Life: Idiotropic

Karneval is coming to town... the parties have started and this weekend, the big parades start -- the biggest one in Cologne on Rosenmontag. We'll be in Austria, so we'll miss most of it.

But this morning while drinking coffee and visiting with friends, I heard a bunch of racket from outside, so, as usual, I grabbed my camera and ran to the front door. The local German elementary school (the one Aria will attend next year), was having their big costume parade through the village and they were turning right in front of my house. The best costume was one boy dressed as a giant Kinderegg - the toy filled chocolate eggs.

Luci left this morning for school dressed in her fancy dress because she wanted to be a princess. Her class is taught by German teachers, so they like to do the local holidays big. They had a party with a lot of music and dancing and a small parade around the building to show off their costumes. (Luci's the one in the peach dress)





Tiara had a party this afternoon too. I stopped by to drop off cookies and ended up staying a while to take pictures for the yearbook. The costumes were hysterical. Three boys dressed up as girls - one in a extravagant pink and purple dress with fur and a jacket and hat and pink fishnet stockings. It was a bit frightening. The girls were all dressed cute as baseball players, cats, rock stars, and one wore a mardi gras feather mask. Tiara was a 50's girl. They played duck- duck-goose, dodge ball, musical chairs, and a few other games.





Arianna didn't have a carnival party with her class, but I took pictures of them in the computer lab learning to use the computers. They learn to log in and go into specific programs. The teacher (who is still living in the dark ages when it comes to computers) was trying to teach them to put stamps on their worksheets in the art program. It took her so long to explain it and then the network kept crashing when the kids tried to log on, that most of the kids never even got the program open before the class was over.