Um yes, I will be returning next year to play Carnaval...and every year after that.

Carnaval is AWESOME! The four days or so before Lent starts everyone throws paint and eggs and oil and water at each other...there aren´t any safe zones and nobody really cares if you say you´d prefer not to get dirty. The president declared "feriado", which basically means that he put the whole country in a state of vacation. We had retreat groups visiting so we were still working the after-school programs, but I had a break from my morning site, which was nice. The whole thing "officially" started the Friday before Ash Wednesday, but the Carnaval paint fest didn´t really pick up until Sunday. I got hit with a bucket of water from Eduardo as I came home from church haha at least he didn´t hit me on the way out to mass.

Jon, Brendan, and I along with Eduardo and his family (Nancy and Wellington), Daniel, Ricardo, and a TON of other neighbors (including one questionably drunk gentleman that sang various renditions of Carnaval songs) piled into the back of a pick-up truck (there were 18 in total) and drove two hours or so to this little pueblo called Salitre. There´s a river that runs through part of the town and everyone swims in the river and all these hut-type things are set up with food and dancing. It was SO MUCH FUN. I got thrown in a pit of mud no less than four times, lost an earring (whoops) and then continously got dunked in the river. There are little packets of powder you can buy that you just need a little bit of water to make paint, so we were throwing that at everyone too. I tried my first cazuela de camaron, which was awesome. Salitre was also the start of my purple hair (yes, you read that correctly). There were people selling bottles of very dark purple paint that was very liquidy (is that a word?) and Daniel and Ricardo kept warning us that it would never leave our clothes or hair. We naturally each bought two bottles.

On the way home, there were people waiting all along the streets near the speed bumps (where the cars have to slow down to cross) with buckets of water and hoses, and people were just throwing water mercilessly on the people in the cars. This was hilarious for us when we were watching this from the river, but then it was our turn to get in the car and drive home. I only got saved because Daniel ended up effectively blocking a lot of the water that probably would have ended up on me hahaha it was funny but then we were freezing on the car ride home.

On Monday and Tuesday we played Carnaval pretty much all day. We got hit by random kids playing in the street, especially the kids that live on the corner. There are about seven of them under the age of seven that got us pretty good one day. It was fun to play it at Semillas with the kids and the retreat groups too because we just filled up TONS of water balloons. After Semillas we also played with the purple paint, so I ended up with purple (I am not exaggerating in the least) hair for about a week. Brendan used bleach to get it out of his hair, but I didn´t hit that point (actually now it´s pretty much all come out of my hair just using regular shampoo).

I must say though that the highlight was Tuesday night when we were so covered in paint and mud and dirt and that purple stuff that we headed to the river behind our house to bathe in the river. This river is dirrrrttttyyyy but it was so much fun. I don´t even really know what the point of bringing soap with us was, but it was awesome. It was a questionable decision at best, considering I´m now sick with a cold and an earache, but let´s be honest, I´ll probably do it again :)

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador