Karneval Warm up and TRIPLE RAINBOWS!!

This week was pretty cool, observing a surgery, going to a museum, hanging out with friends, and studying for our tests. However, my favorite program led thing by far was the Karneval warm up.

When my friend Kelsey and I arrived (she was a sheriff and I was a tiger), the party was just getting started. There were so many different costumes; fish, animals, Charlies angels, clowns, anything that you could think of was there. It was just like Halloween but in February. In fact, that's a very good comparison for Karnival from what I've gathered. People dress up in costumes and party, drink beer, sing songs, and get candy. I think last year there were 150 tons or more in candy given out...just in the Bonn-Cologne area. Yeah, that's a lot. And it's a nonstop party from Thursday to Monday so that when Lent comes on Wednesday, you've gotten everything out of your system. We were given a brief into to Karnival and even got to sing one of the more popular songs called Viva Colonia...which is now stuck in my head by the way. It was a lot of fun, and after the presentation (with a lot of confetti and candy being thrown at us) we ate and drank some more while socializing. At one point, a song came on and I don't know who started it, but a conga line started that eventually pulled everyone in. By the time that we were all a part of it, the line snaked around the entire room. It was quite a lot of fun, and I made some new friends during the party.

 

  Everyone had fun dressing up...even those who didn't!

 Charlies Angels (AKA: our program coordinators)

 Lots of fun with everyone

  Look at this conga line! It's even longer than seen

Out of just the personal stuff, it wasn't the socializing or hanging out with friends this time (I know, it's shocking!) It was actually the triple rainbow I saw on the way home one day. Yes, you heard right, a triple rainbow. On the way home, Kelsey and I saw it was raining, but that there was a rainbow in the sky. Not just a faint rainbow, but a full-on ground to ground complete rainbow. Then we did a double take. It was a double rainbow! I even took pictures! There was a fainter rainbow above the more vibrant one, and Kelsey and I were mocking the double rainbow "what does it mean?!" video. Then we took a closer look. Beneath the vibrant lower rainbow were the dim last few colors (YGBV) of a third rainbow. it wasn't complete, but we were looking at a triple rainbow! By this point, Kelsey and I were really freaking out until we couldn't see it any more. You can't really see it in the picture because the colors were dim, and my camera isn't the best in the world, but it was there, and it was beautiful.

 If you can see, there's a fainter line above the lower rainbow. 

And a bit of color below the lower one (right below, almost covered)

 The dichotomy on either side of the rainbow is pretty cool

There is one thing that almost beat out the rainbow in my personal category, which was the falling chair incident. In the middle of our mini meeting about our design project, I noticed that I was slowly sliding down below the level of the table, and that something was insistently pushing against my foot. I moved my foot, and all of a sudden my seat tilted slowly enough that it was comical and that all who were looking thought I was just doing something weird, but fast enough that it stunned me. It wasn't until I was on the floor and my chair was on it's side that people realized something was wrong. Turns out my chair had broken on one side right where the legs connected with the seat and that insistent push against my foot was the legs trying to fold under the seat. I looked around and everyone was laughing because the inevitable slowness of what had just happened made it ridiculous to watch, and I'm sure my bewildered expression just made it that much more funny. I gave the broken chair to my teacher and sat in the one next to it. Hopefully it won't break this time. The reason it was almost my favorite personal was twofold; first was the fact that this week was rather tame in terms of goings-on, and second was just the hilarity of my inevitable slow fall and the reactions of everybody in the room that made it so funny.

And that's it for the week. I've been having a ton of fun on this trip and I can't wait for the craziness that is Karneval.
Erin Z