Carnival

So the past couple of weeks have been un poco locas, owing to lots of work, things to organise, trips and of course, carnival.

It turns out that people allow you to sit on
the Carnival Throne if you're foreign...

Carnival is a fiesta I had never celebrated before and to be honest, I wasn't very sure what it was all in aid of. One of my students told me that it's about letting your hair down and enjoying yourself before giving something up at Lent and it turns out he was right, it is something along those lines.

Basically, in the olden days, you had to use up all of your good food and drink before Lent came along in order to ensure it wouldn't be there to tempt you. And no-one could think of a better excuse than this to throw a big party and don some fancy dress, not least the Spaniards.

The interesting thing I found about celebrations here is that the fancy dress isn't an individual thing, whole groups of friends go out and buy exactly the same costume. So you'll see 24 bottles of San Miguel walking towards you, 10 Rihannas dancing along the street and 20 brides walking down a makeshift aisle. It's quite an experience.

And the fancy dress isn't very much like what you'd see at Halloween in the UK or the US, where everyone tries to be desperately sexy. Just check out our outfits if you don't believe me.

'Boy Scouts on Tour 2012'