Saturday started normally. Rotary is sponsoring some Spanish lessons for all the exchange students. They're at a school about 5 minutes from my house. I got to take a taxi there all by myself! I'm probably a bit more proud of this than is normal, but I think it's cool. Everyone here uses the public transportation all the time. In a couple more weeks, I hope I'll understand the bus and combi system. The lesson were alright. The teacher is honestly a bit crazy and his use of English "slang" is frankly hilarious. My favorite was what he kept referring to as "the tree of language." There is the trunk which is the nouns, the branches which are the verbs, and the leaves that are the adjectives (or something like that). But the leaves that fall from the tree is "the money we will make next year when we return to the USA and teach Spanish." Yeah...
I got home from the lessons just before lunch, which was some fantastic Ceviche (a fish appetizer typical of Peru) and Papa Reyena (also traditional Peruvian, consists of stir-fried chicken/onion/tomato rolled inside mashed potatoes and then deepfried). During lunch, my host parents asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with them. I agreed, although I really had no idea what it was. All I understood from the explanation they gave me was "Partido" (which means game- and apparently political Party), "expresidente Alejandro Toledo," and "15 anos" (15 years). I am now pretty used to not understanding things, so I just sort of went along with it.
We left about an hour later, and drove for about 20 minutes to a more rural district of Lima. We pulled into something resembling a farm. The first thing my host dad pointed out to me was a bull fighting ring, so we stood around and watched that for a bit. I found out my camera has this really cool setting that allows it to take 2 pictures every second, and so I took a ton! It was an "artistic" showing, so the torero did not kill the bull, simply tried to make it charge impressively at the red fabric thing. The bull wasn't very enthusiastic, until it's final charge towards the exit. It was so enthusiastic then because it saw an opening that lead out of its enclosure and into the parking lot. Yeah. Thats right. The bull escaped. It just sort of ran around the parking lot for a while. It was quite exhilarating for those of us not being chased. They caught it after a couple of minutes, and nobody got hurt.
After that, I finally figured out the real reason we were all there. It was a political rally-like thing. It was the 15th anniversary of the Peru Posible political party, and ex-president and founder of the party, Alejandro Toledo was going to speak.
Since I'm not sure how many of you are up on Peruvian Politics, let me summarize what I know about this party (which still isn't very much). It tends to be more Central or Liberal with a greater focus on the rural areas of Peru. It was founded in 1994 by Alejandro Toledo, who became president in 2001 for a 5 year term. As president, he worked to improve the living standards in rural Peru, which are often overlooked because so much of the population lives in either Lima or Arequipa. Overall, he helped to stabilize Peru after the Internal crisis it had in the 80's and 90's and was widely supported.
There was a stage nicely set up nicely under a tent overlooking the bullfighting arena, however, the slight problem was that the organization forgot to set up any chairs facing the stage. I mention this because I found it funny. A lot of events like this are really lacking in what I would consider organization. It wasn't a horrible problem to fix, everyone just had to go grab a chair from the dining area that had been set up.
The ex-president arrived late. When he finally did arrive, he was greeted by a long, long, long standing ovation. He proceeded to give an hour long speech that was interrupted many, many times by times by chants of "Toledo 2011!" (the next presidential election year) or "Viva Peru Posible" or other similar chants. The crowd was all really lively. Everyone got involved in the shouting, even me! I couldn't tell you much of what he said in his speech, more due to the fact that I am not knowledgeable enough about the recent history of Peru and couldn't understand many of the references made. He was a great speaker, and the parts I understood seemed to be good.
After his speech (and another long, standing ovation), we all sang happy 15th birthday to the Peru Posible Political Party. The ex-president was then shuffled off the stage by some guards, and a band took the stage. They started playing music, and about 70% of the crowd stayed around and danced and drank. My host family and I didn't stay very long, but long enough for them to convince me to "dance" with them for a song or two.
Here are a couple more pictures.
Alejandro Toledo Speaking
The crowd (a mere fraction! I sat pretty much smack dab in the middle)
Ciao,
~ Jacqui
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