Experiencing Carnaval (but not really because it's July)

Yesterday, because it was cloudy, Anna and Rory and I decided to go to the Carnaval warehouses, a place on the edge of the city called Ciadade do Samba (SambaCity, a dumb name). Since no floats are currently being built, it serves at the moment as a Carnaval museum. A really lovely English-speaking worker gave us a private tour of the complex and told us all about how it works.

Carnaval is in February, and starting at the end of July/beginning of August (this weekend, actually), the city starts preparing. The way it works is there's something like 58 samba schools in the city/region that try to have a show at Carnaval. Right now, groups from each samba school start putting together themes/costumes/songs for their school to perform. Each Saturday (night: starting at 1am apparently) for the next two months, these groups perform their shows for the school, and the school ultimately picks the best show. The themes are all over the place: Love for Nature, 200 Years Ago in Rio, Time Travel, and Chills and Thrills are four from last year. Anyway, the schools pick a theme, compete among the 58, and either win to be in the top twelve or get eliminated. The top twelve then get huge spaces in Ciadade do Samba to put together floats and costumes. Literally HUNDREDS of people from each school participate (some get to as members of the school, but citizens of Rio can also pay about $500 and dance/walk in a costume), so hundreds of elaborate costumes are made. The floats, too, are unreal in their intricacy.

At the time of Carnaval, the twelve top samba schools get a 1 hour and 20 minute performance in a designated area of the city with a street something like a mile long (six go on Wednesday night and six go on Thursday, then on Saturday the six best go again). Forty different judges rate them in ten different categories. Carnaval is actually a national holiday in Rio, so everybody gets the week off. Seats for the event cost from $500-$2000, so in general people just support their favorite samba school (each school has colors and banners, etc it's so cute) instead of actually attending the parades. My favela is adjacent to a samba school that's consistently in the top twelve -- they were painting the streets the other day the school's colors, green and pink in preparation for the Saturday performance parties that are about to start. I'm making it my new goal in the three Saturdays I have remaining to attend one of these performances.

Here are some pictures of floats.

We could only climb on one.

This one had fur.

This is from the Thrills and Chills theme. It's a baby emerging from the womb. What you can't see are the thousands of smaller upright, green-tinted babies that comprise the rest of the float.

The costume on the left is for the oldest female participants. Hundreds of women age 60-80 wear dresses like this in each school's performance. Keep in mind that this is in the middle of Rio's summer (AKA SO HOT EVEN AT NIGHT THIS SHIT IS CRAZY)

It's raining now, which is really hard for everybody to deal with. The Cariocas on the streets were looking around in disgust; it's a fair point, though, that a slight rain is a big deal for people used to 78 and sunny every single day. Also, I may have stubbed/broken/bruised my little toe today playing soccer this morning. But I did score two legitimate goals. Against children. Probably I'm just being a baby. But it really hurts!