More Dancing Pictures

After getting involved with this dance group, we have now found ourselves ministars and have been invited (the group has been invited, I mean) to dance every weekend in this month. The nice plus side? Lot´s of good pictures and unforgettable memories. This past Saturday, we danced at a concert. So although people were not paying to see us, we preformed at a pay-to-enter event. Maybe the first time I have done that in my life.....

Even though it was at night and we are entering winter, Seamus and I were sweating like crazy.

We got to lead the way for our group and clear a path through the drunk concert goers, while stepping over bottles of beer on the ground. And even though we were not always coordinated, I think we did a darn good job.

This photo is from May 3rd, and the quality is low, but its the best shot of us dancing and in our full get-up.

Some Not-As-Exciting-As-I-Was-Hoping-Photos

Here are a few fun shots from last weekend´s dancing.






Here is a shot of the end of the mass for the Fiesta de las Cruces in the Cathedral. There were over a hundred crosses parading out.










The four of us friends dressed up before heading out to dance. Seamus and I are Mistis, while Cara and our friend Karina are Cholitas. The costumes were quite wild.







We had to wait for hours before dancing, so to handle the anxiety, Seamus and I played around a bit in our crazy costumes. By the way, the whole idea of our role in the dance was to be real high energy, scream a lot, and to coqutear (or flirt) with the crowd. If I haven´t made it clear yet, I had barrels of fun.

Wild Wild Week

Wow. Well, so, it is just after 8 in the morning on a Thursday morning and after not hearing the start of school bell, I went outside to see what was going on to find no students anywhere. Suddenly it dawned upon me that because of a 6.5 - that is right, 6.5 - magnitude earthquake last night, there would not be classes. (If you read Spanish, check out this website for news on the quake: http://www.correoperu.com.pe/correo/ciudad.php?txtEdi_id=6).

The quake last night was noticable and strong - we went running out of our house and power was knocked out - but I had no idea at the time that it was a 6.5. The epicenter was also just 60 miles away. Luckily there was no real damage and no injuries here in Habitat. The experience was thrilling in some ways and terrifying in others, but at least now I am glad to have a sense of what a real earthquake would be like and hopefully would know what to do.

The events of the last 12 hours are just part of what has been a bizarre and adreneline-filled week. It began on Saturday with Nate´s birthday, and then Sunday and Monday we danced morenada in the Fiesta de las Cruces (which was incredibly thrilling and wonderful and I will write more about this when I can post the pictures), and yesterday I found out that we actually won the dance contest on Monday night. Needless to say, it has been an exciting and fun time to be in Tacna, and I promise I will try to detail what the dancing was like when I get my camera back.