Wedding bells....

Man, what fun. When I found out that I wasn't staying with a family in Bolivia, I was worried about missing out on traditional Bolivian life. But, I was wrong. All what I needed was to find some great Bolivian friends.

My friends Evelin and Helen have been bugging me for a while to go out dancing. So, last week when they suggested we go on Saturday, I said sure. Unfortunately, I then came down with yet another stomach bug. I popped in to see them at noon on Saturday to tell them I wasn't up for dancing that night. Evelin was there and able to convince me that I could at least go for 2 hours. After all, she would be all dressed up for her cousin's wedding. I agreed to meet back at 6:45pm.

Now, knowing that she said SHE would be dressed up, I ran my wardrobe of jeans, cords, and zip-off pants through my head. I decide to head to the market. In 1 hour of power shopping and $35 later, I head home with a pair of pants, a shirt, shoes and a jacket. I'm set!

Am, I ever glad I did that. When I meet up with Evelin, she said ¨okay, we just have to quickly run to the market and get a wedding present¨.

What?

So, it turns out, the wedding starts at 7pm! I was going to the wedding! Wooohooo!!!

Overall, it was great. I'm not sure how my body did it, but I didn´t end up getting home until 4am! Evelin's Dad and 4 of her 8 brothers walked me home. Too funny!

Point form highlights / interesting things / Bolivian traditions from the wedding:

- The usual stuff: ¨you may now kiss the bride¨, first dance together, following dances are with wedding party, parents of the bride / groom, etc

- After the ceremony, everyone was given a glass of champagne to toast the couple. The interesting thing here, is that the glasses were rimmed with coconut and had coconut floating in the champagne!

- When they toast, they DRAIN their champagne classes. If you don't, the 'waiter' will wait in front of you until you finish your drink and can add your empty glass to the others on the tray.

- There were 2 toasts. One from the groom´s side and one from the bride´s side. Therefore, we got two glasses of champagne.

- After champagne, out come the ¨chewflys¨ (drink with Bolivian liquor called "Singani", which tastes a little like gin, mixed with the equivalent of Sprite and a squeeze of lime). These come to you, and it is unwise to have an empty glass.

- Dancing starts right away after everyone has had a few drinks, starting with the regular combo dances at the beginning.

- A traditional Bolivian wedding dinner was served around 9pm. It was similar to another ¨celebration Bolivian meal¨ that I´d had another time, and think it´s standard. It was potatoes, choclo (big fat tasteless corn) and roasted pig. Llahua, a spicy chili / tomato condiment is served on the side. Now, the tricky part is that the pig is served, complete with the fatty layer right out to (but not including) the skin. I´ve tried to eat it on other occassions. But, the combination of my gag reflex, sharpness of my teeth to bite / rip a hunk of this stuff off, and the strength of my jaw to chew the stuff just doesn´t measure up. I was relatively successful at descretly not eating my meat, and then ushering my plate back into the kitchen before anyone noticed.

- You don't get cutlery. Everything is eaten with your hands. This makes the corn finger food, which is actually kind of nice! (Since it's already off the cob)

- Dancing: it´s all "couple" dancing, even if you´re just dancing across from each other. All the chairs are along the walls all around the dance floor. When the dancing first starts up, the men all get up and "get a woman". Me, being the only one without black hair (and blonde at that) and being one of the tallest people there, was a bit of an oddity. I didn´t sit out a single dance.

- Traditional Bolivian dances are fun. There was one, where the woman stamp their feet, and men clap their hands in the same rythm. We almost toppled the wedding cake with our stomping. :)

- In another, the couples line up down the dance floor and everyone has a scarf in their right hand. Then, it´s a combination of dancing into your partner, then out, then back in and switching places. Of course, there was some footwork that went along with it, and waving of this scarf. All the couples do the moves at the same time. I´m sure if I were WATCHING it, it would have looked really beautiful. However, I was one of the lucky few up there with a partner, that INSISTED, I'd be able to get the hang of it, after giving me his scarf (he then used a paper napkin). Too funny.

- Funniest dance of the night: The father of the groom insisted on a dance with me. By this point, he was extremely drunk. The better part of our dance consisted of him shimmying his hips while raising his arms (evangelical preacher like). It degraded from there when he wanted to shimmy around with our backs together... or when he would grab my hands, and try to shake by shoulders back and forth while staring at my chest. This was right as the end of the night, and my friends got many off-to-the-side-looks saying ¨get me out of this!¨ (while they laughed at me. what else are friends for.).

- The cutting of the cake happens at midnight!

- At 2am(ish), the bride and groom get HAMMERED. They have to do another dance infront of everyone. However, everytime the music stops, they have to chug an entire drink. They do this 12 times, to wish good luck to the 12 months of the year. I thought the bride was going to puke at around 9, but she made it all the way through.

In summary: It was awesome. I´m fully realizing how lucky I am to have stumbled across a few great friends here. It was initially just to practice my spanish with them, but they´ve welcomed me into their family, their social lives, etc. It´s been wonderful. And, they´ve so patient with my low levels of Spanish!

(If you´re wondering where the photos are, I didn´t have my camera with me! I thought I was just going out dancing for a couple hours, and didn´t realize it was a wedding! However, there were a couple film cameras around, and I´m going to try and get my hands on the negatives.)