But for me, Mardi Gras reminds me of the bittersweet holiday in February 2006. I was in Belgium, where I expected to celebrate the day with a grand European fete, but it resulted in one thing.

Puke.

Binche, Belgium is infamous in western Europe for its carnival. Men dress as “Gilles,” which are flamboyantly dressed characters who prance around town in red, yellow and black and are belted with heavy, loud bells. On top of it all, the men don 4-foot tall feathered head pieces that can way up to 7 pounds.

It all sounded very nice when a plethora of other English-speaking exchange students and I decided to take the train to the tiny town, about 34 miles south of Brussels.

But then it started to rain.

It wasn’t a normal rain, but rather a cold, gray rain that makes you want to bury your face in your coat and ignore the world. Normal people would have spent the day inside, reading or listening to jazz music, but for the Belgians, it was a day to drink and be merry.

And for one exchange student, it was a day to drink too much and not be too merry at all.

My friend was an exchange student from the Philippines, who we’ll call Belinda. Belinda was the type of girl who could just glance at a guy and put him under her spell, so she typically had a harem of men in tow. As it was Mardi Gras, she took the “When in Rome … “ approach, and bought a bottle of blood orange rum. The stuff tastes so nasty it’s no wonder it isn’t sold in America. Even the color of the liquid is sketchy, as it’s similar to the liquid remains of a week-old tomato.

Well, as you can guess, Belinda drank about as much as it rained that day. The bottle was empty, and it wasn’t until she decided to take a pee underneath the steps of City Hall that we realized she had gone a tad overboard.

Belinda then turned to our friend Jessica and gave her an inquisitive look. It’s that look you give when you don’t hear a person just right, or when you don’t know what to order at Starbucks.

But she wasn’t wondering whether to get a chai or a frappuccino — rather which part of Jessica she would puke on.

Belinda chose Jessica’s mid-section. She projectile vomited the contents of the empty bottle onto Jessica’s puffy vest, which caused Jessica to let out a ear-shattering screech. Belinda then fell into the puddle of puke that had missed Jessica, marinating her jeans in a nice red-orange liquid.

Belgians are used to drinking heavily, but that sight threw a few over their limits. Belinda lay on a park bench where she drunkenly decided to speak only Spanish. This proved to be difficult, as I hardly know any Spanish.

We had all been speaking French primarily for the past six months, and her switch into a third language was completely useless. We had a drunk, Spanish-speaking Philippine girl rolling around on a park bench on our hands, which meant one thing.

Someone had to call an ambulance.

The Belgian equivalent of the American Red Cross zoomed to the park bench in about five minutes after a worried Belgian made the phone call.

The bright yellow ambulance workers hauled Belinda in, as she became progressively more angry.

They asked who should ride with Belinda to the designated “Too drunk to function” location. I volunteered, half because I wanted to make sure Belinda was OK, and half because I was sick of walking in the rain.

In the ambulance, Belinda had that same look of Lindsay Lohan when she was passed out in Samantha Ronson’s car. They dragged her into the building, and she flopped down on a green cot before she was poked with an IV. As expected, she puked a few more times, this time getting it in her jet black hair rather than the plastic foam “puke catcher” next to her head.

I spent all of Mardi Gras in the grim building, looking out a gray sky while Belinda sobered up. We hardly got to see the Gilles for five minutes, and Jessica was forced to ride the train back home smelling of vomit.

The train was packed with more people than a Capital Area Transportation Authority bus on a snowy day, which, in Belinda’s eyes, was the perfect opportunity for her to leave Binche by doing one more thing.

Puking.

For those MSU students who will be taking a page from the book of Belinda, I advise keeping your puke to yourself or the ground. While it’s great to celebrate Mardi Gras with enthusiasm, collect your beads instead of your booze. It’s cleaner and you avoid the stench of regurgitated rum.

Because puking is never cool — regardless of the country you’re in.