Carnival de Binche!

---

Hello Everyone, i know its been awile since my last Travelblog but being in Belgium now just seems normal to me-like a home so i dont often take many pics-but ill try to change that! Im really happy here still and im always busy with somthing to do
Anyways about te Carnival-Lots of European countries have the tradition of Carnival which is to scare away the winter and to weclome the warm sun again. In belgium they have many differnt festivals for that-most of the little towns have a big bonfire and everyone dresses up. But in the town of Binche its pretty specail. They have all these people-manly guys who dress up as Gilles and throw oranges into the crowd, nobodies really sure the reason for this anymore cuz it goes way back, but the Belg keep doing it anyways cuz they will never pass up a time to party. Anyways theres a lot of people that go see it and its a very important ceremony that goes along with it too. The Gilles are up really early tueday morning to get up and get dressed in their outfites and then they start eating and drinking than on. They have hay that they put in their custumes to make them look fat thats why they call it the Mardi Grass cuz grass means fat in french. every Gilles is followed by a drummer all the time-and the sorta dance to it in a weird way.
so yeah i was there with my host dad Jean-phillipe and some other rotary students, it was really fun and i danced alot. I also caught a lot of oranges-which were blood oranges and really good. I got one to the face though when i wasnt looking-it hurt! They like throwing them hard those Gilles! And afterwards the streets are littered with Oranges and also smeel like piss-all the guys piss outside..gross i know. But yeah it was a really cool time and im sad that in Canada we dont have Carnival.
I hope you guys are doing well and i love all of you soo mutch-only 4 months lefts and ill be home!

---