Soccer anyone?

Classes started yesterday at the institute. I got one class yesterday, and hopefully, I'll pick up another class today. There are still some Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, and Monday-Wednesday-Saturday classes to open up, so I hope to get one of those. My class yesterday was fairly small, but apparently all the afternoon classes were small, since Peru was playing yesterday in the Americas Cup, and many of the students opted to watch that over coming to class. Hmmm. My classes are fairly demanding, so I hope the students that stayed out are up to catching up to where they need to be.

Soccer is the national pass time and favorite addiction in Peru, it seems. Every kid learns to play soccer early in life. Soccer is played on the field, on the school playground, and in the street. Peruvian soccer fans are like the Denver Bronco before the days of John Elway...always faithful and enthusiastic, even though their team hasn't won a major tournament in over 20 years. The fans are passionate about the game, opting to cancel important appointments, miss days of work and, yes, skip classes to watch a game on television. Right now, the Americas Cup is in progress. It includes teams from the countries of South America, Mexico, and the United States. I think the US was eliminated, losing to Argentina and I believe they also lost to Paraguay, although I didn't see that last game. Last night's game was Peru against Bolivia, and it turned out to be a draw, in spite of 4 additional minutes being added to the game. It was exciting enough to delay the assignment of instructors to the last round of classes till the game had finished.

On the knitting front, I'm still plugging away on the Spring Colors sweater. It's slowly, slowly becoming a sweater. I love the way the colors fade into each other, and this time, knitted on smaller needles, the stitches are tighter and everything will be warmer, and not having arms that mysteriously morph into something resembling tentacles, heh. I'm looking forward to getting it finished and being able to wear it! Those beautiful blue buttons are calling me...! I've finished Maggie's third chullo and am hunting for a small box to ship it in. I've started another sweater in a kind of dusty rose color, I think it will be beautiful! And it goes with a skirt that I have, if I should manage to get it finished before summer rolls around again. And, I promised a photo of the gray beaded poncho, but I ended up giving it as a birthday gift and forgot about taking the photo first. I guess I need to make another poncho, maybe this time to keep for myself.