the late night Brazilians. So the way it’s set up is that there is bleachers set up on a street specifically located for the Carnaval parade. You have to buy tickets in order to get into the parade area, and then there are different levels of bleachers where you can sit, depending on how much you paid for your ticket. Our location was quite ideal! We were high enough up that we could see all parts of the floats, but not so far that it was difficult to see the details in the costumes that they were wearing. Plus, with my 20x zoom camera, I could see anything and everything if I wanted. There were 6 different samba schools that were “performing” Friday night, and then on Saturday a new group of 6 schools would be performing. Vai-Vai, the samba school that we got to see rehearse a few nights before, was performing on Friday, so it was fun to see them and sing along with their song (we had learned it earlier as well).

This isn’t just a big fun parade,, though. This is a competition. Each of the samba schools in the parade are being judged on their costumes, their floats, their music, and they’re being timed. They have one hour to make it from one side of the bleachers to the other, and one minute plus or minus can cause point reductions. The prize for the winner is money. A lot of money. Which, they put towards next years floats and costumes. Apparently most people in Sao Paulo aren’t a big fan of Carnaval, and they’ll usually travel to other cities (mainly Rio, where Carnaval is HUGE) for the weekend, but even so, there were a ton of people at the parade and at all of the blocos, and the atmosphere of being there was awesome. Some day, I’ll make it to Rio Carnaval.

Until then, I am very satisfied with what Sao Paulo had to offer ☺

Fatima, Bianca, me and Niki getting ready for Carnaval



One of the Vai-Vai floats

My host mom all dressed up to go dancing!



-Heidi