crazy carnaval

Carnaval is like Mardi Gras + Halloween.

And, it is kind of insane. Every night, starting last Thursday or so, people dress up and head over to the Vrijthof, a square in the city, for dancing, drinking, and eating. That crowd is mostly students. It's a lot of fun! Here is us getting ready. By the way, you can dress up like anything you can possibly imagine...and you'll never be the craziest one, oh believe me.

Goofy makeup is pretty much necessary to blend in.

Me, Caroline, and Kathy, posing like creepy dolls.

Amanda, Kaitlyn, and Rachel- gogo gals

One of the best things is that you meet so many people because you are all squished up together dancing and running around. Random people will come up to you and say hi...good times. I met people from all over the world in the past two days- Spain, Costa Rica, Germany...

Caroline, random Maastricht guy, Jonathan, Me

Pana, Katie, Claire, Me- after we almost got squished because it was so crowded

I won't lie to you. Carnaval is all about partying. We were kind of shocked to see the Vrijthof at night- all of that trash on the ground? It's broken beer glasses and plastic cups, and this was only at like midnight. So we were sure to wear sturdy boots when we went out!

We did make the mistake of dressing up for the opening ceremony! Though there were a few people in costume, we were in the minority. Today, however, at the parade, something like 95% of the crowd (parents, children, grandparents, students, everyone) was dressed up. It was drizzly but that didn't stop anyone!

And there are NO limitations on what you can wear. I have video footage of everything...so I'll put it up asap! Among the crazy things we saw:

These dudes walked the wrong way down the parade route.

Terrifying...so naturally we attempted to recreate the monster. We also saw a group of guys dressed up like that afro painter guy from PBS, someone with a Hugh Laurie mask on, 20+ Elvises, the monks from Monty Python, a thousand people time-transported either from Victorian England or the American 60s, and a ton of adorable coordinated families.