Last week my son participated in his school's Paraguayan dance celebration.  The dancing is a Paraguayan form of folclorico, a traditional style of Latin American dance.  He participated with his kinder "5" class; each class from kinder "4" to sixth grade performed different folclorico dances for their parents and faculty.  The boys dressed in black slacks, white shirts, straw hats donned with Paraguayan tricolor bands, and waist sashes also sporting the tricolor (the Paraguayan tricolor, its national color scheme, was inspired by the French red-white-blue tricolor flag).  I thought the students all performed very well; the bottle dancing sixth grader did a particularly splendid job. 

My son did an excellent job dancing and wielding a broom.  He's ready to tear up the dance floor.  I posted some photos of the dance -- they tell a much better story than I.

We bought a harp this weekend from Gustavo Sanabria here in Asuncion, and Gustavo delivered it to our home.  I'm planning to learn both the harp and guitar (pictured, behind harp), while my wife and son will learn to play the piano. I believe that learning both stringed instruments will help me learn both faster.  My guitar and harp teacher, Ruben Sanabria, will come over tomorrow night to talk to me about giving lessons for both instruments.  (Ruben isn't related to Gustavo, although Gustavo told me that Ruben was his harp teacher.  You can't beat that.  It's interesting that every harp player I've met in Paraguay has the surname Sanabria, and I don't know any Sanabrias in Paraguay who don't play the harp or guitar.)  I plan to have Ruben teach me harp for one hour and guitar back-to-back for one hour on Fridays.  I'll make a good faith effort to practice between lessons for at least two hours per week per instrument.  My primary goal is to learn a few songs well, such as songs I sing well (Roy Orbison's "Oh! Pretty Woman," the Beatles' "Yesterday," and some praise songs), and perform at impromptu gatherings in our home.  I imagine that kinds of songs must sound spectacular on a harp, which sounds absolutely heavenly (No angel jokes, please).  If I can do better than I did when I was a teen -- try and fail to learn the guitar -- then it will be worth it.  My wife is lining up Friday piano lessons for both my son and her with a Taiwanese-Paraguayan piano teacher.  We dished out the dough for these fine musical instruments, now we have to learn to play them.  Wish us luck!