I'm a Celebrity!

I updated my blog on Sunday and forgot to write the most important thing of what happened that day. I was in a parade! Last week was the anniversary of Lourdes, the catholic school in town. Whenever it's the anniversary of a school, they have a week long celebration with sports tournaments, dance contests, parades, a presentation of typical dishes of Peru, and more parades. They are CRAZY about marching here and spend a lot of time practicing in the week leading up to the big parade. They miss tons of class practicing their marching and the weirdest part is that they march like Hitler and the Nazis by kicking their legs straight up in the air. I think it's so weird, but they are really proud of it and take it really seriously.

Other schools are always invited to participate in the parade as well to join in the festivities. The director of San Carlos, the school where I've been doing all of my work, invited me to march in the parade with them on Sunday and told me we'd be meeting at the school at 9:30 am. I said why not and agreed to meet them at the school. Rita thought it was a great idea too because the head nun at Lourdes could see I was already working with this other school and Rita hoped it would make her want to have me more - haha.

I had spent the night at Jessica's on Saturday night and didn't get back to my room until 9:10 on Sunday morning. I was rushing around like crazy trying to change and get ready for the parade. I showed up at the school at 9:30 and of course no one was there, but not only that, everything was locked up and there was no sign that anyone would be showing up. I just figured everyone was late as usual. Another teacher showed up about 10 minutes later and she and I were joking that we might be there all day waiting for them. Luckily around 10 am another professor came and told us we were actually meeting in the Plaza de Armas, not at the school. Oh, thanks for telling us. The other lady and I probably would have been there until sunset waiting had he not come. The parade was supposed to start at 10 am, but of course it didn't start until 10:30 (pretty much on time for Peruvian standards). I marched with the director and 8 other professors (I guess the other 67 professors were still on their way.....) pretty soon after the parade started. The Plaza and the streets were lined with people and I was laughing that I was part of this. I saw the doctor and he was really excited because he didn't know I would be marching. Turns out all we did was march around the Plaza de Armas because it wasn't actually the real parade yet, it was only marching with the Peruvian and Bambamarquino flag before they had a ceremony to raise the flags. Apparently it's a big honor to march with the flag and Rita was really impressed I was part of it. Haha - I had no idea until she told me.

After that I thought we were finished, but apparently that was only the beginning. The students of the school had been there since 8 am waiting to march and as of 11 am, none of them had gone yet. At 11:30 it was my turn to march again with San Carlos. By this time, there were about 25 professors there since it was now 2 hours after the original meeting time. They were all debating about where I should march because I wasn't wearing a suit like all of the rest of them. At first the told me to walk in the back behind all of them, but then they insisted I walk in the front and center, right next to the director, carrying the banner for the school. The huge parade that we had been waiting all morning for turned out to only be about 50 yards long! As we were walking I kept wondering what happens when we get to the end of the street because there was a huge wall of people. I wondered if they were just going to part ways like the Red Sea and let us through, but no no, that was the end of the parade and we had to shimmy our way through them once we finished. I was laughing so hard. I can't believe these kids were practicing all week long for 50 yards of marching. They waited for hours and hours in the hot sun for their turn to march. One class would go and then there would be a long pause and another class would go. So this 50 yard long parade that started at 10:30 am went until at least 1:30 pm and perhaps even longer! Hahaha.

And just for the record, since I marched alongside the director of the school, the rumor flying around town now is that the gringa is the new director of San Carlos! Hahahahahaha. Oh man I love the gossip here. Apparently I was a big hit in the parade. The doctor told me I looked like Shakira out there (for those you of you who don't know, she's a very famous and popular singer) and all of Rita's husbands friends told him to tell me that they are single and available. OH BOY!

San Carlos has their fiesta at the end of October so I guess I have another parade and some more excitement to look forward to! Hahaha.