Inter House at the Colegio Internacional

Nearly 90 years ago in 1923, Latin Link missionaries founded the Colegio Internacional in Arequipa,  which promotes education for girls and boys, women and men and the Latin Link representative of the school is  Rosemary Gibson, who has been in Peru for 37 years. My Peruvian Mum also works in the colegio as well as Administrator - I went into her office the other day and it was full of sheets of paper with numbers on them, rather her than me! 

Anyway the point of this post was to tell you about 'Inter House' the yearly fiesta held in the school where all the different 'Houses' (it is a British/Peruvian school, so instead of using Casa they adopted the word House, but the colours of the offices are still in Spanish not English) show of their talents.

There are four houses altogether  - Azul (Blue), Rojo (Red), Amarillo (Yellow) and Verde (Green). 

The day started with the colegio's band marching in and playing music... I can tell you with the sound of the big base drum I felt I was at home during the 12th! 

And then the Olympic Torch was lighted (still get a taste of the Olympics even though left London to avoid them!!) Rosemary also gave a little speech, not sure what she said as it was in Spanish but everyone clapped so must have been good!

Rosemary Gibson

Then the displays started. First of all there was a few gymnastic displays, it really did feel like I was watching the Olympics, some of them were that good, hope to see them compete in the real Olympics in the future:

Then the band game back in again accompanied by Spiderman, Superman, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk, was bizarre:

Each House then came on and did an act - Rojo, Azul and Amarillo all told the story of Creation in a different way. They all had little children dressed in animal costumes, they were just so cute:

Aren't wee Adam and Eve so cute 

They did the whole good vs evil thing as well, and evil was represented by people dressed in black and they looked like the Raith's from Lord of the Rings or the Deatheaters from Harry Potter and where quite scary. Then they took their black clothing off and were in white which resembled the good in the world. They all told a very good wee story but for me House Rojo was the best as the way they told the story just made sense to me and made me see the creation story in a new light. 

House Verde did a different thing, they told the story of Sports which was excellent and fitted in again with the Olympic theme:

This is them riding their bikes!

Shalom (which is a school for disabled children and part of the Colegio, and run by Ruth Green from Latin Link) held races for the kids as well  - and that was really lovely to see:

We were then treated to dances from the kids in different traditional costumes (Peru has many traditional costumes, think there is one for every city and possibly even every district in each city), but it was nice to see the different styles:

On and don't forget the ribbon work which has to be at every display (it was this section that made me feel as if I was back in Bangor watching the girls in the GB Display!)

All in all it was a very good day and I enjoyed it and was glad to be able to experience more of Peruvian culture. It showed me a difference between the school's here and the school's back home - there is more celebration here and more of a want to be involved in things  - I have never seen this kind of enthusiasm of display before in a school back home and it was just nice to see both parents and children getting involved in the festivities and cheering for their 'House'. 

To see more pictures please go to: https://picasaweb.google.com/100676954376098189077/InterHouseAtColegio?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvpvKrP28-F_gE