Our group acting out an imaginary trial of parents by their teenagers... just one of our fun, life-examining activities in Confi!Yesterday I got a nice break from playing the guitar at Mass in the morning: we had the first of this year's jornadas, or workshop-type meetings, with the teenagers in the first year of the Confirmation program from all four sectors of our parish. Normally each sector meets separately every week to talk about that week's topic, but this was an opportunity for all the participants to meet each other, hang out, and... mostly just meet each other. At the preparation meeting with the catechists, I was all like, "What's the topic? Who's going to talk about what? How are we going to give them good, deep moments of reflection, etc?" Instead, the main focus of the day was dinamicas. Dinamicas are group games kind of like ice-breakers, but way more elaborate and usually silly. My fellow catechist Any is the queen of dinamicas. Some of her classics:
"Casa-Inquilino." Two people hold hands to form the house, and one person stands in the middle as the inquilino. (An inquilino, it seems from context, is either a renter, or a post that the house is constructed around. Living in another language makes life so much more interesting sometimes.) One person is left out. The person outside calls out either "Casa," "Inquilino," or "Earthquake." If they say Casa, the house, without letting go their hands, runs to find another inquilino. If the caller says Inquilino, the inquilino runs to find another house, and the caller ducks in too, leaving a new person out, a la musical chairs. If the caller says Earthquake, the houses break down and everybody scrambles to form new groups of three. (some Peruvian reality there too.) If you're left out three times, you have to dance La Bamba at the end, in front of everybody.
"The Postoururi Iceberg." This one has some environmental conscience to it. Each group of five or six people receives five or six pieces of newspaper, which they place together on the floor. When the caller says Postoururi Iceberg (a famous iceberg in Peru's Andes), everyone stands on top of the newspaper. This accomplished successfully, one of the sheets of newspaper is taken away, and everyone has to stand on the now much smaller iceberg. And so on until you're all hugging each other, balancing on tiptoe, picking people up, etc. to all fit onto one sheet of newspaper at the end. The group who touches ground with a foot first has to dance.
And my personal favorite, "The little kitten" (el gatito.) The person who's "it" chooses a victim from the circle. They go up to that person and start acting like a cat. Meeeeoooowww, pawing, rubbing up against their leg, etc. If the person laughs, they become "it" and have to go be a cat to someone else. This is hilariously embarassing and a truly wonderful icebreaker, in terms of actually breaking the awkwardness in a newly formed group. I highly recommend it for corporate meetings, if anyone out there is running such things.
Besides the dinamicas, we sang (translation: Kathleen spent an hour and a half frantically typing up a song sheet the day before); saw a depressing video about kids who work on the streets in Lima to survive; listened to a VERY brief talk on the dimensions of reality that we talk about in Confirmation: personal, family, social-political, and religious; and had no time to reflect on those dimensions in groups because we'd started too late and the coordinator wasn't there to move things along. (Remind me to complain later about the way group leaders in Peru tend to leave everything to everyone else, and then yell at everyone else for their incompentence, claiming that "my being late wasn't actually being late, it was to see if the catechists could live up to their responsibility and run the meeting themselves," a sort of putting the underlings to the test... and the underlings accept it, even blame themselves for not measuring up! This is not the first time this has happened to me and I strongly strongly disagree with this management style.)
The whole thing was kind of disorganized (SURPRISE), but it was really fun. At one point I also ended up doing a skit with a group of jovenes about roosters, and then changing the words of a popular song to present our group as The Roosters who wake up the world to live passionate, religious lives. I couldn't believe how enthusiastically all the groups made up dances to introduce themselves to the rest--really good dances, too! It looked like they were ALL members of a cheer team or dance squad. You'd never catch a group of American teenagers willingly dancing in front of their peers. But Peruvians just have rhythm, and for them it's natural, they're not ashamed of it. Some pictures of the group presentations:
"Casa-Inquilino." Two people hold hands to form the house, and one person stands in the middle as the inquilino. (An inquilino, it seems from context, is either a renter, or a post that the house is constructed around. Living in another language makes life so much more interesting sometimes.) One person is left out. The person outside calls out either "Casa," "Inquilino," or "Earthquake." If they say Casa, the house, without letting go their hands, runs to find another inquilino. If the caller says Inquilino, the inquilino runs to find another house, and the caller ducks in too, leaving a new person out, a la musical chairs. If the caller says Earthquake, the houses break down and everybody scrambles to form new groups of three. (some Peruvian reality there too.) If you're left out three times, you have to dance La Bamba at the end, in front of everybody.
"The Postoururi Iceberg." This one has some environmental conscience to it. Each group of five or six people receives five or six pieces of newspaper, which they place together on the floor. When the caller says Postoururi Iceberg (a famous iceberg in Peru's Andes), everyone stands on top of the newspaper. This accomplished successfully, one of the sheets of newspaper is taken away, and everyone has to stand on the now much smaller iceberg. And so on until you're all hugging each other, balancing on tiptoe, picking people up, etc. to all fit onto one sheet of newspaper at the end. The group who touches ground with a foot first has to dance.
And my personal favorite, "The little kitten" (el gatito.) The person who's "it" chooses a victim from the circle. They go up to that person and start acting like a cat. Meeeeoooowww, pawing, rubbing up against their leg, etc. If the person laughs, they become "it" and have to go be a cat to someone else. This is hilariously embarassing and a truly wonderful icebreaker, in terms of actually breaking the awkwardness in a newly formed group. I highly recommend it for corporate meetings, if anyone out there is running such things.
Besides the dinamicas, we sang (translation: Kathleen spent an hour and a half frantically typing up a song sheet the day before); saw a depressing video about kids who work on the streets in Lima to survive; listened to a VERY brief talk on the dimensions of reality that we talk about in Confirmation: personal, family, social-political, and religious; and had no time to reflect on those dimensions in groups because we'd started too late and the coordinator wasn't there to move things along. (Remind me to complain later about the way group leaders in Peru tend to leave everything to everyone else, and then yell at everyone else for their incompentence, claiming that "my being late wasn't actually being late, it was to see if the catechists could live up to their responsibility and run the meeting themselves," a sort of putting the underlings to the test... and the underlings accept it, even blame themselves for not measuring up! This is not the first time this has happened to me and I strongly strongly disagree with this management style.)
The whole thing was kind of disorganized (SURPRISE), but it was really fun. At one point I also ended up doing a skit with a group of jovenes about roosters, and then changing the words of a popular song to present our group as The Roosters who wake up the world to live passionate, religious lives. I couldn't believe how enthusiastically all the groups made up dances to introduce themselves to the rest--really good dances, too! It looked like they were ALL members of a cheer team or dance squad. You'd never catch a group of American teenagers willingly dancing in front of their peers. But Peruvians just have rhythm, and for them it's natural, they're not ashamed of it. Some pictures of the group presentations:
This is me and my group, the Roosters (we were given that name... and had to find each other in the crown by going around making rooster noises, just like everyone else was making the noise of the animal on their little card...)
In our weekly Confirmation meetings, there's always a good chunk of dinamicas time, as well as singing, a topic of discussion such as family, parents, finding God in our personal history, friends, etc. I'm really enjoying the group and glad that I can contribute with my guitar (as always!) and by leading the Bible reading section (usually). Even in Spanish, I feel more at home with the read-and-reflect than with the dinamicas or with spontaneously talking in front of the group.Rebecca comes this Friday! and my kiddies are singing the national anthem at the Fiestas Patrias celebration in the school, and then-- My Vacation!
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