Friday was the "Dia de la Primavera" and "Dia de la Amistad," (Day of Spring/ Friendship) so the elementary school had a spring celebration. The first hour, the kids had P.E. while the teacher had a meeting with parents, so I went out and watched the P.E. class. They were playing a 4th grade version of handball, and it was getting pretty intense. I think the competitive spirit is valued here, and the fistfights that broke out just reaffirmed that for me. Some of the girls didn't want to play, so they sat with me on the sidelines and complemented each other's clothes (since it was a fun day they got to wear street clothes instead of their usual uniforms), made fun of each other for being short/having small feet, argued about who was the bigger gossip, etc. Fourth grade girls are the same everywhere I suppose.
The meeting with the parents was still going on after P.E. got over, so I sat in on the last part of it. It was fun seeing some of the parents. There was one mother who's child is the bane of my existence, but she actually looked really mean and strict, so I'm guessing he doesn't try to pull the kind of stuff with her that he pulls with me.
I'd been practicing a song w/ my kids in English to sing for the spring celebration called "It's Springtime."It's pretty long, and they didn't quite get it down, but when we were doing the last minute rehearsals, and they were all actually trying, it sounded a lot better than I expected.
After recess, the celebration began. First, the preschoolers did their presentation. They had a little girl dressed in a pretty white dress with flowers and ringlets in her hair come to the front and recite a poem into the microphone, while her classmates, dressed as the sun, bumblebees, birds and flowers, danced around her. It was one of the most adorable things I've ever seen.
Then the 4th grade-A class (the one Nichole teaches) sang their spring song, "Mr. Sun." We were up next. They kind of butchered the lyrics, but I don't think a lot of people there speak English, so I don't think they could really tell.
Afterwards, a clown came out and did a little routine for the kids. Then it was time for the Hora Loca. The Hora Loca (crazy hour) is a thing they do here at the discotecas where they bring out crazy jester hats and balloons and stuff like that and you dance.
For the Hora Loca at the elementary school, they brought out a bunch of balloons, a guy dressed in a giant dog costume and a guy in stilts who danced around and sprayed a type of silly string stuff that looked like artificial snow onto everyone's heads. It was pretty cool. All the kids were dancing around the guy in stilts and having a blast. Then they had a dance contest between the 4th-A class and the preschoolers. There was a girl and a boy from 4th-A dancing together and it was clear that she has seen a few Shakira videos because she was movin' her hips and shakin' her booty. It was hilarious. Then they put a reggaeton song on and the preschoolers started busting some serious moves. It was hilarious.
The celebration got over around noon so we got to leave a little bit early.
Nichole went back to my house with me so that we could go to Metro and get some tickets for the soccer game.
Along with Raquel and Dawn, we decided that it would be a nice afternoon to go to a little wine bar that Joel told us about that was close to our house. It's the oldest bar in Jesus Maria (that's my district in case you haven't been paying attention). We planned to go there around 5:30 so I could get back at a decent time to start my mountain of homework. But you know how things go. We ended up getting there around 6:30, and it was packed. So instead we went to a restaurant around the block owned by the same people. It was Raquel, Dawn, Nichole, Hannah, Ren, Ren's host brother Oscar, and me. We shared a couple pitchers of sangria, and ordered some food. I ordered the palta rellena, an avocado, peeled and sliced in half and stuffed with chicken salad. It was probably the most delicious thing I've had since I got here. After another cocktail, we walked back and ended up getting home around 9:45.
My homework for this weekend consisted of me reading 150 pages in Spanish, 30 pages in English, watching a 2 1/2 hour movie, (all of these are about the Amazonian rubber boom) and then writing a 5-pg paper about all that. For my other class I also have to read a chapter in English about the Tupi-Guarani language family. All this is due Monday.
It's also really difficult to get anything done when you're busy drinking sangria and going to soccer games.
So last night I read about 10 pages of the English article and then couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
Today I got up around 8:30 and sat in my room all morning reading. Well, at least until about 1, when the internet stopped working and the pages of the article stopped loading.
At 3:30 Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin came over and a little later all of us, along with Raquel, grabbed a taxi and headed to the Estadio Monumental to watch the soccer game between Universitario and Alianza, 2 rival teams in Lima.
The cab got as close as he could, but they had closed off the streets around the stadium so we had to walk a ways to get there. There were police everywhere, on foot with riot shields and clubs, on horseback, on motorcycle...
We were in the section for Oriente and kept having to ask where to go to get into the stadium because it was kind of confusing and chaotic. One of the police pointed to the line and so we started walking towards the end of it. The problem was, it didn't end. The other problem was, we were pretty much the only gringas there, and Hannah is like 6 ft tall and blonde, so we stood out. So all the guys in this incredibly long line that we had to walk past, were whistling and catcalling us. That's a normal thing in Peru anyways. When you're walking down the street it's typical for a guy (no matter how old he is) to say something like "hello, beautiful lady" or, in my case something about my eyes (blue eyes are out of the ordinary here). But the level of catcalling we experienced walking through this line was ridiculous. And it's really funny, some of the things they shout at you in English, so you had to laugh, but it only encouraged them. Finally, after about 5 minutes of walking, we found the end of the line. But when we got there, a cop asked us what section we were in and told us that we were at the wrong line. Ummmm.....are you serious? So we had to turn around and walk back. Like a bunch of gringa idiots with no clue what's going on. But maybe this time it wouldn't be so bad, because they had their backs to us. Wrong. It was still pretty bad.
After speedwalking back through that line, we found the right line. Which was right where we had come in in the first place. We made it through the security and the 5 different gates. (Sidenote: they made people take off their belts and leave them in a pile when they were doing the security check, and later when we were leaving the game, some guys were stealing all the nice belts to sell on the street.)
We got to the stadium and found some good seats right in time for the game to start.
Earlier, we had asked Manuel who to cheer for and he said Universitario, so we sat on their side. It was so much fun. People were going crazy and doing cheers, they were setting off smoke bombs and flares (in the audience, right by other people waving gigantic flags, which I would think to be a fire hazard) and there was confetti raining down on us. There was some crazy fights that broke out over in the Alianza section, which was pretty crazy to watch. Universitario scored the first goal, but Alianza got one not too long after. It was tied for quite a while, and at 7, 1/2 hour before the game would finish, Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin decided to go. Raquel and I stuck around a little longer, but at 7:15 it looked like a pretty big crowd was leaving so we decided we better head out to beat the rush. We got some jerseys for souvenirs on the way out. As we were walking we heard cheering and someone said la U had scored another goal, so yay! We won!
We knew that catching a cab would be difficult, but we saw a bus that said it was going to Arequipa, which is a street we know, so we decided to hop on. If it took us to the wrong spot, at least we would be away from the stadium and would have a better chance of catching a cab.
The stadium was in La Molina, which is a district I'd never been to before, so the bus ride was pretty interesting. La Molina is probably the most upscale district, followed by San Isidro and Miraflores. There were some really nice looking car dealerships, and shopping centers. Along with a lot of American fast food and restaurants like Chili's and Starbucks. We recognized some stuff from the cab ride there, so we knew we were on the right track. After a while the guy who collects fares walked back and asked us where we were going. We said Arequipa and he said we'd passed it already. He asked where we needed to go and we said Jesus Maria, and he told us to get off at 28 de Julio. Luckily I go past that on my way to the elementary school so I knew there would be a combi that would take us home.
When we got home I continued my reading. It basically seemed impossible for me to read 100 pgs in Spanish and write 5 pgs before Monday, but when I got online to look at the syllabus to figure out how much this would hurt my grade, I also saw that he had posted an extended bibliography of sources we could use for our paper. Among them was a 30 pg article in English that I'm able to access full-text through the UNL library website. So I think I'll trade that in for the 100 page Spanish one. Thank you Jesus!! That's a huge relief. So now I feel a little less guilty for ditching homework in favor of wine and futbol.
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