Carnaval Friday

Friday night marked the start of the Carnaval festivities. Another US girl from PUC named Laura and I have been sticking together for the most part, and we met up with some other international PUC students in Leblon. We were originally planning to go to Ipanema with a Canadian PUC student and a couple (non-PUC) Irish guys we’d met on the beach that afternoon, but arranging a suitable meeting time and place proved to be too complicated, so we stayed in Leblon (where Laura lives) instead.

Carnaval seems to be a bit like a Brazilian-style Halloween. Some people wear full costumes, with anything from the Flintstones to the Devil. There was even one guy dressed as God. Cross-dressing is somewhat popular, and guys seem to have fun with that. Most people, though, opt for either a festive headband of some sort or just normal attire. I got a kick out of the festive headbands; most looked like things girls would get at an 8-year-old’s birthday party. There were lots of Minnie Mouse ears, princess tiaras, and headbands with antennae that had stars, hearts, or other things attached to the tops. Vendors either walked around or sold from kiosks to all the people who didn’t happen to have a pair of spare mouse ears or something of the like lying around at home. Laura and I decided on a couple of star headbands. We kept laughing because we looked so ridiculous, but there were plenty of other people our age wearing exactly the same thing. Carnaval has such a reputation for being risqué, but most people’s choice of costume is ironically innocent and child-like.

Laura and I went to a party on a street called Dias Ferreira that had been closed to traffic. The original street was so packed with people that you could hardly move through the crowd, and the surrounding streets were full of people, as well. Most of the people were just standing around in groups, talking and drinking, and vendors were selling beer (and the occasional Coca-Cola or water) every hundred feet or so. With so many beverages being consumed in the same place, the streets were soon littered with empty bottles and other trash. It was pretty disgusting to have to walk through. The city does an excellent job of keeping Leblon’s streets clean normally, and on Saturday it looked like an effort had been made to get the mess under control. Leblon’s streets looked decent just in time for them to be littered again Saturday night. Being a sanitation worker during Carnaval must be a rather disheartening occupation.

The strangest thing about the street party was the extreme lack of music. For all that Carnaval and samba are connected, the absence of any music whatsoever was quite noticeable. Even in the US I think there would’ve at least been loudspeakers or something set up.

At one point a group with drums did start playing in one of the adjacent streets. People started dancing and it was fun until the police set off pepper spray to clear out the people so the cars and buses could get through. I didn’t get hit with the pepper spray, but that was the end of the music.

It was so nice to be able to stay right in Leblon. Since I lived there last summer I was already familiar with the area, so even though there were huge crowds of people and it was somewhat chaotic on the streets, I never had to worry about losing my bearings.

Laura and I had walked there by ourselves, aiming to meet up with the rest of the group in front of a particular bar on that street. However, when we got there it soon became evident that about 200 other people had had the same idea, and even though we tried texting and calling a girl from that group, it was clear there was almost no chance of finding them in the crowd. We walked around by ourselves for awhile, until by some miracle we actually did find them awhile later.

It was a fun group to hang out with. Laura and I were the only Americans, and then there were two Chilean girls (Paulina and Julieta) and a Brazilian girl (Natalia), and then one guy each from France (Mathiu, or Mat), Peru (Carlos), and Germany (whose name I don’t remember). There was no single language that everyone spoke well, so it was amusing trying to figure out which language to use with which person. Laura and Mathiu could speak English better than Portuguese, the German guy could speak both, Paulina, Julieta, and Carlos spoke mostly Portañol with varying degrees of English, and Natalia seemed comfortable with all three. I really enjoyed talking to Julieta and Paulina because I love Portañol. Portuguese and Spanish are so similar that my mind really has to work to distinguish which is which. It’s fun to be able to listen someone speak a mixture of the two, without bothering to figure out which word goes with which language. I would usually reply to Julieta and Paulina in Portuguese, but in the event that they didn’t understand, I’d translate it into Spanish instead. We had a wonderful little language mosaic going. It was awesome.