Holidays in Peru

So, these last few weeks have been really hectic. I´m sorry I haven´t been able to post sooner. But there have been too many parties and celebrations. Let me share their Christmas and New Year traditions.

First, Christmas day isn´t half as important as Christmas eve, or Buena Noche. I spent the day in Cerro hectically shopping for presents for the children in Wilda`s family. It was pretty fun, although very crowded. Everyone took the opportunity to travel to Cerro to buy their Panetton. This is a tall, round fruit bread. They cook it with some liquor, so that it has that aftertaste, and also has very modified fruits. They`re as artificial as you can imagine, bright red and green with raisens too. You can imagine most Volunteers hate the stuff, but Peruvians gleefully eat it for a week straight after Christmas Eve. Also, a special bar of chocolate is melted with canned milk (that´s the only type of milk they know here), and this Chocolate with Panetton is the utmost classic tradition for them. We spent Christmas eve evening enjoying the new toys which weren´t ever formally presented to the kids in any special way. We played Monopoly, one of the gifts, until midnight. At midnight, we all got up, lit those flare fireworks and stood outside. We all had to kiss each other´s cheeks and fervently wish each other Feliz Navidad. Then, and only then, we had our Christmas dinner. It was a roast turkey, with apple sauce and white rice. The turkey was actually incredible; I had seconds which for me and meat in Perù is a very rare occasion. The first in fact.
Christmas day was only special because it happens to be my host grandma´s birthday. So the family from Lima stuck around, and we slaughtered two of her sheep to make Pachamanca. We spent the afternoon prepping this, eating Panetton and drinking Chocolate. The 26th, a day late, we had our massive amount of snow. My host brother and I had a mini-snowball fight before the family made a snowman together. We also made a mini-snowdog.

On New Years Eve, there was massive amounts of preparation in Vicco. Tarps and stands were erected along both the Plazas and bands started playing around mid-day marching through the streets. The night time festivities included two massive structures made of bamboo and fire-worked up the wazoo. All day they had been lighting off the fireworks that are attached to bamboo poles and shoot up to explode sounding like a gun shot. But these were more like colorful flares, and spinning contraptions on a bamboo frame. The first one started being lit around 9pm, and people crowded around it to watch. At one point, part of the contraption was meant to fly into the air spinning with fireworks, but it shot off into the crowd instead. A circle (small one) was maintained around the thing by the men garbed in formal dancing gear. They`re ¨Negritos¨, part of the 5 day celebration that is still occuring right now. The bands played non-stop and people danced with these guys who jingle with the bells on their pants and one in their hand. After the structure was done, 30 minutes of fireworks were shot up into the air. These exploded so closely that the falling pretty bits often landed on people or on houses. Thankfully, everyone`s roof here is made of metal sheeting. The second contraption, belonging to the second group of Negritos who compete with the first, started around 11pm and was pretty awesome. They had a top part that light up like a flower, and then with its top spinning and exploding with fireworks, more fireworks lifted it up into the air like a mini-spacecraft. This thing floated along drifting over some houses as it shot off yet more fireworks into the air. It eventually fell into a side street, where I presume nobody was hurt. Hopefully.

I bought a wine bottle of this stuff called calentito, which is basically just warm little thing. Its a prepared drink with warm water, sugar and honey. I got my bottle with Rum, and it only cost, for the whole bottle, 7 soles. Which is approximately the equivalent of 2 dollars and change. I shared it with a tia and my host mom and we managed to finish it before midnight, when we all had to hug and kiss on the cheek, this time wishing each other a feliz año nuevo. My host mom swore up and down that the former Volunteer never drank, and then proceeded to tell me yesterday that she loved wine. I don`t always understand Peruvians, but its definitely not always because the language barrier.

All day of the 1st and 2nd there was dancing and bands playing. Yesterday, the 2nd, was the formal Presentation, where there were tons of organized dances with an announcer. I got to sit up with the Alcaldesa, mayor, on the important people pavillion. It was a bit crowded with important people, and the tarp wasn`t waterproof when it started raining, but it was still really cool. The dances were very intricate, if not perfectly performed. It went on for hours. The end part consisted of the two groups of Negritos each getting 45 minutes of dancing while their bands played. There are about 60 or so guys in each group. It was pretty impressive and very long. I got bored; I will admit. But it was cool. There was also massive amounts of beer being passed around the Pavillion stage. I would guess approximately 50 beers over the couple hours. I still don`t appreciate beer so didn`t partake. But after leaving the Plaza, the evidence of heavy beer imbibing was everywhere. Everyone wanted to kiss the Gringita, and invite her to their beer circle. Beer circles are interesting, and I don`t think I`ve explained yet. They consist of men standing in a circle and passing one beer around. The cup follows. The person with the plastic cup fills it, and passes the beer bottle to the person on the side, sometimes to the left sometimes to the right. When he finishes drinking, he dumps the foam on the ground, often on someone´s shoes (mine in the case of the presentation stage), and passes the cup to the person with the bottle. They keep going and going, buying or receiving more and more beer. They become remarkably friendly and want to hug you a lot. It took me a significant amount of dodging and Holas, no gracias to escape the Plaza after all the formal dancing. Then commenced everyone dancing for the rest of the night. Supposedly all of this commemorates baby jesus, who is their patron. I`m not sure why the fiesta is of the Negritos. But the costumes are intricate and bejeweled spectacularly. They also have dunce/clowns/jestors who run around the whole day doing ´funny´ things. They mock everyone and pose and just act stupid. Sadly, part of this included one of them swinging a live mouse around on a string. The whole day, he`d wipe him out and play with him, the others often clustering around to scare the mouse into running, using their stuffed specimens of lynxes, skunks and other animals. They also enjoyed making a sport out of tormenting me by trying to hug and kiss me, or always posing in my pictures, I guess being the only Gringita made me a prime target that stuck out. Today continued the party and dancing, with more promised tomorrow.

I tried to talk to the Alcaldesa today about my Compra de Reciclaje paperwork I submitted but she was too busy with all this partying. She promised to talk to me if I came back Thursday. So basically, I haven`t been able to get work done for the majority of the last two weeks. Paperwork here or there, and I finalized my surveys I want to give. But life is mostly at a standstill right now. Crossing my fingers kids come to my summer school Monday.