Who said the holidays were over???

I´m nervous, super nervous right now. Walking outside my house I have to hold my breath and hope that I don´t get hit with waterballoons. It´s Carnaval. What is Carnaval? Men in the streets urinating, drunks who won´t let you walk by without wrestling out of their grasp. Waterguns. Shaving cream. Whistles used as instruments. Fog horns used as instruments. Fireworks and firecrackers exploding above your head. Waterballoons- frozen, filled with urine, filled with paint, launched at the prize targets- females and foreigners. And if you are female and foreign, well... I´m just nervous.

In some areas they have gorgeous parades with people doing traditional dances. I sat and watched them practice for hours in Cochabamba. Where I live, they don´t do traditional dances. But the do form their ¨comparces,¨ little fraternities as they describe it to me. They drink together, party together, eat together, and prance around the plaza with their ¨queen¨on the back of a truck, barely clothed, dancing and getting hit with balloons and shaving cream. How beautiful, they say.

I´m about to head out to Valle Grande where the Carnaval celebration is even more ¨beautiful.¨ I think beautiful means a larger degree of the aforementioned. I hope I make it through. I took a waterballon in the eye the other day from a distance of just four feet away. I didn´t have the necessary vocabulary in Spanish to say what I wanted to say to that kid.

Wish me luck. I hope I don´t become overly belligerent on this ¨beautiful¨holiday.