Small Town Carnival
Carnival is a pretty big deal in Italy...bigger and different then we expected. It's kind of like Halloween but only because people wear costumes and not just the masks and capes that you see in pictures of Venice. Here's a picture of Isaac (a shark) and Juliet (a bird) with our friend Emma and our neighbors Phillipo and his little sister who's name I can never remember.
Every commune (it seems) has it's own celebration of Carnival. In our town, Caneva, the center square is blasted with confetti, lined with tents for the towns organizations to serve food and accept donations to all the towns people that come out for it. Pop-music was blasted to cheer everyone up and put them in the party mood.
Emma is a peacock:
This is a group of people running one of the tents dressed up like Gondoliers. I liked their costumes so I asked if I could snap a photo:
They had a few jumping castles for the kids to play in, which was nice. We left our big kids to play with their neighbors and school friends while JOey and I let our friend Daniela show us around all the tents.
Daniella took us to the Alpini tent to try a local delicacy whos name I can't remember. It was a round of white polenta, perfectly soft, topped with a slice of traditional (and very fatty) Italian sausage. They top it off with a horseradish sauce that they warned us about, telling us how spicy it was, making sure we thought we could handle such spice and then waited, watching with suspense when Joey popped it in his mouth. It was nothin';) HOrseradish or wasabi or something like that. Italians don't know spice:)
All and all it was a cozy, local, friendly party. I, again, felt enamored by the Italian idea of communes...a local town center that organizes events for every holiday and random weekends where everyone from the community can get together and volunteer and feel like real neighbors. I know we do that in the US...city festivals etc. but these feel smaller, more consistent and neighborly then anything you'd ever go to in Houston or Orange County or something. It's been a cool experience.
Afterward we went to Daniela and Giovani's house to hang out and eat chips;) They're the kind of hosts who gather everyone in a group hug, kissing each others cheeks through toothy smiles every time we say good bye. We love them....!
