What Carnival looks like

Friday April 22nd
Carnival is a huge two week festival here that shuts down half the city. There are parades, concerts, food, drinks, rides, and traffic every night for two weeks. Friday was the start of it, and coincidentally the first night Erik's friend Christian came to visit him. Christian is from the same university as Erik back in Denmark, who is also on exchange but in California. He, like Erik, quickly became one of my best friends and I hate he only had a week to stay.

Erik and Christian while
walking home in the rain

On Friday night Josh, Erik, Christian, and Mackenzie (NSE girl who is also a fairly new friend) went to Tap n' Still to get burgers before we headed to Carnival. The Carnival celebration takes place every night in this place called the Village. The venue is basically huge parking lot that they closed off. Lights are strung up all around to make the night glow. Along the perimeter of the parking lot are these little huts that all sell basically the same local food and drinks. In the center of the lot is a stage where different bands perform. That night I wasn't familiar with the band, but it was some sort of local island music. We only stayed for a little while, and then decided to leave. Instead of getting a taxi, we walked home, something the two Danes said was very common to do back home. The walk would have been about 45 minutes, but it started raining so we hitch hiked back. It was a fun night.

Sunday April 24th

There was a hammock on the boat.
That's Josh to my left.

Pulling up to the sailboat.

Erik far, Christian near.

Two days later I got invited by Josh to go with him and Erik and Christian to the boat races. That's all they told me when they invited me. I agreed to come, but I honestly had no idea what they were talking about. Around 1:00 we gathered on campus and got a safari to the grocery store, because apparently we needed food to grill. That was cool. I didn't know this was going to be a cookout type situation, but I was all for it. We picked up some beer and brats and walked to this girl's house that was right on the water. I wasn't expecting to get to watch a boat race from a private home, so that was a pleasant surprise. Right when we got there we saw the first race, and it was 4 people each in a very small boat about the size of a twin mattress. They explained to me that this was the smallest of the races. The bigger and louder boats where the people wore helmets was coming later. I honestly was expecting sailboat racing, but this was much better. The final surprise, and the best one of the day, was that we didn't stay at the house. The invite was actually to go on her sailboat which was moored in the bay about 40 ft away from the track. We spend the rest of the afternoon on her boat, grilling, and watching the races. The day was awesome.

Tuesday April 26th

Today was the last day of classes, which I was thrilled about. It also was the day Rock City was coming to play at Carnival. Rock City is a musical group from the St. Thomas. They have been on some pretty big tracks like Locked Away with Adam Levine and Make Up. That concert they put on was pretty crazy. I didn't know they words but all the locals did. I mainly hung back with Erik and Christian and observed. It still was a great experience. Click here to see a little bit of their performance that I put on YouTube.

Thursday April 28th

Today was Christian's last day so we (Erik, Christian, Laura, and I) went to St. John. We played the role of tourists and just went to Trunk Bay via taxi and then hit happy hour at Joe's Rum Hut. Pretty average day, but the company made it fun.

One of my goals in coming here was to meet locals to have an excuse to come back whenever I wanted. Never did I think I would meet two people from Denmark and want to go visit them instead.