Amsterdam + Carnavale

In March there is a week of holidays for "carnavale". In Belgium Carnanvale takes place in a few citiees all around the county. Every city has a different celebration, but most of them involve people dressed up with a parade where the people throw oranges at you. I had the chance to go to two different carnavales in Belgium. The first one I went to was in a town called Malmedy, and I went there with my host family. THe carnavale started out with a bunch of peple dressed in colourful costumes and hats with large feather plumes. There was music and they did a little dance in the middle of the square. After that was finished there was a parade that lasted for probably at least two hours. In the parade there were all different characters dressed in different costumes. There were probably around 100 of this one character called "long nez." They were called that because the people wore masks with long noses. These characters would run around in groups of 6-8 and choose a person in the crowd to imitate. Once they chose someone they would copy everything that person did until he or she bought all of them in the group a beer. There were also many charaters who had very long arms, who would walk by in the parade and mess up your hair. There were many other characters as well but those two were the main ones I think. For the main day of the carnavale, mardi-gras, I went to the most well-known carnavale in Belgium with my friends. At this carnavale the main characters are all these men called the "gilles de binche." These men are dressed up in costumes stuffed in hay and they also ear very large hats with feather plumes. These "gilles" walk around all day long and throw oranges at people. At the end of the day there is a big parade with a couple other characters but every character throws oranges into the crowd. My friends and I watched the parade for a while but then we decided to hop over the fences and join in the parade as well. There were other people who weren't dressed up who were in the parade as well but hose people were the people with the media badges or other types of special passes. We didn't have any pass but we didn't get caught and it was a lot of fn! I was really glad that I got to experience a couple different carnavalesin Belgium because that is something I would not see back home.

During the Carnavale break I also went on a Rotary trip to Amsterdam. THh trip was only for 3 days but it was so much fun! We left early in the morning from Bruxelles on the bus, and we had our first stop in a city called Delft. While we were in Delft we just ate lunch and then we saw the Vermeer museum. If you don't know who Vermeer is, he was a very famous Dutch painter who is called "the master of light". One of his most famous paintings in probably "The Girl with the Pearl Earring." After we finished our tour of the museum we got back on the bus and made our way to Amsterdam. When we got there we first got settled in to our Hostel and then we went out for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. After we finished eating we had a tour of Amsterdam by night which included the Red Light District and all. Seeing everything in Amsterdam was both shocking and interesting. It is just shocking because in Canada I could never imagine seeing anything like that. The next day in Amsterdam we had a tour of the Jewish History Museum, as well as a Synagogue. We also got to go to the Flower Market and have a tour of Anne Franks House that day. I really liked the Anne Frank museum, and it was a lot different than I expected. It was very cool to be able to walk through the secret passageway and see exactly where Anne and her family were hiding. The same night we got to visit the Van Gough museum. While we were in Amsterdam we also had a boat tour of the canals and the Royal Museum. It was a really cool city and I'm already looking forward to going back some day!