My favorite Guatemalan celebration: CARNAVAL!


What is Carnaval? Basically it’s Fat Tuesday, but way more crazythan anything you see on channel 5 reporting live from New Orleans. It is always the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and it is ridiculous. The idea is that kids act like little devils because when Lent starts there’s no more fun.

 In Guatemala the celebration is mostly in the schools (lucky for me) and revolves around eggs. Yup, that’s right, eggs. Back in the day one would crack eggs on the heads of their friends and enemies (this is still done in some schools). Now kids save egg shells, once they’re dried they fill them with confetti and use tissue paper to close them. The final touch is some paint. The final product?A cascaron, to be broken on the head of friend or foe. (read: confetti in your hair!)


The confetti here is called ‘pica-pica’ and it’s beautiful. Imagine little polkadots of every imaginable color. You can also mix in some glitter (which is EVIL, it’s really hard to get glitter out of your hair). So kids come armed to school with around a dozen cascarones and at least a pound of pica-pica in a bag. And the war begins.


400 kids in the school patio having a confetti war. I told you that it’s the best holiday EVER!


So, after being sneak attacked all day (I’m kind of tall so it makes for a good challenge to crack the cascaron on my head), I was ready for some payback. My two host brothers had attacked earlier and I told them to watch their backs as I retreated into my house. So, I went to the market and picked myself up TWO dozen cascarones and a pound of pica-pica (it was on sale at this point). Then I called for reinforcements.


Rene is an expert, I mean, he’s got years of carnaval up his sleeve. We had ammunition and just needed a strategy. Our strategy: we’re a lot bigger than them plus they are super ticklish. Result: BAD. Those kids are good.


In the end: