Andiamo a… Carnevale!

My name is  Meryem. I am 23 years old. I was born and grew up in Istanbul/Turkey.  And no...I am not coming from an Arabic country and in Turkey we do not speak the Arabic language as usually people in here tell me. :) We even use our own Latin Alphabet.

​I have studied sociology at Istanbul University. I have been active in voluntary work since 2012. I have been abroad for various youth workshops and programs many times but I have never been in another country for such a long time so I was very excited to start my EVS in Palermo.

I am living with 6 different people from other countries. Since the beginning of our meeting we all liked each other so we have a lot of fun all together. And I think this makes Palermo much more precious to me. 
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Me and some of my housemates

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​In this blog post of mine I would like to talk about Carnivals in Sicily. As a Turkish girl, in my country and culture, there is no carnival celebrated. So when I heard Sicily has carnivals in different cities on the last week of February, I got so excited. 

We saw these when we arrived to center of Sciacca

​So we arranged a trip with friends to Sciacca to see the “Carnevale di Sciacca”. We went to Sciacca for 2 hours by bus. When we arrived we were so happy although we got off in the wrong station and had to ask for help. Luckily, when we arrived to the city center we forgot all of these troubles.
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There were huge breathtaking carnival wagons with different colors, figures, design. Me and my friend Jennie were so happy to see these amazing wagons because they reminded us of our childhood dreams and nightmares at the same time. 

At night in the carnival

When the carnival parade started, we were filled with joy and happiness to see this amazing event live. We learnt that every wagon  actually represents a theme and each theme has different music, people with special costumes and dances.

​There was only one bad part about Carnevale: The theme songs! First when you arrive to the city center, you start to hear these songs but  then you realize there are only ten of them and only they are played all the time. But despite this small thing, it was so nice to see all the people from 0 till 99 years who were wearing costumes and dancing all together. I was so happy to see a real carnival and to be a part of it for the first time.
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Me and my housemate Marie who is also EVS volunteer

​Next day when we were supposed to come back to Palermo we were still having fun while waiting for our bus.  So if you ever have the chance to see this carnival in Sicily, you should definitely go at least for one day. ^_^