We Celebrated ash wednesday here in our school today, it is connected to the carnevale and the beginning of the fast ;-) In Iceland we have a three day celebration, beginning on Monday with creamy bun eating after the kids have awakened their parents by bumming them, i.e. spanking them with brightly colored sticks. Then on Tuesday there is the gorging of oneself on salted meat and bean soup (yummy) and the Wednesday one dresses up in fancy costumes, goes galavanting about town begging for sweets, pins bags onto other peoples backs without them knowing it and the finally slams the piniata ;-) Humm anyone notice our talent for taking all the nice holiday customs from other countries and making them our own..;-) ??? I had a presentation for the fifth, sixth and the seventh grade, where I showed them pictures from the Carnevale in Venice, the carnaval in Rio and then of course Mardi Gras. I showed them the different costumes, the masks, the history of the masks and developement, the floats, the dancing groups and so on.. The kids never cease to amaze me :-) I would ask the questions like "what do you think the music sounds like behind them?" and they would get the baroque feeling and the samba beat right :-) Then we had different stations where the kids could paint the piniata, paint each others faces, play cards, make masks and more .... well ...So now off I go home to finish sewing Ragnars "prince" costume and to try to find Elenas magic wand and then at eight we´ll be going to the costume ball where the "cat in the barrel will be hit" i.e. a piniata :-)
If you´d like to see more pictures from the Icelandic custom of Ash Wednesday the try these :-) 1, 2, 3, 4.