This is Max Angel. He's 4. And we baptized him last night. His parents are both students at the UAC and Hugh is his Padrino. (Last night Hugh said he's Godfather to 14 people here so far.) All of us volunteers were invited to evening Mass, and the Baptism following that, and the party in San Pablo following that. The party was dual-purpose because little Max Angel's uncle Willy had just returned from his year of obligatory military service. Which meant that even more of the family and even more of the village was in attendance -- it was pretty much everybody, I'm told.

To celebrate, we poured a splash of beer on the ground to please Uchumachi, the local incarnation of the male half of God, then drank the rest (except the foam -- which it turns out we also pour on the ground but for practical, not spiritual, reasons.)
We listened to Peruvian music in Aymara at full volume (which mercifully blew the circuits in the amplifier often enough to give us a moment to actually hear and therefore potentially understand the kind and slightly tipsy person sitting next to us). And we loaded the top of everybody's head with mixtura. (They called it pico pico in Guatemala and we English speakers use the Italian word that is more accurately used here for the tiny hard candies thrown on tin roofs during Carnival: confetti.) As you can see here, Max Angel was not always thrilled about the extra mixtura.

And those of us with digital cameras took as many photos as we could to try and satisfy the insatiable desire of kids everywhere: to point out themselves and laugh at their friends on the tiny LCD screens. Here's one such photo, replete with 3 different takes on the evening's activities.