Carnival!

Learned information of the day: Germany celebrates Carnival and apparently its HUGE there. Since we don't really do anything for it in the US, I'm kind of clueless about it. This weekend was the big celebration in Germany and Holger my German roommate was very nostalgic about it (he was singing German Carnival songs for DAYS and hung balloons up in our room). Lucky for him, most of Central and South America celebrate it too! The school had a day off from classes Friday and everyone had an assembly in the cafeteria. I'm still kind of confused as to the purpose of it, Holger told me that in Germany its a holiday for getting drunk and kissing strangers. I was really curious how that was going to translate into this setting, but here it was more like a parade with costumes. They also had singing and dancing contests which of course the kids loved (ALL kids love to perform). I had to take a kid on a med run in the morning, so when we came back it was just in time for the dancing contest.

As you can see, gender was irrelevant for this glorious Carnival. It's hard to see in that picture but there are two boys who had been dancing together all morning. They were the crowd favorite until the little kids joined. That little chubby kid in the striped shirt had some seriously good moves! He went on to win. The fact that he's the assistant director's son probably didn't hurt his chances either. I don't have a pic but there were also two girls slow dancing and one was in drag! Naturally it made me miss NY.

Next was the parade. I figured out late in the game that my phone takes really crappy action shots, so sadly I don't have much to show you. There was some pretty impressive costumes from the older kids made of garbage and cardboard boxes. I dont have a pic so you'll have to take my word for it. Here are some little kids in costumes! (Sorry for the bad action shot)

Agh!! So cute! That's Jordy as the pirate, God I just want to eat that kid, he's so adorable. Kudos to Myriam (the volunteer who is the teacher at the Montessori) for her awesome costume design!

During the assembly these two random girls sat on my lap. I haven't a clue who they are (stranger danger is non-existant here) but I'm including this pic in case I eventually get to know them and want a momento of our first encounter.

After the festivities all the staff (including the folks who work in the clinic and office) had to help the kids scrub out their sections. It was like a big spring cleaning, furniture was pulled out and curtains were taken down. It's amazing how fast things can get done when you have twenty kids to help. It was so efficient, five little girls with brooms and another five following behind them with mops. At one point a little girl slid down a banister with a bucket of water (no lie) and I think you can guess what song was stuck in my head after that...



Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I'm an awful person, I know ;) I feel like I should add a disclaimer stating that while the kids do frequently break into seemingly-spontaneous choreographed song and dance routines here, they do not in any way share the sentiments of the children in that video.

After our cleaning was done (and I checked all the girls for head lice, something I'm getting remarkably good at) I headed to my section to watch a movie with the special needs kids. Last week we watched Pinocchio (pronounced in Spanish as Peen-ow-cho) and they LOVED it, they've been talking about it all week. This week I decided to continue the Disney theme with "La Sirenita" (The Little Mermaid). The attention span wasn't quite the same, though most of them made it through it. It never occured to me before that when they make a big movie like this, not ONLY do they have to hire a whole other set of voice actors to record the dialogue in Spanish, they have to rewrite all the songs so they rhyme! It's crazy! All the songs have the same melody and stuff, they just say completely different things. Por ejemplo...

Part of Your World:
(English Version)

Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collections complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm a girl...
A girl who has....everything

Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you'd think
Sure, she's got everything!

I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I've got hoozits and what's its galore
You want thingamabobs? I've got twenty.
But who cares? No big deal. I want moooooooooooore

I want to be where the people are
I want to see, want to see em dancing
Walkin around on those... what do you call em?
Oh, feet!

The ease with which I was able to recall all of those lyrics should cause me embarrassment, but it doesn't. Okay, so now here's the Spanish version of the same song translated back to English... (obviously it's not going to rhyme now because it rhymes in Spanish)

What do I have here? How lovely!
It's treasure that I discovered!
It's very easy to say
That it's not lost anymore

That that you see around you
Is so abundant, so splendid
It makes you think that I don't need more gifts
Since I have thousands.

Although sometimes I don't know what they are
You want thingsamabobs? I've got twenty.
But truthfully, I want moooooooore

I want to go someplace special
I want to see a beautiful dance and
Walk with those...what are they called?
Ah, feet!

See?? Same basic idea, but different lyrics. So now its my goal to memorize all the Disney songs in Spanish so I can sing along with the kids, er I mean improve my vocabulary... ;)

After the long day a bunch of us played a really awesome board game called Mensch Argere Dich Nicht. It was actually called something else in English but I can't remember what; I just googled it and it gave me the German name since it's a German game. Anyway, it's really similar to Sorry! except you work in teams and use cards instead of dice to determine how many moves you can make. As you can see, we're all operating on a budget here. Maybe for Christmas I'll buy everyone game pieces so they can retire the pasta shells and chewing gum. It was a ton of fun, made me think about all the card games with mom and the family. (In case you're wondering, my team totally won :)

(Addendum: I just actually read that article on google and have now determined that this is not that game we played. It's kind of similar though so I'm keeping it up here)