Valentine's Day in March

In Botshabelo style, we celebrated Valentine’s Day the first weekend in March. The best time we have had since we’ve been here! The annual v-day bash is composed of 5 areas: karate display, contesting (aka beauty pageant), singing, eating, and dancing. We were lucky enough to be the judges of the beauty pageant (although I would say “lucky” is a subjective opinion bc for me -ayla- the pageant began at 4pm and ended at midnight. That is a friggin long pageant. Longer than my wee attention span).
judges' table

ayla does makeup for the beauty contestants

There were 4 rounds: casual wear, skirts, bathing suits (called “costumes” here in SA), and formal wear. Each round lasted 25 minutes to half an hour, where the girls walked together endlessly in geometric configurations as well as individually strutting their stuff and dancing for the crowd (you could not pay me to dance in front of the crowd in my bathing suit- but those girls sure can shake it). Ooooh, we almost forgot to mention the best part of the pageant: dancing grannys!!!! One granny in particular hit the booze pretty hard, and tried to join in the contest. Moments later we see her in the center thinking she is auditioning for girls gone wild, playfully raising her shirt. We thought it was a tease, but she wasn’t bluffing. The bra made an appearance, a few actually. We took video of the grannys dancing, we will try to put it on the blog.
the girls in the contest

granny joins the contest

There was mad drama when the dj, who was payed to play from noon to midnight, came at 3:30 and decided he was done at 8:30 and tried to sneak away. However, in the end it was settled, and we danced til 3 am. In fact, we danced sooo hard that two days later ayla is still sore. We spent some of the dance trying to get down the kids’ south african moves, but they are insanely good dancers with crazy intricate footwork.
It seems that at least half of the money that came in for the v-day bash was set aside to buy new clothes for the kids. Everyone got new shoes, jeans shirts, and underoos. Remember how we mentioned a few blogs ago boys dressing like girls….. now we know why. The family buys whatever is cheapest and decent quality. In the shoe department, it turns out that it was lime green fake crocs that were bejeweled for the boys. We know we shouldn’t laugh… but that shits funny.
Next on the agenda: Ilene’s friends come on Sunday and stay for the week, and then its our spring breeeaaaak! This semester is flying…
Ayla and Ilene
random pic of the promised chicken feet meal... soo rubbery

we tried to upload the granny dancing video, but it just uploaded forever and wouldnt finish, so we had to delete it. soorry