A month of happenings

Hello everyone. I know it's been over a month, sorry. I had a few troubles in August, and I didn't want to write blog entries when I was in a bad mood because I didn't feel like I would accurately portray my life here. Now those times seem to be behind me, and I'm back. So some of the weird things that I have seen in the last month.

I went to a queen of the school competition at an elementary school (they asked me to be a judge, but I declined on the basis of cultural and language confusion) that was actually pretty normal for Guatemala. One student from each grade gets all dressed up and parades around. There are several stages including dance, walking around, and more walking around. If it had been up to me the kindergartener would have won for being the cutest little girl in the history of those competitions, all shy and dressed in traditional Guatemalan "traje." That's why I wasn't a judge...

The next day a different school was doing a dance competition, which was much more, um, different, than the previous day's competition. Each grade had choreographed a dance for a few of their students that they performed in front of the rest of the school. I would have expected to once again vote for the kindergarteners, but they did something strange. I'm sure it wasn't their idea, but they danced to the Shakira song that she wrote for the World Cup. Apparently their teacher thought they would best represent this song if the dancers all had their faces painted black to represent the Africans... There was one girl who didn't have black face makeup, but she was representing Shakira (long, curly, blonde hair, possibly a wig, but there are a few blonde children around here...). They sort of danced, as much as you can expect 6-year-olds to dance in front of a crowd of people, but I was too distracted by their makeup to think they were particularly cute. I figured the 1st graders would then take my vote by being the next-smallest group, but they too had been given a strange dance. They were mostly girls, all dressed in really short skirts, shirts that showed their bellies, and lots of makeup. They danced to a Spanish R&B song, and they gyrated and moved in pretty sexually provocative ways, which considering that they were mostly 7 & 8-years-old, made me feel uncomfortable for them. Not that this is abnormal in America, but I still don't like it... Then the 2nd graders... Another R&B song. This time, mostly girls, but two boys dressed as thugs and danced like thugs for the whole song. Backwards hats, baggy pants, all they needed were big, gold chains and they would have been the complete picture. The girls were dancing separately from the boys, first in a wide line facing the audience, but then they formed a single line front to back. Unfortunately there wasn't enough space for them where they were dancing, so the girl in the back kept getting smashed into the wall. I was basically just sitting with my jaw dropped for each performance, and then scribbling notes in my notebook for this blog entry. The older kids didn't do things that were strange, at least not for Guatemala. Dancing to "ranchero" music in cowboy hats and boots. That's pretty much it. The 6th graders won for including choreographed removal of their hats in their dances...

That's all for now. I'll write more about August soon. I'm going to be bored this week I think...