Tuesday was Will’s birthday so instead of doing the traditional celebratory bar visit, we took a cab to the carnival in town! It’s still Holy Week, so there’s a carnival in town the entire week full of Mexican jubilee! The carnival is preceded by a bunch of stands selling goods like over-sized blankets with iconic images (giant wolf head, scarlet macaws, wild horse whipping its mane against the wind, pretty standard really) and ceramics (piles upon piles of china). My boss from last summer, who sells china on ebay, would have been a kid in a candy store. Men were literally shoving as many china sets as they could into bags and selling them for $10. But this was a rather comical sight, watching this men ramble off bargain after bargain, repeating the same catch-phrases and gradually dropping their price. Each stand competing with the adjacent one for the attention of anyone walking buy who might fancy five or ten giant blankets.

Like any carnival, this one had food stands, games, and rides. The food stands were a little out of the ordinary I admit, selling not so average items such as corn on the cob, cups or greasy…something (grapes, dates, olives? I haven’t the clue or the stomach to find out), and quesadillas. There was a lovely candy stand that sold delicious candied nuts. Absolutely fantastic. But this blog has already committed enough time and space to my food obsession, more importantly I rode on two rides and survived. Yes, the rides of a Mexican carnival sound just as shady as they actually are. But I didn’t go on the really ridiculous ones, like “Himalaya” or whatever it was. Essentially, it was a circular rollercoaster that spun its riders in heinously fast circle while playing obnoxious music and flashing bright lights in their eyes. It was like the seizure ride, a guaranteed seizure in every car! It was next to a brightly colored haunted house ride that everyone took lightly, but ended up being quite the adventure. I decided to wait by the exit for everyone and was shocked to hear screaming from within the non-threatening building. Everyone’s faces while exploding through the exit doors was hilarious. If only my camera hadn’t run out of batteries I’d share them with you. Maybe next time.

We ended the night with a familiar carnival game – the horse race. You know the one where you roll a ball up a slanted slope into various holes, each with a different value, and depending on which hole you ball lands in determines how far you corresponding horse will travel. Well, the winner of the American round was the brilliant, purebred #4 whose jockey was none other than yours truly. All that training at Hershey Park finally paid off! Some say the game was rigged since a small child continually tried to steal the ball from my one of my opponents, but contrary to what the tabloids may say I did NOT bribe said child. For my victory I received a yellow stuffed bear. If there’s one thing Regan Dohm loves, it’s winning small, inconsequential prizes (preferably stuffed animals) so this really was the highlight of my night. The bear wears a bright orange hat and a little vest that says, “I dream with you.” Cute right? I have a new friend to snuggle with for these last 11 days. Here he is with Domo-kun feeling very much like one of the family.