It's 5 pm. I sit in a dark classroom and watch Oggy and DeeDee. With me today are: a few Portuguese peasants, a male nurse, two Flamenco dancers, Zorro, a cat, a group of pirates and a very small old woman drowning in a salt-and-pepper wig.
It's Carnaval and, after all the excitement, lessons are impossible. Enter Oggy and DeeDee, who appear to be a version of the Itchy and Scratcy show. Multi-coloured violence, eye watering, and yet the kids watch with utmost nonchalance. The two other teachers present tap on computers. Everyone's tired, slumped in their chairs. I'm floating in a post-stress daze. Kira's been fretting all week, chirping excitedly, telling everyone she was 'going as a gypsy girl.'
'Mum, shall we see what I can wear?' - the phrase most heard since last Saturday. 'Tomorrow' – the phrase most uttered.
Finally, we looked – on the night before the Carnaval parade, which is VERY RESPECTABLE INDEED. It could have been – please keep it in mind – ten minutes before the parade.
She went as A Mongolian Princess (or just A Mongolian Person; if that's still too much, maybe only An Aspiring Mongol?) She wore golden silk pijamas, a red dragon vest and an arctic hare hat from Russia. She doesn't know it was pijamas, let's keep it like that.
The parade was on Thursday morning, market day in Monsoonville. The entire infantile population of the region was marched through town in Carnaval clothes, in a rain of confetti and a blur of jolly music.
Henry – our little Down Syndrome boy – was leading the parade, beating merily on a huge drum.
Everyone was ecstatic. Kira's white hare hat was shedding so much hair it looked like snow. When the kids ran out of confetti, they hit on a great plan: pat the hat; white bunny hairs would fill the streets at once.
P.S. It's now Tuesday evening, and Kira's off to her third Carnaval parade. She's wearing her third costume so far (after Mongolian Princess she became a Bride and now a Flower Fairy, but not yet a Gypsy Girl). The masks and music are the same. The white hare hat is bald.
