Belgium: Fat Tuesday!

Friday, February 23, 2007

Fat Tuesday!

Yay Mardi Gras! So this week has been Carnaval and I have been enjoying the break from school VERY much. Me and Marissa have pretty much been chilling and doing almost nothing the entire week. I'm gonna have a realy hard time going back to school on Monday but oh well, it happens.

So Binche is pretty much the best place for Mardi Gras in Belgium and as it turned out one of my friends, Stephanie, has a host uncle who was a "gille". Now to explain a gille.. they're pretty much these guys thatget dressed up in silly costumes, wear wooden shoes, parade arond town banging drums, dancing and throwing organges. I have asked a ton of Belges why they throw oranges and no one seems to know. Continuing, Steph has a host uncle who is a gille and she invited me and Marissa to spend the night so we could see what really went on in this Belge tradition. So we got to wake up at 3:30 am to get up in time to see the gilles get dressed. And in my half asleep state i managed to fall down the stairs of death. Yes, I do have very large bruises where the sun don't shine.

We went to some person's house at four in the morning and watched the gilles get stuffed with hay and then everyone drank champagne... at four in the morning. I don't really know? Then we started parading around the city banging the drums and doing our little carnaval dance. We did that for about an hour and a half then went into a little cafe to have the special gilles breakfast of oysters, salmon and white wine. At five thirty in the morning. Mmm... delicious. We did some more dancing and stuff for about an hour after that but me and my friends didn't eat an amazing amount because anyone who knows me well enough should know that I do't exactly do oysters or salmon or white wine. Especially at 5 am. So we left the group and found a patisserie and had some caffienated beverages and pains au chocolat. There were so many people after that we kind of gave up on finding our group and hung out in the grand place for a little bit and ended up getting in a confetti war with a ten year old boy. That was pretty fun. Then all our other friends got there, we had some frites for lunch and got a good spot for the parade. We just chilled for about 2 hours then the parade finally started and all the gilles threw oranges for about...ever. After a while me and Marissa finally got sick of running on 3 1/2 hours of sleep for 18 hours in the hot sun (yeah, sun. In Belgium. In February. I got a sun burn.) so we left a little earlier than planned. We were kinda the party poopers, we were in bed and asleep by ten on Mardi Gras but o well, we were happy to be home :)

Bisous,
Chelsea