noun
1. a period of public revelry at a regular time each year, typically during the week before Lent in Roman Catholic countries, involving processions, music, dancing, and the use of masquerade
2. That week where Bekka's face was pretty much anything except necessarily a face.
Not kidding. The whole point is "put disguising things on, then go run around being absolutely nutty in the middle of the day but it's awesome because nobody actually can say for certain if it was you" and let's just say the Castle kids complied. (Well, mostly.) So much for my "recovery weekend" being last week...
I realize it's been another week-plus-long hiatus but things have been getting crazy around here; Carnaval kicked all of us directly and repeatedly in the shins with cleats, midterms are next week, the Madrid excursion/Free Travel Week is directly after that, and on top of everything I woke up this past Wednesday, of course the day after the festivities ended, with a horrible cold or something that's finally heading out now. It's been a double-healing kind of week, so I'm actually glad I didn't book a trip for this weekend, as it would have probably been miserable for me and equally miserable for my travelmates to deal with someone trying to flit about Europe with a box of tissues in one hand and tea in the other.
So first things first: Last Monday, Feb 13th. What on Earth could I be doing that far in the past, you ask? Well, it has something to do with last Saturday, and with the upcoming Madrid/Barcelona/Oporto week. Fun fact about Monday: I ordered my first package to the Castle, two bathing suits to pick from because I was a complete space cadet while packing and didn't bring a swimsuit! They were expecting the delivery by Friday, one day before a group of us - the group who didn't want to get daydrunk in Venlo - went to the thermal bathhouse in Arcen. Perfect, right?
LIES.
On Friday:
8am: Wake up, hear Dusseldorf is cancelled due to 75% group illness.
12pm-10: Wake up again. Walk around Well, see a lot of closed shops, realize Jaq makes around €700 just on us every Wednesday, get groceries, order my first Kasteel pizza, watch Tangled.
11pm: Go to the Linden on a non-American Night night and see what happens*. *Elderly gentlemen playing billiards and a corner of Americans hanging out
On Saturday, the schedule went something like this:
10:45, I check at OSA if my package has arrived and maybe hasn't been properly archived yet - meet with disappointment.
11:00, our group leaves for my favorite place in The Netherlands, Klein Vink. Everyone understands why I started walking after 20 minutes of waiting last time.
11:40, we get a group discount for entry and I scour the 50%-off rack for anything that could possibly work - at first meet again with disappointment, then settle on the first reasonably designed and priced option available.
At 12, I finally get into the locker rooms - actual rooms, kind of like spacious bathroom stalls without the toilets, with lockers on the side that are thankfully easier to finagle with than the Amsterdam train station lockers.
Around 2:30ish, I resist the urge to follow the crowd into the 1. nude (manageable) 2. mixed (not so manageable) sauna and instead head into the most intense shower stall sauna I will probably ever be in, with beyond-boiling eucalyptus steam replacing all air with cough syrup water droplets for fifteen minutes of calming (but slightly painful) solitude. While my skin was the softest it's been in ages, I'm certain, without a shadow of doubt, that horrible people are reincarnated as lobsters. (Honestly, it would suck to be a lobster. Religion hates on you and then you're boiled alive to be cracked open and eaten with butter. Think about it, Mainahs.)
The rest of the day was hanging out watching How To Train Your Dragon and prepping my prop for the parade (say that 5 times fast), and pulling an insane Carnaval costume out of my existing, clean, normal clothes for deBuun's party at 9:30.
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| We realized later that I probably should've been in front of a plain background instead of Emily's open wardrobe. Oops. |
This "costume" consists of: my brightest tank top, my brightest cardigans (strategically intertwined, don't ask how I did it because I'm honestly not sure), the new spring skort, multiple necklaces, multicolored hair elastics, and all of my favorite eyeshadow colors at the same time. The only part of this outfit that I would not normally wear on its own: the pigtails. At least, not at that height.
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| Ms. Match and the French Pirate |
Saturday night was the first time I saw the Dutch going harder than us on American Night, and we... we have been put to shame. The Beerfloor situation was so epic I could hardly lift my feet at times, there were feathers and glitter flying everywhere, literally everyone was hollering along with the Dutch songs (regardless of lyric understanding), and the bartender even teased me when I downgraded from a Disaronno and [whatever cherry-flavored liqueur he'd put in instead of the cranberry juice I'd asked for] to a small beer when it got too hot to be in the dance room.
All in all, a very good night.
Sunday hit us all square in the face the next morning, but by no means were the Dutch done with us. After breakfast, we reorganized to paint each others' faces for the parade. Our theme was "Around Europe in 90 Days," where each of us dressed up as a different European country's stereotype and walked the three-mile parade tour through Well.
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| Belgium, or as Talia guessed, "the trash of Germany?" |
Yes, those are Chokotoff and Côte D'or wrappers on my shirt. (Yes again to the gold shoes.)
We walked as a group of near 50 people to the far reaches of Old Well and waited for the call to walk, huddling and dancing for warmth. Why so drastic? Well, the moment we turned into the driveway, literally as my feet were crossing the threshold, the beautiful sunlight we'd been walking through tagged in a sudden hailstorm.
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| Represented here: Greece, Belgium, France, Italy, and two Scotlands |
EUROPE WHAT
I was very glad that my Belgian Waffle prop could also serve as an umbrella. However, it is now toast. (No pun intended, but seriously that cardboard is ruined)
We started walking at 2:11 (11 is the number of Fools), followed shortly by the sun making an appearance. We sang our way through Old Well, picking various strains of various songs until we forgot the words, trailed off, and waited for the next person to fling a new melody into the crowd. A good portion of us (myself included) dropped out at the Kasteel station where Dojna and Dulcia were handing out free hot dogs to the paraders; we spent the next hour or so actually seeing the crazy people we kept hearing, dodging spinning floats and waving to everybody. Jacqui, in a highly colorful Flamenco dress on loan from OSA because they seem to just have things like that floating around, was the unspoken Hot Dog Girl/Savior of the Day - she'd somehow skip down the road with a fully loaded tray, pass up said tray to a 10-foot-high platform, then dance back for refills and never seemed to get tired. The only time she dropped one was when a group of boys biking around in bunny suits tried to grab food on the go and missed.
Meanwhile, the Dutch boys from the Linden were lighting up a gigantic joint behind us and inviting everyone to hang out, but as I honestly prefer being able to feel my toes over getting completely blazed in mid-February hail flurries with Dutch high schoolers dressed as giant neon bunnies, I went inside and spent twenty minutes washing my face. Priorities, people.
I was sitting down to tape my next video for the 1114ers when I realized something was amiss - the thistle necklace I'd gotten in Edinburgh during the 2008 Fringe Festival was nowhere to be found. I looked around my room, the hallway, the castle grounds, but after a fruitless search Facebook was notified. Thankfully it doesn't hold much sentimental value, so unlike the frenzied search for Margo's bracelet, I sighed, hoped it'd turn up, and perused Etsy for a pendant that would actually mean something other than "I'm pretty and (assumedly) of Scottish heritage!"
Sunday night, or Dutch Rager Part Two
For the hour or so before our next deBuun party started up, my room suddenly transformed from "single bedroom" to "public makeup station" - in the course of one night, my room hosted: 1. a sea witch (Emily), 2. A butterfly (Mel, who did her own makeup but used mine to great effect), 3. France, 4. Brazil, I guess, although Lucas didn't actually do much, 5. A zebra, 6. A marionette, and 7. A pinup/porcelain doll (when I finally remembered that I might need a costume too).
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| Erin the Marionette and I in her room |
Yes, my bathrobe. (I was out of ideas! Also clean clothes.)
Some of the people I went with:
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| Sarah as some sort of fae and Taryn the Zebra |
The party tonight was pretty different from last night, primarily because there were awards given out for the best floats, and also because the bartenders had switched shifts so the atmosphere was quite different. It was still fantastic, not to mention that almost everyone who'd traveled had gotten back during or right after the parade - we all wound up screaming the English lyrics along to a Dutch version of some 80s hit or another, intermingling with the locals, and at various points taking over the stage.
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| This was one of those points |
Monday after class, I took a bike ride along the parade route to try scouting out where my necklace could have dropped, but again - no luck. "Okay, maybe EUOR will have something that could work in the meantime? I need tissues anyway..."
Oh look. All the stores are closed. BRILLIANT.
In my defeat, I pedal solemnly back to OSA for more laundry tokens - only to find that not only did Dojna have plenty more laundry tokens, she also had my necklace! Apparently it fell off Sunday morning during breakfast and had been sitting in the dining room until Monday afternoon.
Monday night was the Light Parade in New Well, complete with fireworks off deBuun, freezing temperatures, lit-up floats (a lot of which poked fun at Greece's situation, but political jokes are expected for Carnivale)...
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| One of my favorites of the night: papier-mâché Euros conveyor-belting through dry ice to a Greek temple. |
Tuesday was hectic, as usual for me, but when we arrived at deBuun for the 2:30 Ethics class we stumbled into the Daytime section of Carnival.
Yes, it was still going. At 2:30 PM. WHAT
Class continued (of course) despite several interruptions by curious (and costumed) elementary school boys and from Spice Girls blasting through the floor, both of which severely inhibited focus on the chimpanzees.
Tuesday night was the Burning of the Bird in New Well, symbolizing the end of Carnivale and the beginning of Lent.
Wednesday morning hit me like a truck with yet another cold, just in time for 90's themed American Night - or rather, so we thought. Turns out the Ash Wednesday tradition around here is to go to the Linden to peel and eat herrings.
From 7-12pm.
Let's just say American Night was a bit of a bust this week but at least we all looked slammin'.
Since Wednesday, it's been a constant push towards midterms, planning our Free Travel Week (I'm going to stay in Madrid an extra day, then go to Barcelona and Oporto (in Portugal) with Mel and Lucas), and in my case fend off the sickness. I finally got a chance to go to yoga practice on Thursday, buy tea, honey, soup and various sources of Vitamin C, and wash my sheets; I woke up today feeling miles better, so hopefully I've jumped onto a one-way train to health. Skyping with Mom & Dad was a little painful though, mostly because I look horrific today - so actually, when my video feed cut out, it kind of worked. I could see them, they couldn't see me, so blowing my nose right in front of the screen wasn't an issue.
WHOO epic post.
Anyway, if you're still reading this (Mom), yes I just got your fb message. I think you'll have put off the vacuuming for a bit more than "a few minutes" by now. If this delay caused any sneeze fits, I'm sorry.
giiiiirl, you craaaaaaazy
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