Football and Carnival

The carnival here begins on a Friday and goes on until Tuesday. There is party on the streets all the time in what we call Blocos. The hard translation is “blocks” and it means that there will be a large group of percussionists playing the hot samba rhythm and tons of people dancing around them. Sometimes we have brass (trombone, trumpet and saxophone) and occasionally there is a big sound car with strings and singers. What does it have to do with World Cup? Well, after every winning game we have a similar reaction to carnival. Everybody goes to the streets again just to see each other smiles.

There is also the big parade at the Sambódromo (sambadrome), filled with semi-naked girls, but the ticket for that isn’t cheap. Furthermore we can check it out on TV the girls body and go crazy about it. Have fun! Keep your keyboard clean! The “schools of samba” parade for about 8 ours (begins at night and ends in the morning) in two consecutive days, sunday and monday. Ironically these schools are not really schools for people who wants to learn how to dance samba (as seen in The Simpsons Rio episode). They are clubs like football teams, with their theme colors and faithfull followers. But the real fun is at the streets!

Yesterday I walked trough the neighborhood and bumped into 3 different blocos. Like me, a lot of people were wearing Brazilian World Cup themes. After drinking some beers and after dancing a lot I came back to my place, made myself a caipirinha and turned the computer on to see what’s new here and everywhere. About 30 minutes later a percussion sound was coming trough the window and it was clearly getting closer. It got really loud soon after I prepared another caipirinha, so I’ve put more Brazil clothes and rushed down to the street. My mother, who lives nearby, was there too. That was funny.

Super Bob gave me a red card today, just because he thinks that Brazil is more blessed than other countries. Ok, we have samba, carnival, the Selection, beautiful girls, beaches, caipirinha, sunny weather… well… we have an expression here that is a clear reflection of Bob’s opinion: “Deus é Brasileiro” (God is Brazilian). But we have a huge share of problems too, of course. My beloved city’s most famous postcard is that big statue of Jesus with wide opened arms, blessing and welcoming everybody. So maybe Bob is right after all… (lol)

Anyway, more party and more carnival is what I expect to see again in June and mainly in July. If Brazil wins the World Cup the yellow, green and blue will be the samba colors more than ever.