playback

Living overseas I often head off to events not knowing what to expect or what exactly I’m getting myself into. Tuesday night was no exception. For a week my 10th grade students have been pestering me, “Ms C are you going to playback?” Playback? What in the world is that? I know part of their interest is the need for each of them to sell their tickets, after all this is a fundraiser for the sophomore class. But still, what is it? Words here and there tell me it is something about dance, or remaking a music video…in any case it should be a nice change from another fashion show or asado.

My friends and I show up at 7:30 for a show whose ticket said 7:00. We only have to wait another 15 minutes before the show starts (am I starting to adjust to Paraguayan time?). Soon enough the lights go down and the curtain rises at the Centro Paraguayo Japones. On stage is a group of black clad, teased hair girls. Above them on the screen is a video showing the same start. What continues on stage is their recreation of the dance video playing overhead. Ahh…that is what they mean by calling it “playback.” A group of five students from my school emerge next and proceed to dance to a hip hop mix. Perhaps what has occurred is a mix of playback and dance competition (although how you compare the two I’m not really sure). Next was my favorite, and the eventual winner, a playback which began with a conductor orchestrating three groups of dances around the stage. Add to the night a group of girls dressed in satin flight attendant costumes, another group which danced with barrels, a large group of women at work and a somewhat fireman inspired theme and you have an evening’s entertainment which is difficult to describe. I had to take some video to be able to fully convey the experience. In any case it was not my typical evening. I went to see what it was all about and ended up with quite the show! I’m left only be able to say so that is an ASA playback.

Hinchada

Bam, bam. Rat at at a. The banging on the drums signal the start of another game at Intercolegial. I find the fans to be more fascinating than the games themselves. Never before have I seen this kind of fan support for high school teams just playing in a city tournament. At some games a school manages to fill over half of the bleachers with jumping, screaming students. Have I mentioned they have drums? Chants pour forth out of the group and at times it is hard to think much less hear anything that is going on on the floor. And the referee whistle? Forget it. Even if you could hear it you would still have difficulty distinguishing it from the whistles coming out of the stands. The hinchadas will all be color coordinated (school colors of course), most likely with some sort of face paint. Where I started to get overwhelmed was when they unfurled a flag that took every person to hold up and flutter, a flag that takes more than 10 people to just carry into the stands. These people have it together! Coordinated enough to get the flag over all of the students and often to have matching shirts, this level of planning is impressive. I’m not so amused by the fireworks going off (some even in the gym the final day of play), but it still amazes me the level of commitment they have to cheering. It doesn’t surprise me that it is part of every professional football game here, but for high school sports? It is so hard to describe you probably aren’t getting an accurate picture, so please, just take a look at the videos.

Intercollegial

All my students have been thinking about this past week is Intercollegial – a large sports tournament that occurs across Asuncion. Many of the private schools in the city host their own tournament, all called Intercollegial, ASA just happens to always host the first one. I’m not sure if they are all as big as this one, I doubt that they could be as I don’t think many other schools have the facilities that we have. This particular tournament is over two weekends (oh the joy, that means my students won’t be worth much this week either), has 20 schools competing, and includes 5 different sports (football, volleyball, basketball, futsal and handball). It is no wonder that all of our fields and courts have been pressed into use over the weekend. The tournament itself is not such a surprise to me, particularly when you take into account the Paraguayan love of sports. What has been a surprise is the number of people who turn up to watch the games (the guards estimated about 5,000 per day), the crazy cheering sections schools bring (more on that next week), and the amount of advertising that is on campus. There are booths covering our courtyard area and half of the parking lot, places where you can buy crocs, compete at dance revolution with a blue mascot, play air hockey at the cell phone provider tent, or buy food to snack on. When I was told it was big I never imagined it was going to take over the campus! My goal for the next week is to just try to keep my students somewhat focused until Friday, and then to enjoy watching sports again.

Scarily Crazy

You wouldn’t think that Halloween would be a big deal in a country that doesn’t exactly celebrate it, but today I am telling you that my school goes absolutely crazy about Halloween, scarily crazy. I had no idea that the American School would so wholeheartedly adopt this crazy American celebration, after all the American population of the school is only about 5%. When the hallways outside the elementary classrooms began to get decorated with smiling spiders, ghosts galore and witches, I began to wonder. When some of the elementary teachers shared that there was actually an informal competition between the class moms for the hallway decorations I suspected that it would get a bit over the top in that area. And sure enough for the last two weeks you’ve had to dodge hanging decorations to get to the classrooms in that part of the school. Then about a week ago decorations stated going up around the school. One day the courtyard area had streamers, ghosts and pumpkins. The next day there was a giant wooden “Happy Halloween” sign above the guard house. The following I saw giant ghosts peeking out from behind trees and hanging upside down out of the branches. After that came a blow up Frankenstein to greet visitors to campus and scary mask/wraiths along the sidewalk. It got to the point where I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see what else would go up. And I didn’t even see the school when it got to its most decorated as I didn’t return for the Halloween party on Friday evening. While I’m pleased to have actually had something that felt a bit like Halloween I have to question the over the top way in which it was done. A few of the cleaning and maintenance staff tried to ask teachers what the point was, why they went so crazy for the holiday, and frankly none of us could come up with an answer beyond “because they can.” Looking at it through their eyes we could see how difficult it could be to watch the celebration when you know there are so many other things that the money could go to. Is it worth it? I really can’t say. All I can say for sure is that ASA goes scarily crazy over Halloween.

Boogie Woogie

One of the things I love about working at a school is that sometimes you get to see performances or hear speakers that are amazing, and that you wouldn't normally run into on your own. A few weeks we were told our schedules would be rearranged a bit because we were going to having a short concert and lecture about the boogie woogie genre of music. Turns out we were being given a lesson by one of the best boogie woogie piano players in the world - Axel Zwingenberger from Germany. All I can say is that his fingers flew over the keys! I had a difficult time staying still, and some of our students even got up to dance a bit. I'm still not sure what a boogie woogie player from Germany was going in Paraguay, but I'm glad he chose to stop in Asuncion and included the school among his stops. What a foot tapping, clapping good time. Enjoy a bit of it below:

The first day

It might not be my first week in Paraguay, but the first week of classes seems like a much bigger step. All in all I have to say that my week went great, and I think I made a good choice coming here. I have just a few thoughts to share about the start to the school year. I am always interested in how the first day of school plays out in a new place. Ranking my four schools I have to say that this was the second most productive. In Guinea the first day was all about getting someone to scale the flagpole to run a string up it and having the students clean the classrooms. In Turkey we pretty much had an assembly and a picnic lunch before sending the kids home. In Paraguay the only difference from a normal school day came from the opening part. Apparently it is tradition in Paraguay, or at least at my school, for the seniors to party with the freshmen and stay up all night the night before school starts. In order to combat the problem of drunken students on campus the administration this year chose to send home all of the seniors after the opening assembly. An assembly which seemed to celebrate the installation of the class of 2010 as seniors. The theme this year was jailers and prisoners, with all of the seniors dressed up as the jailers and the freshmen dressed up as prisoners in black scrubs with 2013 on the back. I had to take attendance (without a roster) before anything began but as soon as my students heard some fireworks going off they started running out of the door and towards the gym. They didn’t want to miss the seniors coming. The entrance was…interesting. The 60 or so seniors piled in the back of a large truck (think more like a dump truck then a pickup truck), waving flags, blowing whistles and all in all making a ruckus. Parents line the sidewalk snapping pictures. The freshmen congregate on the sidewalk waiting for the seniors to disembark and chase them inside – a noisy and chaotic affair. I slowly made my way into the gym only to be surprised by the amount of noise 120 students can make (the sophomores and juniors are fairly quiet in this whole tradition). The seniors were making laps around the gym blowing on their whistles and popping balloons (activities which continued through most of the assembly) while the freshmen bounced in the stands screaming. Things calmed down a bit and the requisite speeches went on – the director, the principal, the senior class president, and a guest (a former teacher who had returned briefly) – then the seniors handed out a t-shirt to each of the teachers and we were off back to class. Time for me to get introduced to most of my students and give them an idea of my expectations. Now I need to get serious about learning the names of my 90 new students, never mind learning how to pronounce them correctly.