Día de la madre

May 9, 2011, Continued

When Regino and I got back to Las Mercedeswe were just in time for the Dia de la Madre celebration (Mother’s Day). I’ll add pictures to this when I get back to La Esperanza.

First, they paraded the Honduran flag into the community center and sang the national anthem. Then they said what I think was the national prayer. After the prayer, the games, dancing and singing began.

They kicked things off by inviting 4 mothers to the front and giving them each a toothpick. The teacher, who was master of ceremonies, instructed the mothers to put the toothpicks in their mouths and use them to pass a ring down the line without using their hands. The crowd went wild, and the mothers exchanged timid looks of surprise. It took a few tries for the first pair to pass the ring, but they eventually passed it down the row to howls of laughter and applause.

After this opening act, there were a series of dances and song from different age groups. Here’s a summary in pictures.

sleepy dance

mom song

preschoolers singing the elbow part of the "point to different parts of your body" song

action shot of the stamping foot song

shake your booty song

The fathers weren’t off the hook. Near the end of the show five dads were brought forward and given a balloon. The first dad was given a balloon to hold between his knees. They were instructed to dance to the music while passing the balloon down the row without using their hands. Theywere great sports, dancing wildly and passing the balloon back and forth until the music stopped.

Finally, the school aged children all came up and sang a song to the mothers. That ended the program, but not the celebration. The boys went out to the field to play some soccer while the smaller children and I played duck, duck, wolf (pato, pato, lobo). It’s the same as duck, duck, goose, except when the wolf catches the duck he or she pretends to eat the duck which is much more entertaining. I recall being a very conservative duck as a child. I would already be half way around the circle and back to my seat before I had even finished saying goose. These kids prefer to milk being the duck for all it’s worth. They run off across the field like a two person game of tag before returning to their seats by sliding into home base. You can also have two or three ducks at once.

pato running from lobo

I'm going to pretend like this is a precious "good-bye" pic to end the post, but really it's the best shot I could get of the monster attack faces I mentioned a few posts back :)