CARNAVAL!!

OI OI!

It's Ash Wednesday today and the last day of carnival before everything goes back to normal and back to work. I've had a very hectic few days off and the holiday has been far more exhausting than work but it's been pretty fabulous and memorable. So last time we spoke, dear readers, I was very excited about dancing in the Sao Paulo parade with Tom Maior, right?!
Well, we changed samba school at the last minute because of some problem with getting costumes, so we were to dance with Academicos do Tucuruvi instead, who had a much wackier costume anyway, much more carnavalesque. But their parade was going to be Friday night, well 4.30am Saturday morning! And we have school on Saturday! We had a few doubts but the opportunity was too good to miss so we decided we would drive to Sao Paulo after school Friday, do the parade, drive back and go straight to school and teach.
The week passed pretty quickly, just lessons and stuff, also Bruno got some good news about university and he'll be going to UNICAMP in a city called Campinas :) yayy Bruno! I think it's pretty cruel how the results are done here, it's not like in the UK where we all receive results, fairly discreetly, all on the same day, instead they have to wait for lists to be published, every few days, and see if their names are on the list.
So Friday arrived and we put on our flashiest make up and drove to Sao Paulo. We got the basic undergarments of the costume which was some lime green leggings, lime green top, a hula skirt of long green leaves, with gold bits and flowers around the waist, some flowers to go round the wrists and ankles, and some very fetching green plastic shoes which were not at all the right size for us (because of our last minute costume charade) so the lady in charge of the costumes for our ala (parade group) kindly made holes in the heels to tie them a little smaller for us.
Then we waited.
And waited.
Then we got our headdresses and big flowers. We looked absolutely brilliant.


Then we found out that flowers the same colour cannot be together in the parade so I went on a short mission to swap my yellow flower. I got a red one.
Then we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
It was after 5am when we started to parade, but finallllly we paraded and it was fantastic! Very surreal, probably because of being so tired, but I loved it and I was singing along with the song, partly in Portuguese, and probably in some made up Portuguese words that sounded right to me.
On the drive back we stopped off at the old favourite, Graal, the self service restaurant place for a quick coffee before hitting the traffic covered road.
When we got back to Piedade it was just gone 10am. Usually we have lessons on Saturday from 8.30am but Carol covered for us, then I had to face my classes in my delirious state. Cayla had a TNT energy drink so she was feeling more normal I think! We took our costumes into school to show everyone! Fabulous.