karaoke and baleadas

Wednesday of this week our group got invited to go to dinner at the Zelaya's house. The Zelaya's are the family that owns a large amount of property that includes the land the school is on. They are very wealthy and very generous! They have four children that I know of. One is named José and is 24. He is kind of a stud and hangs out with us frequently. Another child of theirs is named Irma. She is going to be in my class. It was fun to talk to her and to watch her sing Karaoke. That brings me to the fun part! Karaoke!!!!!

I have never actually sung Karaoke before, but on Wednesday night I sang loud and proud! They had a microphone stand with two microphones and a very large selection of music (in English and Spanish) ranging from the 70's to present day. The selections were quite overwhelming but once we started it was hard to stop. The fact that alcohol was involved truly added to the desire to sing as well, which made the evening all the more interesting. I belted out Summer Nights from Grease with several other volunteers. It was a good time. Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, Savage Garden, Enrique Iglesias, Sugar Ray, and many other fabulous plasts from the past. Between singing we took a break and ate some delicious Baleadas. Baleadas are flour tortillas with a wide assortment of things inside. Generally they include refried beans, cheeese, and eggs. The ones we had also included chicken and chimol(fresh salsa with chopped up tomatoes, pepers, onions, and lime). It was delicious!!!

After the gringos had sang for a bit and provided the entertainment the Zelaya family also sang for us. They chose several karaoke songs in Spanish and we sang along with them as best we could (there were some quick fast words that I did not know how to say). My favorite part of the evening though was when Don Zelaya(the father) and his brother sang a song together accompanied by the guitar. Their voices were truly breathtaking and the sweet strum of the guitar pushed the music over the top! I could have listened to them sing forever. I wonder it is a cultural requirement that if you are male and you are around 50 -60 years of age you can sing and play the guitar beautifully. Many of the volunteers, myself included, could not stop smiling the whole time they were playing. It was probably another favorite experience to add to my list here. The singing and laughing and dancing came to a close as we all faced the reality that we had to continue with classes the next morning so we had to say farewell. The family seems so great and I am excited to continue interacting with them in this coming year. I am afraid however for my home visit with them. I am supposed to do home visits for each of my students before the year starts or at the very beginning of the year. I am nervous that when I do my home visit for Irma they will make me sing alone! Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!