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| Our Booth at the 2011 Town Fair |
Santa Clara is preparing for the fiestas again this year. It's the Shad Derby (Windsor's premier town fair) of the Ecuadorian Amazon and it is guaranteed to be exciting. The fiestas begin Thursday night with the reina competition - a beauty pageant of epic proportions. Although my vote goes to one of my students Jesica (one s) she's apparently an underdog because she is nearly as tall as me. Friday is the opening parade and the start of the town fair, but the fun doesn't stop at seeing an ostrich chase the kids around.
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Object of the game: get toro to run past the empty beer box
without ending up on the pointy end. |
Saturday is a big day starting out with toro gol - a game played by getting a real bull to run through your teams' set of goalposts. This is a big crowd pleaser - especially when the bull wins. Despite the attraction of seeing a bull run full force into a drunk guy in my town, the big news in town is Byron Caicedo. He's the most famous thing to come out of the Ecuadorian Amazon since Texaco started drilling for oil. You can watch his latest music video
here. Or check out
this classic. Although the videos maybe hilarious to the average American, they are classic jungle tunes. In fact the first time I watched them my host family pointed out all the famous places in the video, and now I can show you all the famous places I have been to.
Sunday should be pretty tame after the tsunami (Byron's most famous song) sweeps through town. Hopefully everyone will make it to the parade on Sunday - the second parade - and then motocross in the afternoon. Seriously. The town has changed the soccer field into a motocross arena and the motorcycles will be tearing it up all afternoon.
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| The week before it was a soccer field |
I can't wait - the only thing that is missing is the fried dough, and a bag of hard earned goldfish from ringing the bell at the Windsor Rod and Gun Club booth.
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| Last year my beard was so powerful that I just had to ride a horse |
