One good piece of advise that I received from a fellow PCV was “agree to
participate even if you do not know what you are participating in.” Before she
said this I had already done this numerous times. In fact, I feel like the
majority of things that I do in my community fall under this rule. My latest
example was the election of the “Madrina” which turned out to be a beauty
pageant for teachers put on by my school district. Four teachers out of the ten
schools that I work in participated in this event. It was set up very much like
other beauty pageants with different sections each of which involved different
outfits and little speeches. One of my schools had set up a stage and a runway
on which this event took place. What was different were the categories and the
outfits. The categories were as follows:
- Choreography - the four contestants did a cowboy waitress themed dance
complete with flannel and cowboy hats
- Traje de fantasia – strawberry shortcake, snow white, tree fairy, and
a star princess with a duck friend?
- Traje tipico – each contestant
wore the traditional huipil and corte from their town. One of the cool things
about the fabric and patterns of the Mayan traditional dress is that each area
has their own.
- Dynamicas involving audience members (of course) and a couple of
student performances.
- Traje deportiva – two of the women were golfers, one was an archer and
the other was a tennis player. I'm pretty sure that none of these sports are
actively practiced in Guatemala or at least are not very popular – it is all soccer,
soccer, soccer!
- Traje de gala – formal wear – two woman wore the traditional huipil and
corte and the others wore more Western dresses.
Clearly a lot of time and effort was put into this event and I
thoroughly enjoyed it! I have some good videos from this event and once I can
figure out how to upload them to my blog I will put them up!
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| This is how smokey the room was after her fireworks dance |
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| This dance was odd. They looked like little dancing businessmen |
So who won the pageant? Was it the woman holding the candle bouquet? She is pretty and I like the traditional dress. Better yet--the little golfer--what a cutie. For a country that doesn't golf much, she looked genuine! I'm glad you put up pictures and a story, I was going into withdrawal. Yeah for the permanent mailbox; letters on the way. xoxo KMP.
ReplyDeleteWeren't you eligible to participate? You could have dressed as a rugger-- another sport not likely indigenous to Guatemala. And you could have worn the native dress of Cambridge (or Waterville): shorts and flip flops.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if teachers and students put as much time and effort into math and reading.
Love the Dancing Business Men!
ReplyDelete