Fiesta Tipica

Do you know how to get your fiesta on Honduran style? This gringa does! Once a year each school in the Abundant Life school system puts on a Fiesta Tipica. The day is dedicated to celebrating and honoring Honduran culture and traditions. It’s essentially a day of cute costumes, lively dancing, delicious food, and a community that comes together to pull it off. Unlike the Christmas program, I was not in charge of teaching my students how to dance because, well, Honduran-dances are not in my repertoire. (If they wanted a line of 3^rd graders doing the Macarena or the YMCA, then I would have re-visited my dance instructor talents.) I loved this day, whether it was because I did not have to do much to organize it or run it, or that I just got to spend a day playing in the sun with my students and embracing their culture.

Each grade was in charge of performing a dance and setting up a hut to sell food. Since the 3^rd and 10^th grades have very few students (13 and 8 respectively), they joined forces to prepare for Fiesta. The men of the group (fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers of the students) were in charge of constructing the huts. It was impressive to see these shacks just pop up in the field as they were built in less than a day. I maintain that if you asked students and their families to do something like this in the States, it would not look this authentic or cool. They built the huts out of wood, bamboo stalks, rope, palm leaves, and tall grass. (I may be getting the majority of those material names wrong, but that’s what it looked like to me.) They were also responsible for naming the huts. I’m not sure giving a creativity task to the men was the brightest idea… our hut’s name was “La Calabaza” which means “the pumpkin,” despite the fact that our food items had nothing to do with pumpkin.

The women (mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters of the students) were all responsible for cooking. Each grade was assigned a menu so that no group would make the same food. Our grades were given oranges, baleadas (a quesadilla style tortilla filled with beans, eggs, cheese, and a cream), and horchata (a milky drink that resembles chai tea). The variety of food was killer because I simply ate too much. There were too many things to try, I couldn’t say no! And of course it was for a good cause, so every Lempira I spent was a Lempira well-spent since it went back to the school. My favorite items were a fruit and custard tart, and something called a papusa (which is actually native to El Salvador) which is dough stuffed with either a cheese or meat filling and then cooked as a regular tortilla. I am also a huge fan of the fresh juices no matter what fruit they come from.

The day is best described in pictures so here are a few of my favorite:

The girls wore these brightly covered dresses with braids and lots of jewelry. 

Every student was required to come in traditional dress. The boys wore jeans (some with patches sewn on), button-up shirts, and cowboy hats. 

The 11^th grade students put on the best dance performance. They, of course, had better rhythm than any other grade as they floated through each dance move. They were light on their feet, even when dancing with machetes!

My 3^rd graders decided to dance a very traditional Honduran dance called “punta.” The gist of punta is to dance entirely on the tips of toes and to move quickly. You are supposed to swing your hips with the rhythm of the music and your feet, but my little kiddos ended up just shaking their whole bodies. They gave a whole new definition to the phrase, “looking like they were caught in a blender.”

The 1^st graders were the cutest as they dance-acted a song. The boys played men who were each desperately in love with a woman and wanted nothing else than to whisk her away and marry her. The girls played the women who were less interested in the men and were not willing to run away.

In a machismo-centered society, what could be better than celebrating men at their burliest?

This week be praying, well, for me! My birthday is coming up on Sunday which means I get to celebrate another year of life that the Lord has blessed me with. What a crazy year! I graduated college and took the giant step into the real world. I got stitches for the first time ever. I switched roles from being the student to becoming the teacher. I have lived in three separate places, including moving my entire life down to Honduras to be impacted and humbled by the sweetest children. I have grown more and more in love with my family every day and have realized how much they support the heck out of me. I’ve been able to travel to some really cool places, old and new. And I have been growing closer to Christ and learning to trust him in every single way. I am learning an immense amount about myself through his guidance. Pray that I am equally as blessed with another incredible year ahead of me, and that the adventures only get better from here!