Samba e Carnaval
Monday night, we had tickets to Sector 13 of the Sambadrome. The hostel all decided to go out before. We wanted to watch the schools perform for the last half of the night. Herb, Matt, and I got seperated because; we had to go back to get our tickets. We ended up in an area around the Sambadrome with no tourists. It was kind of annoying because; people wouldn't stop trying to sell us stuff. Eventually, we went inside to find out seats.
We couldn't find the rest of the hostel group, but we sat way up at the top of the stands. It was far away from the main runway of the parade, but you could see the floats and people quite well. We were right infront of where a school would finish. They would continue to play music and pump up the crowd after they finished. I stayed by myself to the end with a Botafogo local named Antonio. He was very friendly, and explained to me everything that was happening with each school. We also talked about religion and politics. Lots of fun. I have a brouchere in Portuguese, but Ill try to remember what he told me from it.
Each school has an Hour and Twenty minutes to complete there run through the Sambadrome. The closer you finish to the time limit, the better score you receive. Speaking of score, the highest a school can receive is 100. There are 10 catagories of 10. They include drum performance, croud reaction, harmony or song, fantasy which is costume, Mestre-Sala e Porta-Bandeira which is the man and women who are in love, the focal point of the school's presentation, samba, amoung others. Its crazy to watch how each porition of the school is coordinated with each other portion through dance, color of costume, and timing of movement through the Sambadrome. At the very start, each school has a fireworks display with the colors of the school. Throughout the procession, people from the school dressed in white help coordinate the movement through the Sambadrome to keep the parade on time.
Antonio's favorite is Beija-Flor. They won last year and were set to perform last as tradition. This was to begin at 7am. Before they began, people passed out Beija-Flor flags to the croud to help with croud participation points. Antonio tried to teach me their song to sing, but I could not get it. I did wave my Beija-Flor flag for most of the hour and twenty minutes. They were extremely good, but Imperatriz was also excellent. The champion is announced today so, we shall see.
The festivities died down around 830am, and Antonio and I stopped by a cafe for some drinks. The buses were very crouded so, we needed to waste some time. I was back at the hostel by 930am. I ate some breakfest, and got a few hours of sleep. Have I really only been here three days?
Comments
Hey Simeon...maybe you should've spent less time waving your little flag with your new friend Antonio and more time admiring the beauty of my model friends Naomi Campbell (who was atop the Beija Flor Float) or scouring the sambadrome stands for super-model Gisele, who was also in attendence ...now if you'll excuse me...mini-me is peeing in the corner again...
