alex in peru: Promoción season = cuy season

With the end of the school year comes Promoción season. Every class that graduates (Preschool, the Escuela, and the Colegio) has a big party at the end of the year to celebrate their graduation. First it started with the despedida lunch. This is when the grade below (i.e. 4th grade in colegio, and 5th grade in escuela) puts together a lunch to say goodbye to the graduating class. After the lunch there is a dance, but it is just teachers and students and no alchohol is involved. After classes end there are the promocións. It started with Johana's promoción from prechool/kindergarden. Participating in the promoción is optional and only 5 out of the 8 in her class opted to participate. This involved going to the preschool and each family brought their own guests and treated them to cuy. I mentioned before that I have a newfound love for cuy so this only made me more excited for promocion season. Afterwards there was a dance and drinking of course. The party was small in the preschool and the majority of the guests were part of my host family. So pretty soon they moved the party back up to my house. My host family continued to drink and pretty soon the huayno was blasting and the dancing was on. It's times like this when I wish I had my camcorder with me. The party ended relatively early (11pm) but that's probably a good thing because my host father was so drunk he could barely talk or walk. The next morning I awoke at 5am to a bunch of voices and even some crying. Apparently my host father wouldn't wake up so everyone was worried about him and crowded around his bed. They called the nurse and inserted an IV. He ended up being ok but I don't think they talk about what happened.

The kindergarden/preschool promoción.

Delicious!

That day was the Promoción in the colegio. Last year I went as a godmother to one of the kids, even though I hardly knew the class. This year the promoción was smaller and it didn't have godmothers in order to keep costs down. There was a little mix up because everyone assumed that I was going to take pictures but I hadn't received an official invitation. Each student received four tickets to invite their family but teachers and other professionals were invited separately. My host family isn't related to anyone that was graduating so they weren't going. Anyway when the parents found out that I hadn't received an invitation they went and confronted the teacher. He claims that they were going to give me an invitation but told me to just come. I really didn't want to go just because of the principal of the matter. If they wanted me to go they should have invited me just like the other teachers. I did end up going because my host sisters ended up going at the last minute. I made the mistake of sitting with them the entire time which wasn't as fun because we weren't sitting with a family of a student. We left pretty early at midnight but the promoción actually ended early as well, at around 1:30am. It was definitely not as fun or as big as last year and it ended early because they ran out of beer and no one had more to sell them.

However, as boring as it was, there was some entertainment. The town drunk, obviously upon hearing that there would be a fiesta, stumbled in right after the ceremony. He didn't have a ticket but that didn't matter. Again, I wish I had my camcorder to film him! He scares most of the girls, but I he doesn't really scare me, just amuses me. With a room full of teenage girls, he didn't pay too much attention to me. He only patted my head once and sat next to me until I moved his chair when he stood up. He was much more interested in one of the girls across the room. Every 5 minutes or so he would get up, stumble across the room, and stop in front of her. Then he would try to get her to dance while she clutched the arm of her friend, truly terrified. Eventually he found a circle of drinking buddies that accepted him and he didn't bother many people the rest of the night.

The girls all dressed up for their colegio promoción.

Two days later was the final promoción, the escuela. I was a godmother to one of the kids, the profesor who rents a room where I live, her son. The escuela doesn't have a lugar to have parties so it was just held in one of the classrooms, making it very cramped. I only received one cuy this year instead of a plateful, but I was fine with that because while I love cuy, cold rubbery cuy isn't my favorite. The lady next to me was delighted when I offered her the head. She told me it was her favorite part and then proceeded to suck every last bit out of it while scraping the head of all brain matter. There was a dance after but it was mostly huayno for all the parents.