march?

OK, I admit, I have been neglecting this blog for quite a while. The truth however is NOT that there is nothing going on in my life, but rather there is going on far to much to still get hold on it. The new semester started and my weekly nights during the weeks are almost sold out:
Monday: salsa classes. To practice and to feel great. Cause I am the best! Literally, hehe. And my prof loves to dance with me, BECAUSE I am the best. Reeallly good for my self-esteem.
Tuesday: my night free... but seems to turn out into sushi-night twice a month. There is a new all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant for 20 Reais (8 Euros) around the corner. And enough people who would go there with me once in a while.
Wednesday: movies with Kimberly.
Thursday: university up to 11h00. Night! So after that we just watch desperate housewives and then to bed...
Friday: Tango classes. OK, here I actually learn a lot. And its great. And after that: movies...
Saturday: Salsa. This time at a salsateca.

OK, gotta go... movies are waiting. I'll try to write a little more later.

basics

Every school has its mestre-sala (the man) and porta-bandeira (the woman), who represent the school. Here you see the couple, representing Mangueira, wearing the school's colours. They are one of the categories to be rated individually by the judges.
So better smile and DON'T EVER get entangled with the precious flag!



Another important part of any samba school is the "bateria" (the drummers) which must be made up of at least 200 integrants (to ensure the sound?) and one "rainha da bateria" (drummer queen), who is kind of leading the whole section. Of course they are rated as well. Here... you see the rainha and the bateria of Viradouro.


OK, another category: the harmony of the whole parade. Here you see again Mangueira, with a very good performance ;-) at least they have no holes between the sections.

fantasias - the horse

Well, their are a lot of fantasias (dresses) for those who actually participate in the parade. And some of them are not really practical as we learned in the underground train.
This young man was REALLY upset about his beautifull pegasus-unicorn-horse-fantasia. Apparently it didn't want to enter neither his car, nor any taxi, so he had to go to the sambódromo by metro (underground). With some thousand other tourist who were going the same way, taking pictures of him ;-)

Can you see him? One of the purple horses must be our hero from the metro. We are PROUD of you!

CARNAVAL - getting ready

Samba, sambar (to dance samba), escola de samba (samba school), samba-enredo (theme song of a samba school), sambódromo (catwalk for samba schools), ... carnaval is definetly about samba in this country. Both in the official samba-school championship and on the streets. Following you'll get an impression of the sofisticated samba parade, as in the streets I prefered to have fun instead of worrying about a camera...


And this is how you get the whole audience to be YOUR fanclub: just give them all for free some flags of your own samba school. Everyone will be happy to cheer for you, just for the fun of it.





And of course... I did the same ;-)
This is the Mangueria-flag. It means mango-tree and they were one of the favourites for winning the whole parade. In the end they didn't, but who cares. We had lots of fun anyway...




And these are the judges... 10 different categories from "theme song" to "performance of the drummers", "evolution of the whole parade" etc... After each school their poins are sealed into an envelope which is only opened on ash wednesday when the winner is proclaimed.