Translation: Kite flying contest. Like stated in my previous blog hace tiempo (a long time ago) my host aunt Maritza decided to host a kite flying competition for all the kids in my town. After a few post-ponings due to various reasons, we finally had it one Saturday afternoon. I had been planning on going just to watch the kites but my involvement grew to extraordinary proportions when I was chosen by Maritza to be the sole judge of the competition. Disclaimer: I hate public speaking and making decisions, especially when it involves deciding which child got to take home a prize with them. I would have never signed up for judging had I known I would be the only one involved.
So Maritza appointed me to be the town judge which was fine until I was handed a loudspeaker with a horn on it. Now, my Spanish proficiency has increased 1000 fold but I still get nervous when speaking to 100 people with a loudspeaker. But I wasnt really left with a choice. There were also four prizes involved to be given out depending on who I thought should win.
At the start of things, I was really impressed. People hand-made all of their kites and they came in all shapes in sizes. There were some designed to look like airplanes, someone made some geometrically-complex cube that somehow flew and there was even a little lady that brought her daughter and a kite that was just a cutout of a hand-drawn superwoman (unfortunately that one didn’t fly). I actually thought for a second it was going to be easy to judge.
Once the kites managed to get up in the air, the sky looked so pretty with tens of kites floating peacefully above our little town. And every child seemed to be having a good time.
Then the time came when Maritza nudged me to start judging. I decided that the prizes would be given according to four categories: The kite that flew the highest, the kite that went the farthest (some kites didn’t go up but away), the best decorated kite, and finally, the most unique kite. The latter two I gave away instantly, the cubed-kite won most unique, and a heaxagonal kite that had so many layers of tissue paper formed in the shape of a star that it looked like stained glass won best decorated. That was easy. The question was which kites were up the highest in the air and farthest away. Considering I had just had my sunglasses stolen, I had to look up into the sky of a town that is situated 3 degrees below the equator with no eye protection. I think I burned my corneas. And to be honest, every kite was high up so it was hard to distinguish which one was the winner. The same goes for the kites that were in the running for being the farthest away. I swear they were all flying above the next town over.
Everybody else began to notice this too because they all began to start shouting at which kite was the winner. This is when things got stressful. I’ll have you know that Peruvians are very competitive when prizes are involved and I had a few parents and children telling me which ones were the winner. And since there was no other judge, my voice was the end all be all. My word was law. Maritza had made the right decision when she appointed me and not herself and the judge.
However by the end, I made my call and handed out the prizes. I had to deal with some unhappy kite-flyers and grumpy parents afterwards but what can you do. That´s life. I was just happy that I was able to drink some Inca Cola and eat some cookies afterwards.
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