Dia Villamariano

Yesterday was my school's carnival and it was really really fun. On Friday we spent the afternoon setting up tables and chairs and making sure everyone knew what her job was. I had the pleasure of selling tickets for the Tombola which is more or less an "everybody wins" carnival attraction. Basically you buy a ticket for 5 soles and it either has a number or a letter on it with the number corresponding to a better prize. I bought two tickets with the carnival money I received from the school and I got a bottle of shampoo and a headband. Not bad. The Tombola had prizes from snickers bars to kitchenware to a playstation 4. No matter what you get something which is fun.

What I really lucked out with was the Gran Rifa. Marco bought 5 tickets and I bought 1 and out of the thousands that were purchased, one of our tickets was chosen for the dinner for 6 at a Chinese restaurant prize. How cool is that? There were some fantastic prizes including the grand prize of having a years scholarship to the school. There were a couple of Scotiabank 1,000 USD and 1,500 USD bank credits too.

Setting up by pulling legs apart.

The final outcome. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of the day of.

The idea behind the carnival day is to raise money for the school as well as charity programs. It is a Catholic school so they do a lot of work with other schools that need funds and food in the Lima area. I couldn't help but notice the onslaught of advertising done. The chairs and tables were from Coca-Cola, the stage had huge Movistar banners on it and all of the booths in the main patio were restaurants like Bembos, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, ChinaWok and D'Nofrio ice cream. I am pretty sure at my school's carnival days the food was made by parent volunteers and there were always tons of grills going. Hotdogs and hamburgers were the main food. I will say that it was nice to have some variety for lunch. Julie and I couldn't help but wonder how much more money could have been raised if more parents volunteered instead of having vendors come in. I don't know the breakdown nor do I know if the vendors give some percentage to the school.

I found some super cute stickers that could be personalized and bought them for my two nieces. Julie and I took pictures in a photo booth and I enjoyed watching all the teachers do their dance at the end. This year's theme for Teacher's Day was Disney so they extended it to make it the theme of the carnival as well since they already had all the props and costumes. Disney got plenty of free advertising this year at school. If you can't read it in the photo, the quote comes from Walt Disney: "If you can dream it, you can do it.". It's a good quote no matter who it came from.

Overall, it was a super fun day and it got me super excited about the future because I can imagine Marco and me along with Leah at an event of this nature when she is in school.