More parties!

Well, the parties don´t cease in the canyon this time of year, so my only interesting news centers on the party in the next town over that I am still recovering from. On a less interesting note, I was deserving of some relaxation after cranking out close to 100 pages of English curriculum for the next year over 3 days. I still have to polish it a bit but it looks like something worth the effort. Ít´ll get its real trial by fire in March when the new school year starts.
As for the party, it began with an all-day soccer tournament that my town participated in and lost, although they did get past the first round. After that we milled around the square for a few hours and socialized before the Castillo, or fireworks tower, got lit off. I´ve never seen the like before, probably because it´s a ridiculous safety hazard, but it´s pretty awesome. They build a tower out of bamboo with four ropes leading off in the cardinal directions, all surfaces completely covered in various types of fireworks. They light them in sequence and the effect is pretty spectacular, especially since there is no minimum distance to respect, meaning you crowd in and get showered by sparks while admiring the display. My bud Ryan (it was his town)has some pictures I´ll steal and post before too long.
After that we got an extra, even more dangerous, fireworks treat. That is the Toro Loco, which is an apparatus resembling a bull that a guy carries over his head like a Chinese New Year dragon and runs after people as it shoots fireworks in all directions. I got a pretty direct hit last night but I guess it´s not as bad as it seems because I escaped without a burn of any sort. After that it was live music and dancing in the town meeting hall until the wee hours of the morning, which is why I´m a bit out of sorts now- I´m getting used to rising and setting with the sun more or less so my college weekend norm 2-3 hours of sleep is pure torture now. Still, I´ll survive to work on that curriculum some more and perhaps do some summer vacation teaching as well- provided anyone shows up of course.

New Year´s

Hey all,

Well, the holidays are finally over- at least the world-wide ones. We still have a slate of holidays down here in the Colca Canyon- the wititiadas. I’ve described the wititi dance when talking about the town festival in Chivay. That town festival was a kick-off for the wititiadas that travel around the canyon, town-by-town. They are little carbon copies of the festivals, with dancing that lasts two days and plenty of good food and company. Madrigal’s is one of the last- January 27th, and until then I’ll keep working on my curriculum and giving some summer school English lessons if I can drum up the interest.
New Year’s also just went down, obviously. Not a whole lot happened in site, but in the city apparently some interesting customs take place in the cities. It is apparently good luck to wear yellow, the most popular choice being underwear, which is why you see so much of it on the streets being sold right around this time. At midnight you eat 12 grapes quickly- also for good luck, especially if you can do it in a minute. If you want to travel in the new year, you run around the block with your luggage at midnight, and to cleanse all the bad of the previous year an effigy is burned. Other than these customs, the normal western-style New Year’s party reigns supreme.
Well, this next month will be full of the aforementioned wititi parties, summer school, and English curriculum as well as preparations for my 15 day trip down south to Chile and Argentina, which will be from February 5th to the 20th. In there somewhere I’ll try to catch the Superbowl somewhere and watch as many Oscar-nominated films from this year as I can grab. Oh, and I’ll have a week of Quechua classes to try and get as fluent as my compatriot Chris and his Quechua pocketbook he carries around…