Don't Rain on My Parade

Don't tell me not to live,

Just sit and putter,

Life's candy and the sun's

A ball of butter.

Don't bring around a cloud

To rain on my parade!

Life is Guaranda, Ecuador is currently all summed up in one word: Carnaval. This is a season of festivities (in my case month) held traditionally before lent. Carnaval in Guaranda is HUGE! Let me put this into perspective for you, we got a week off for Christmas break, we get a week off for Easter break, but we have two weeks off for Carnaval. Guaranda is the center of Ecuadorian Carnaval celebrations. In my little town of 30,000 people for one month our streets are over flowing with parades, food stands, and people from all over Ecuador and all over the world.

Carnaval started off with a huge parade the 20^th of January. It lasted about three and was quite the event. When I think of parades I think of the Stoughton parades, where you have some marching bands, followed by local sports teams, and maybe the Shriners in there some where. But parades in Ecuador are that and so much more. Parades are taken very seriously here and if you are going to be in a parade you are going to practice. You are going to have very expensive outfits. And it is going to be an event. To give you an idea of what you would see in an Ecua-parade I will tell you about some of my favorite “floats”.  There are always the groups that I have nicknamed “the dancing grannies”. These are groups of 20 or so old women and some times old men that are dressed up in very colorful, very ugly dresses. They look like the prom rejects. Then they have some dance routine that they have worked up often to a very inappropriate English song. As the ladies get older the routines get less active, you have the 50 year olds who are doing quite impressive twirls, steps, and hops, but as they age they will leave out the hops and then the twirls go and eventually they are just walking down the street clapping their hands and trying to move their hips. They make me smile, but after about 50 of these groups you are ready for a change in pace. But don’t worry; a change in pace is just around the bend. The next extreme, the youngins who are dancing in very little clothing with a lot of provocative moves, but they have no idea what they are symbolizing. You will often get these little kids who are dressed in next to nothing dancing to songs like “Sexy Bitch” and other high quality English music. I always cringe a little bit at these, but they seem to be enjoying them selves and they aren’t being judged, so all the power to them, I guess. Then you get the “drunk clowns”. These are almost always groups of men dressed in any number of crazy outfits, at the start of Carnaval parade their were Native Americans, cave men, clowns, cross dressers, and Africans (they impersonate this by painting their faces black. This would not fly in the US, but here it is normal parade attire.) And just about any other crazy out fit you can think of. How do they get the ”drunk” part added to their name, well they walk down the street handing out shots to family, friends, and just random people watching the parade? They always have a bottle in a brown paper bag, and a little plastic shot glass. Then they often indulge in this them selves, so if you are lucky enough to be at the end of the parade you will get a group of dancing drunk men. They often try to hand me shots because I am a white girl, but not knowing what is in the bottle and having no desire to get drunk on a Sunday morning, I politely decline these offers.  Another float you see a lot of is schools. My school almost always participates in these. The best part of these is that they are always (I go to an all girls school) dressed in very small outfits. We would never ever get away with these out fits in the states, but here they are standard attire. Lastly you get the girls dressed in ball gowns. Yep that’s right friends; they walk down the street dressed in prom apparel. They are the reigna’s (“queens”) or different things. Each school, company, town, and any large organization has one and it is a high honor. I frankly find it pretty funny. But they take them very seriously. These are just a few of the many crazy things you will see in an Ecua-parade.

I will try to keep you guys up dated on more of the crazy events that take place during Carnaval. Sorry about it being so long since my last post. I will work on that. ;)

Livin’ life on the loose.