Number of People with Nothing Better to Do

Monday, June 21, 2010

Peace Corps - The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love

Beauty pagaent contestants. The one in the middle won.
Judges hard at work tallying their results.


Fan club for the Computer/IT group

My recruiter did not tell me there’d be days like this. I’ve been working with an English teacher and the health promoter in my town, both of whom are professors at the Instituto. Last week after I finished my English class, the professor invited me to come watch the beauty pageant. Since that normally is my night to teach and I didn’t have anything else to do, I gladly accepted. Looking at pretty girls seemed like a damn good alternative to sitting around the house bored watching shitty telenovelas (soap operas) with the host mom. Besides, this would be an excellent opportunity to promote America and world peace, or something like that.

When I arrived at the Instituto, I bullshitted with some of the professors and ate some picarrones, fried dough beignet-like things with syrup (delicious). The health promoter told me to come with her and lead me to the judges table. The Justice of the Peace who was going to be the fourth judge wasn’t able to make it so they wanted me to be the replacement judge. I’d judged a beauty pageant for incoming freshman last month and it was not a horrible experience so why not.

The pageant started promptly at the Hora Peruana (was supposed to start at 5:30 but started at 7:00). There were five contestants, one from each career track offered at the Instituto – Tourism, Computers/IT, Agriculture, Automotive, and Nursing. The contestants started out in casual wear which consisted of white blouses, black mini-skirts and high heels. They introduced themselves and did a choreographed dance to a Madonna song which, quite frankly, needed a little work. After the dance, the girls left the stage and changed into their evening gowns. I was waiting for the bathing suit segment of the pageant but, sadly, there wasn’t one.

During the intermissions, there were various musical and dancing acts. A fellow by the name of JC did a kind of rap/break dancing routine, a girl with dyed blond hair sang a couple of songs, and a few skimpily dressed girls danced to a pretty erotic song with alot of thrusting and chest heaving right in front of the judges table. At the end of the dance, they were hot sweaty, breathing hard and their hair was a bit disheveled. It would have been pretty hot except they were about 16 years old. I was a little uncomfortable.

After the intermission, the contestants came out dressed “a la tela” (to the nines) in their evening dresses. They selected an envelope and had to answer a question that was related to their career track. They all did very well except for the girl representing Agriculture. As she was answering her question, some asshole photographer that was up front taking pictures answered a phone call and was blabbing loudly as she was trying to answer. It was very distracting and threw her off completely. She couldn’t get back on track and quit saying that’s all I’ve got.

My task as a judge was to assign points based on presentation, beauty, culture, and fan support. The fans were a little bit insane with costumes, confetti, cans with rocks in them, an old bicycle pump with a horn taped to it, drums, cowbells, brass instruments, and piercing screams.

The points were tallied and verified by all the judges. The scorecards were signed and delivered to the Emcee.

And winner of the Reinado del Instituto Tecnológico Palpa/Rio Grande…

The girl from Computers/IT! Peruvian nerds are hotter than ours.

2 comments:

  1. Hahahaha!!
    I am peruvian, living in Germany. The germans are so dependent from the clock that now I love more the Hora peruana. Hahaha!!
    I really have fun with your blog!!
    Enjoy!!
    Maria

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