Carnival!!!

So this weekend was pretty fun! Well… Saturday night was pretty fun! We spent the day relaxing and doing more of our mounds of reading and homework, well what we could get done between like 12, which was about the time that I was awake and ready for the day and about 3 because that’s when almuerzo was, and then we had to leave.
We met everyone at the train station at 4, and it was a pretty big group at first! But since the meeting time was at 4, along with Mormon standard time and the slower paced Spanish lifestyle, everyone started coming around 4:10 or so, and the train was leaving at 4:14. So there were a few of us that decided that we didn’t want to wait for the 4:45 train and took off running just in time to jump on the earlier train and made our way up to Madrid for the Carnival! I guess this weekend was Lent, or sometimes this coming week, where the Catholic people are supposed to give up something and this is their opportunity to party it up before that, so we just joined in the festivities! We made it there around 5 and still had 2 hours till the parade started, so first we went to a store that apparently had a sweet deal on some soccer jerseys (I didn’t but one, I don’t think I would ever wear it) and then walked to this gorgeous park called Parque Oeste that is in the west side of the city (hence the name) which was gorgeous! I think every park here is just gorgeous! It’ll be better when the trees get leaves, haha! But we walked up some dirt steps, the ones that are made of dirt but then have the beam of wood holding it there, ya know? Anyways we walked up the steps and into this park and there was a random, I don’t really know what it was, but it was really pretty! It looked like ruins of a temple in a pond of water, but I got the feeling that they weren’t really ruins, just something nice to look at and it was nice because we got there right at sun set so that made the experience just that much better!
After the park we hopped back on the metro and rode over to the street where they were having the parade and walked around for a while, trying to keep track of everyone in the masses of people that were hording around the gates that the police had set up, and finally, after being kicked out of 2 different spots by some very opinionated Spaniards, found a little metal fence that we could sit on and get a pretty good view of the parade. It was supposed to start at 7, and it probably did, but we were towards the end of the line, I’m pretty sure, so everything made it to us at about 7:45 or so. So we sat there in the cold for a good long time talking, pondering the meaning of life, you know the normal until the parade started for us.
It was funny because there were a bunch of different sections of the parade and they would stop sometimes and do their little dance, and they would always stop right around the corner from where we were, so we could see the lights and hear the music, but alas, we did not get to see the performances. It was kinda funny because it happened every time, so I’m sure the people a little ways down from us were getting quite the show! Haha! But it was still really fun! They had clowns, and a drag queen, lots of older men dressed up as cheer leaders (that was interesting, to say the least), people on stilts, and even a float with guys dressed up as those rolly polly bugs singing Led Zeppelin, or at least that’s what the guy next to me said it was. That was pretty creepy! But when the parade ended, we were about done for the night, mostly because it was so cold and therefore we were cold too. So once again we followed the masses of people to the metro and jammed as many people as could possibly fit in one car, onto one car. I don’t think I have ever been so close to so many people in my entire life, and it is not really an experience that I would like to repeat! Haha! It felt like I was cuddling with 5 different people at one time! And I just didn’t like it. So it was quite a relief for all of us to fall out of the train when the door opened and we were able to make it to our connecting train and head home!