New Year´s

Hey all,

Well, the holidays are finally over- at least the world-wide ones. We still have a slate of holidays down here in the Colca Canyon- the wititiadas. I’ve described the wititi dance when talking about the town festival in Chivay. That town festival was a kick-off for the wititiadas that travel around the canyon, town-by-town. They are little carbon copies of the festivals, with dancing that lasts two days and plenty of good food and company. Madrigal’s is one of the last- January 27th, and until then I’ll keep working on my curriculum and giving some summer school English lessons if I can drum up the interest.
New Year’s also just went down, obviously. Not a whole lot happened in site, but in the city apparently some interesting customs take place in the cities. It is apparently good luck to wear yellow, the most popular choice being underwear, which is why you see so much of it on the streets being sold right around this time. At midnight you eat 12 grapes quickly- also for good luck, especially if you can do it in a minute. If you want to travel in the new year, you run around the block with your luggage at midnight, and to cleanse all the bad of the previous year an effigy is burned. Other than these customs, the normal western-style New Year’s party reigns supreme.
Well, this next month will be full of the aforementioned wititi parties, summer school, and English curriculum as well as preparations for my 15 day trip down south to Chile and Argentina, which will be from February 5th to the 20th. In there somewhere I’ll try to catch the Superbowl somewhere and watch as many Oscar-nominated films from this year as I can grab. Oh, and I’ll have a week of Quechua classes to try and get as fluent as my compatriot Chris and his Quechua pocketbook he carries around…