My friend Wendy, when I told her I began a blog, said, “if in six months you are still posting on it, I will then shake your hand.” Well, the month of December is just around the corner and that will complete my six months (as I started in July). But I’m not sure I quite complete the criteria of being a faithful blogger. Since my October trip with Witness For Peace throughout Bolivia, Chris and I have been kept fairly occupied, In the last three weeks we’ve had three graduations, two birthday parties, a painting exposition and a trip out to the countryside for a good old fashioned Thanksgiving. All of which provide for prime blogging material (not to mention the trip with Witness for Peace). So, I guess I’ll start with birthdays and graduations and try to combine them all together. First of all, in November there is no Thanksgiving here (unless you’re a gringo and willing to pay the $20 for a frozen turkey), but there are graduations. Since we’re on the southern hemisphere, we’re heading into summer right now, and schools work within that same system; kids go to school from mid February through mid November. The interesting thing is that graduations are the jump-start to the end of the year economic boom (much more tolerable than black Friday if you ask me), and it continues right up through Carnival (a marti-gras type festival) this year set for the 5th-8th of February.
Graduations seem to me to be a bigger deal here than I remember them being in the U.S. What keyed us into that realization was our friend Natali stopping by one afternoon to see if we’d be willing to be “padrinos” (godparents) for the photography of her brother’s graduation. Although it sounds like quite a serious job, it actually includes showing up, taking pictures and if you have enough money, develop them and put them in a nice book.
What’s even crazier is that the following week Marisol asked me if I could help her with ideas for the appetizers for the graduation of her 5 year old twins! I’m not sure how long ago it started, but it’s become the custom to celebrate both kindergarten and high school graduations (I suppose Bolivians didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to dress up and doll over little kids, since they only do it two other times in a baby’s life; during her baptism and 1st birthday). So, the most creative idea I had was chicken salad on white bread cut up into cute little squares and toothpicks. One essential seems to be a pinapple stuck with toothpicks all over it with pieces of ham, hot dog, cheese, olives or whatever else you have around (see photo). The appetizers are put on the tables where the graduation takes place. It’s a little bit of a combination of prom and a graduation in the US.
At Natali’s brother’s graduation, each family got two tables which they were responsible for decorating. (decorations included anything from the pinapples to flowers to crazy arrangements of stuffed animals and shiny plastic). The graduation was set to begin at 6. We showed up at 6:30 to find no one else there except the people setting up the stage. At about 9:30, the ceremony officially began (thank God there were appetizers☺) After the ceremony, there is a party with music and dancing. Some families choose to have a dinner at their house afterwards. Natali’s family choose to just have a lot of yummy appetizers for their guests during the ceremony. We ended up leaving (I think we actually botched up our padrino duties by taking off early and not taking advantage of the complete range of photo opportunities) at around midnight, when the party was just getting started. Since then we’ve been told that most celebrating happens until 3 or 5am.
To sum it all up, I’m impressed by the spending power of folks that on any ordinary day would be hard-pressed to come up with $2 to buy a kg of meat for their family. On one hand, it’s really beautiful to see a community coming together to support a person and to recognize this new phase of life (thus, the naming of godparents for just about everything). On the other hand, it’s difficult as a northamerican to be able to just take that for what it’s worth and not want to set up a more “financially responsible” program for how to make money stretch the whole year round.
