like out of an old Czech movie

On Saturday, we went to the little town where Rachel goes to school for a masopust (carnival, the start of Lent) parade. The parade was a week late because the kids had spring break the weekend before.

As you can see by the pictures, this little town of a couple thousand people thoroughly enjoyed this parade put on by the children of the elementary school and nearby preschool.

I was told by my friend J, a teacher at the school, that the town had celebrated this holiday with a parade for years. Of late, the town hadn't celebrated it because no one had taken charge of it. So, some of the teachers at the school decided to put a program together, using the children of the school as the main attraction. Thus, two years ago, they started the tradition again.

The children dressed up, by class, ready to perform skits, say little poems and sing. Our Rachel's class had "beaks" and were dressed as birds. They had memorized several poems having to do with birds and 3 of the students said some of them after the parade on stage in the town square.

The parade started at the elementary school with the mayor, principal of the school and chosen students from the 9th grade announcing the start. We followed the horse drawn wagons in which some musicians rode, on a path through town. As we passed people's homes, they joined in the parade. There were also several people looking out their windows and waving to us walking. I don't know how many of you have seen old movies where wedding parades occurred like this with neighbors joining in the walk to the church. This was much like that and it felt like we were in an old Czech movie!

At one point, we stopped and they announced that they would reenact the time from the 1700's when the townspeople had to defend themselves against the invading horde. This the 8th and 9th graders reenacted loudly and with wooden swords and all.

The parade route wound around until we ended up at the town square where there was a stage set up for the children to perform. The program started with the preschoolers and ended with the 9th graders. All in all, we were there about 2 1/2 hours and had a lovely time.

I plan on uploading a video clip on Facebook. I tried to place it here, but it doesn't want to work!