Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I haven’t really been doing much. It’s been cold, snowy and rainy and both Jared and I have been sick. Jared's been working late and has been very busy.
However this weekend is Carnival. It's a festival here to celebrate the official start of Lent. It is a Catholic holiday that celebrates Jesus fasting for 40 days among other things, I'm not really sure. There are Carnival celebrations all around the world. The largest one is in Brazil. Everyone dresses up in either red, yellow, and green or a Halloween type costume. We saw witches, prisoners, a whoopee cushion, a pharaoh, police men, superheroes, Mario and his whole gang, and even worker bees. We saw Avatars, pirates, fairies, the Flintstones, army men, and even Lego people. There were hundreds of different costumes and some pretty clever ideas.
Friday night we went to a little pizza place on the other side of the river. On the way back we saw tons of people outside singing and dancing to different kinds of Dutch music. Some of it was Dutch rap or hip-hop and others were Carnival songs which seem like western songs mixed with music you’d here in Pee-Wee Playhouse but in Dutch. They also threw in some American rap and hip-hop songs every once and a while. Everyone was dancing, drinking, and singing at the top of their lungs. Everyone was having a great time.
We went up to one of the restaurants and grabbed a couple of beers at this little beer window on the outside of one of the restaurants. We stood and just watched all the people. Everyone was having a blast. There are these little heat lamps under the tents outside each restaurant so it was actually not that cold as long as you were underneath one.
Anyways I am acquiring my taste for beer. So far Bavaria is my favorite but I’m willing to try any light beer. We’ve had Heineken, Bavaria, Brand, Amstel, some kind of Blond and one more random one, I can’t remember the name. I tried each one but most of the time we’ll get 2 beers and Jared will drink all of his and I’ll pour a little of mine into his so he can finish it. We went from one bar/restaurant to another grabbing beers, standing and talking, and then going to the next. We went to about 10 to 15 different bars. Some we just walked in, grabbed a beer and walked right back out and others we stayed for a couple. During our journey we found a cougar bar, a bar with all high school kids, one with everyone over 65 and one place with people our age. That was our favorite. They played the best music and obviously had the best people. We ended up finding this one early and came back to it in the end. We had a great time dancing, drinking, and pretending to know and sing-along with the songs.
The next day we walked around for a while looking for a place to eat but decided to eat carnival food. Jared had a brat and I had fried squid rings. They were very good. We had a few beers and called it a night.
Sunday was the craziest day of all. The weather we sunny, cloudy, sunny, haling, sunny, snowing, cloudy and sunny. I was the weirdest weather day. The parade started at 1 o’clock. There were so many people out and most in very intense costumes. Most are store bought and pretty good. Just like the day before there were so many different kinds. There were tons of floats in the parade but they were more like carts to carry their beer and snacks for the kids. A lot of the costumes from the parade were very bright colors and had a lot of parts. They were pretty impressive.
After the parade we were freezing so we grabbed a warm waffle with powdered sugar and headed back to the apartment. Once we were able to warm up we decided to go back out for a few beers and it was crazy. There were thousands of people outside in the streets, dancing, singing and drinking. We went over to an outside beer stand and grabbed a few beers and just walked around. There were so many people. We walked to a different square and that one had even more people. The music was blaring and you could barely walk through the street. We went down to a popular club street and you couldn’t even walk near it. We decided to head back to our square where there were far less people and it was much less crowded. We had a few more beer and some “frits with mayonnaise” and just watched the crazy drunk people. It was definitely the biggest and craziest party/ festival I have ever seen.
So apparently carnival is a 5 day holiday. It is now Tuesday and there are still people outside in costume, drinking, eating, dancing and singing in the street. There are bands playing on every street corner and people everywhere. I found a video on a site to show you the type of music I hear this song every time I got out. It's always playing so have a listen.
Anyway Monday Jared and I went out to try to go to the supermarket to get something for dinner and some much needed milk, however everything was closed, like on Christmas day. Everything, supermarkets, stores, everything except the restaurants and bars. We tried to go to the gym a few hours later not thinking anything of that and they were closed too!! It is really like Christmas. 
