This Peruvian Life: Being Mary

The day after Christmas I was happily cleaning up the kitchen after making frosted sugar cookies for the family (which just so you know it’s ½ cup of butter to ½ kilo of powdered sugar not ½ kilo of butter-needless to say that was very buttery frosting) and I got called into the front room by my host family; they told me that they had something important to talk to me about- I braced myself when my host brother turns to me and says, “We want you to Virgin Maria and your friend Sam to be San Jose for the Bajada de Reyes celebration.” I proceeded to burst out laughing and in my head thought “no way, no way, no way” but out loud I told them I would think about and talk to my friend Sam. At this point the only knowledge I had of the’ Bajada de Reyes’ was from a home video that my host niece had showed me previously that included a parade, some sort of competition, fireworks, dancing and of course baby Jesus. So I called Sam and I say,” my family wants you to be the San Jose to my Virgin Mary.” I pause thinking he’ll have the same ‘no way’ reaction as I did but he was stoked on it and so ultimately I became stoked as well. Later I found out that on January 6^th they believe that is when the Three Kings went down to see baby Jesus and while it isn’t widely celebrated in all of Peru it is celebrated very much so in my family. I felt as if there was more celebrating on January 6^th than on December 25^th.

Here is how the day proceeded: Sam arrived at my house earlier in the day so we could rehearse our “scene”. Then we ate lunch and hung out for a while. We then put on our awesome costumes and began to parade around the streets. I was handed an actual baby and after cradling the baby Jesus in my arms for about 6 blocks (the whole time terrified that I may drop the baby- you all know how clumsy I am) my arms started to shake so I handed him back to the mother. Side note: When I first got to Peru and had seen a few parades and never saw any candy being passed out I thought what’s the point?! But in this parade- people in the streets handed me candy! Who knew you had to be in the parade to get the candy? Any who so after parading the streets for a couple hours we rested while the other groups went for the competition. There were 5 groups in total and we ended up with 2^nd place! We were only 1 point away from first place- but it felt so great to be a part of it all. After the competition Sam and I became instant celebrities. People were crowding around us wanting to take pictures. Before this day Jan 6^th, 2013 I could count on one hand how many babies I had held- on this day I lost count. So many parents just handed me there babies and took our picture it was if I was the actual Virgin Mary. It was pretty fun to tell you the truth-except some of the babies were soiled- not so pleasant. We walked back to my house in our 2^nd place glory and changed into normal clothes (this was protested by some) ate dinner, drank beer and danced and danced and danced. It was exactly what I needed to lift my spirits.

Since then I have started my summer projects. I am doing 4 classes. On Mondays and Wednesdays I am doing fun activities for improving critical thinking like scattegories, pictionary, checkers etc. The turn out for this class hasn't been great so far so I may change it to something else. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a sports club where we just play volleyball and soccer, pretty laid back and fun. On Fridays I have a environment/art club and a culture club. Last week was my first week so I'll keep ya'll posted on how the rest of the summer turns out. Love you all! Thanks for reading!!!!