Loretta visits for carnival week

As promised, a more detailed blog has been written about this past week with Loretta. I just got off the plane from my weekend in London but you can expect that blog in the very near future. So carnival started last Saturday on the 17th and ended on Tuesday night. Loretta came to Tilburg on Sunday so she was able to experience most of the festivities. Carnival is actually only celebrated in the southern catholic region of the Netherlands and a few Catholic German cities (like Koln). Young and old get into this event by getting crazy costumes.

It was hilarious to go through the costume stores with some of my friends. I ended up buying this ridiculous cavewoman outfit but what made me laugh the most was seeing Florence in her baby outfit! Annalise dressed up as grass so every night we went out I had great fun making her hair HUGE and spraying it with green hairspray. I even incorporated a few real leaves into her hair from the bouquet Howie sent me for Valentine's Day (awww.. ... thanks Howie!) Loretta explained how confused she would have been if I hadn't told her about carnival... seeing grown men walking around in Elvis and clown costumes would have been a strange first impression of Holland...

The whole centrum of Tilburg was done up with colourful flags, food venues, tents, colourful store fronts and even some live music. At one point a drumming circle began outside among the hoards of people and we danced our little hearts out. There was an outdoor concert in the square on Tuesday night and even though I could not understand those two old Dutch men who were singing, it didn't stop me from dancing along. At this point I would like to offer an official apology to my Dad for the times I made fun of his Dutch soccer music CD.

Once carnival ended I was able to show Loretta the more typical Dutch lifestyle. I wanted her to fully appreciate the bicycle while in the Netherlands but it was a little difficult to convince her to get on the bike again after she fell off FOUR TIMES on the way home Tuesday night!! Being the trooper that she is she decided to mount the bike again to do some grocery shopping. Luckily, the open market was going on that Thursday so Danni, Cheryl (the other one) and I were able to point out some of the wonderful Dutch items. She was VERY impressed with the cheese booth and even got to roll a wheel like she always wanted to do. (I won't mention the 'wheel' was ten centimetres in diameter) While grocery shopping Loretta informed me that we had to get red meat because she had brought over a very special and expensive bottle of red wine that simply has to go with red meat. At this point it got a little ugly because I had to explain that (gasp) I don't particularly eat red meat or like steak. Well this did not sit over well with her but we managed to push through this disagreement and I picked up a package of some sort of rolled meat. Sometimes it's a surprise what I eat because I can't always interpret the name.

I feel that Loretta got a good taste of the Netherlands, but by Friday we were off to our next adventure... London!