Italy Trip: Day 5

(Friday 22, 2012) This day was the most interesting and also shocking. When I was told that we were going to a carnival, I thought it was going to be something like “The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey,” but I was in for a big surprise. The place that we went to was called Cittadella del Carnevale and it pretty much was a huge semi-circle of garages that held ENORMOUS floats. I was reflecting back at my experience and I remember that at first I was somewhat scared at how creepy the floats looked. I was telling Billy that if I would have gone here at night I would have been really scared. But as we went though the museum and had our tour guide explain the reasoning behind the historical and political reasoning for them, gave me a better appreciation for the floats. Our tour guide gave everyone an in-depth explanation on how they go about making the papier-mâché models for their floats. It was crazy to know that all the floats are only made out of paper. Some of the floats that they were storing had some extra material to make it look more realistic. (For example, the wolf float that was supposed to symbolize everyone’s rage) But overall, even though I don’t follow politics closely at all, I felt that I took away a lot from this place while learning about how involved Italy is when it comes to their political views and also the politics of other countries. After the trip to Cittadella del Carnevale, we had free time to ourselves, so we decided to relax until our delicious dinner at Bango Stefanella. After that we decided to go to a local bar called Bulldogs where we met this interesting fellow by the name of Guido. He was surprisingly nice to our group and also an amazing foosball player. While talking to him, he said something that I thought was interesting. We got to talking about where we were from and we told him that we were from the Los Angeles area and he said, “LOS ANGELES?! Wow, I wish I could live there because it is so amazing!” I replied by saying “Why would you want to live in LA when you are already living in paradise?” After that conversation, it hit me that the more you live in a certain place, the more you start to find the flaws of that area and then dislike it. I can say from only being here for almost a week, I am still almost star struck by how amazing everything is and how nice people are because, like I’ve said, I have only been here for less than a week. And I feel that that’s how people feel for everywhere that they go for the first time. Everyone is in such a good mood that they don’t notice some things that would normally make someone who has lived in that area for a while mad. It’s hard to explain on paper, but it makes perfect sense in my head…