Yesterday I woke up in the morning and realized that I am already halfway through my student exchange period. The abscence of blog entries from the last two weeks is due to the fact that first we had a week with exams and essay deadlines for our midterms, and last week was spring break. I used to tell my friends that one semester was a short time, and I'd be back in Finland in no time, but I guess I did not believe myself in what I was saying. Now that I have only seven weeks of classes left until the end of the semester I feel like it was only yesterday that I stepped off the plane at LaGuardia, in New York.
During spring break, I went to New Orleans to meet up with one of my friends who had promised to provide me accommodation during the ever popular Mardi Gras, sometimes described as the "biggest free party in the world". Mardi Gras takes place every year on the Tuesday before Lent, a period in the Christian calendar during which the believers try imitate Jesus's sufferings depicted in the Bible. Many people embrace fasting and Mardi Gras is the last celebration before this period of repentance, prayer and self-denial. Although Mardi Gras itself means Fat Tuesday, the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans lasts for almost a week, only climaxing on the Tuesday in question.
The average Mardi Gras goer, called a reveler, usually does not care about the religious aspect of the celebration. I saw very few if any religious insignia in the city of New Orleans during this event. The celebration has during the latest years become very commercialized with various tourist shops selling cheap Mardi Gras souvenirs for masses of tourists arriving to the town just for the occasion.
The most popular attraction of the celebration were different parades advancing slowly on the streets of New Orleans, consisting of marching bands, dancers and floats of all shapes and sizes. The people in the floats throw different items, such as cheap plastic bead necklaces to the audience, who try to catch them. You can only imagine the immense amount of garbage which has to be cleaned off the streets the following morning to make the city presentable for the people arriving to see the next day's parades. This is why the following Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent is often jokingly dubbed by New Orleans residents as Trash Wednesday.
Whoa, now that I read what I wrote it sounds overly critical of the whole event. What I really wanted to say was that I had a good time and met a lot of interesting people there. I also got a taste of the famous Southern hospitality, which in Louisiana was even more apparent than up here in Virginia.
I will try to upload some pictures in the near future.
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