Break it down!

Saturday had the usual alborada and clown festivities, but I chose to pass on them. The casario that was hosting is far and I didn't have the ganas to go. But I did go to the road to see the parade of the little candidatas in the afternoon.

I declined a request to be a candidata last year and was pleased when nobody had the gall to ask me again this year. It's actually a very big expense for families to give up a daughter to be a candidata. You need to have fancy dresses and shoes, a car for the parades, and you need some relatives who immigrated to the US to send you lots of money. Ideally, candidatas ask you the community members to buy votes at about 10 cents a piece, and whoever has the most votes wins. But what usually happens is the girl with the richest uncle takes the crown. I don't agree with this method of fundraising, but it's pretty ingrained in the culture here that if you're going to have a fair (or raise money for church, or raise money for school) you gotta have candidatas.

The parade was nice, even if there was mass confusion decorating the pick up truck that was going to carry our candidata through town.

How many people does it take to paper maché a pick up truck?

After the parade (in which it was too dark for my pictures to turn out), I had a major debate over whether or not I was going to the discomovil/presentation of the candidatas. It was far, and it would be dark. And dancing, oh my. There could be chambre tomorrow! But I've also hit the point in my service where I just don't care what people think or say anymore, so I dressed in my campo best (black v-neck, black pants) and broke it down on the dance floor.

And how we danced! Salvadorans are notoriously penosas (a character trait of being painfully self-consciousness and the need to conform to the crowd). That all seemed to melt away on the dance floor. Obviously, not everyone made it out to the dance floor. Pena still prevails on a whole! But my new host family and I had a blast. I also appreciated the groups of young men that did a jumping/gentle mosh pit dance together throughout the night. When they played the Spanish rock/ska music I got pulled in to their circle and we had the weird jumpathon. At some point the DJs played a remix of oldies and I did the twist with all (ok not all, but at least some) of the young people in my community. It was totally amazing! I had no idea they had it in them.

Night out on the town!

I was 'shipping Glendi and Obed so hard... then I found out they are cousins. But they dance really well together!

Sweaty discomovil pic! Eric loves selfies. 

I can't really explain how wonderful it was to dance in my community. I'm not a very good dancer, but I like to bust a move. I think I did a good job of breaking men's hearts, too. I agreed to dance with a friend of my old English class student, and I danced with some sorry little preteen when Eric ceremoniously yelled "CAMBIO!" and I had to find another dance partner. He was dancing all Rico Sauve but I was so tired I just kind of shuffled my feet around. Cumbia is very tiring music to dance to! I got asked to dance a LOT, by bolos and by some poor young guys thinking they stood a chance. I've worked hard to have a squeaky clean reputation in my gossip fueled community, and I wasn't prepared to let that get tarnished over a batachata song and flashing lights!