A kiss from a gringa

Yesterday, I went with my family for the entire day to the neighboring town, where they were kicking off their week-long ¨ferria,¨ which is like a town fair. My mother is a hair stylist, so she had to be there early in the morning doing people’s hair starting at 10 in the morning. The festivities didn’t start until 4 o’clock, so I spent about half the day just hanging around, watching my host mother at work.

While I was waiting, I got my first ride on a honduran horse, which was especially exciting for me. I love to ride horses, although I have not had much experience with them. Soon enough, the festivities began with a parade that started at one end of the town, and went from there to the other side and back. The ¨parade¨ just consisted of two floats on which rode the recently crowned queens of the town, and a couple of girls riding horses, and half of the town following on foot. I walked with them for a while with the sun beating down on me, but gave about half way and turned around.

One of the most exciting events of the day was a contest, where rope was strung up high between two poles that ran across the main road of the town. On the rope, they put about 25 or 30 pieces of cloth with numbers written on them, and then gave the different girls in the town sashes with the same numbers on them. The goal of the game was for the men in the town to mount their horses, run towards the rope, and try to spear one of the numbers strung on there. Whichever number they speared, the girl wearing that number had to go up to him, give him her sash and kiss him! Of course, they gave me a sash also! The man who got the most numbers, got to enter the dance that night for free, and all the girls who had given him her sash, had to dance with him! It was very entertaining to watch, and so was I, apparantly. When my number was called, the entire time I was walking over to the guy, the crown was cheering like crazy. And the boy looked pretty pleased to get a kiss from a gringa! I’m glad I could make his day J

That night, the dance was supposed to start at 8 o´clock, but it was raining, and all the electricity went out at around 6, and didn’t come back on till around 8:30. Despite the delay, the whole town was still extremely excited, and the dance floor was filled by 11 that night, and apparently didn’t empty out until 4 in the morning! I only stayed for about two hours, dancing with the only other volunteer who decided to be nice enough to come and accompany me. We originally planning to branch out, and dance among the Hondurans, but after dancing the first couple of songs together, we realized we did not wish to dance like they were, which was mostly just close, uncomfortable, dirty dancing. So we proceded to do twists and turns, and dance like total gringos (aka-complete fools) the entire time, which caused us to be the most watched people on the dance floor (as if we weren’t already). I don’t think I have gotten more attention in all my life combined, as I did in those two hours of dancing. Every time I looked around, I saw eyes on us, often looking with confusion and disdain at us. It was the first time I got a real taste of what it will be like once I go to my town. I am a little anxious about that, but besides that, the day was a wonderful experience for me.