Noah's School Fasching

Fasching:  a pre-Laten carnival, which is celebrated with the donning of wild and fancy costumes to chase away the evil spirits of winter in preparation for spring.

(AKA: Carnival, Mardi Gras, last party before Lent starts)

(ANYTHING to get rid of winter and bring in spring is good with me!)

Fasching is huge here in our neck of the woods.  Costumes are sold everywhere.  If I were on the ball I'd make my kids decide on their Halloween costumes now so that they would actually have a choice other than 'look in the tote and see what you can throw together'.  However, seeing that they change their minds 5 times in October alone, it would be a waste of effort and money. 

Noah had a Fasching party at school.  The kids wore their costumes to school and they played and ate a lot.  I had made Valentine cookies for the kids at school and they even saved the left over cookies (just 2 days) to include in their party.  [On a side note, Valentine's is kind of celebrated in Germany.  Nothing big.  You could find heart decorations and see signs that said "Valentinstag" but it isn't really a day celebrated in the schools.  According to my experience.  Noah and I like to "introduce" the Germans to our traditions, so Noah made cards for his friends and we took cookies to the class.]

Noah my cowboy.  He was even able to take a plastic gun to school without worries of being suspended!  He didn't really want a big costume, unsure about his first Fasching, so we went with a basic cowboy who wears "house shoes" and not boots in the school.

 

You can see his teacher, UTE (oo-TAH) in the background. She was wearing a traditional German dress that was off the shoulder and ill fitting. I laughed when I saw the off the shoulder shirt was off to about her elbows. Good thing the little kids really don't have a clue about it! Funny costume though.


This is a picture of Noah's friend Anya (with the black hair). She is an amazingly fluent in English, German, and French. She is also amazingly bossy and likes to tell me everything that Noah might do that is wrong. Usually something about playing with someone else and how her feelings were getting hurt. I've started just telling her that everyone needs to be nice with everyone and that she can just stop telling me about Noah.