Photobombs and family size

                Starting as a dark and cold morning, I embarked at 4 am to go on an adventure which many had the same idea about; attending the balloon fiesta up in Albuquerque, right as it opened.  Knowing that parking would be very tight, I decided to leave at 4 am to arrive right at 5.  I was wrong, due to the number of people in attendance, perfect for gathering field notes; I was stuck in traffic for over 2 hours.  Upon entrance, it was obvious that doing field work at the balloon fiesta was a good idea.  

                One of the first person that I saw was a younger middle aged woman, between 40-50.  She was standing up on a light post dancing.  At first I was not sure why she would be doing this at the balloon fiesta next to a tent that was selling burritos and coffee, but after about two minutes of her dancing, I discovered that she was waiting for family, and was dancing to get their attention.  When her family finally showed up, they began laughing likely due to her ridiculous dance moves.

                Being like everyone else, the group I was with, all four of us being college students, Caucasian, and all thin, we decided to take a group photo.  But before we did our group went to go locate a friend that we knew was there.  While we were standing around, a Hispanic kid under the age of 8 ran into me.  This kid was pushing a stroller, which did not seem too unusual, however once I looked in, I noticed that all that was in the stroller was a cup of Starbucks coffee with no lid, the coffee was spilling all over the place. The kid pushed the stroller straight into my foot, pulled it back a few inches, and then did it again. I shall refer to him as “Stroller Kid” This happened around 10 times before he finally went around my foot.  Less than two feet later, stroller kid ran into the foot of someone else in our group, and continuously tried to ram his foot.  Eventually stroller kid got it, and ran straight over his foot without saying anything.  Roughly 20 minutes later, when we were getting ready to take out group photo, I felt a bump on my foot and a splash on my leg.  I looked down, and who happened to be there, but stroller kid.  He had bumped his stroller into me again, knocking his Starbucks into my leg, covering me in coffee.  Stroller kid looked up at me, smiled, and then ran away.  Upon later looking at the photo, stroller kid was in it, dead center staring at the camera.

                One of the interesting things about the balloon fiesta was the diversity of families.  This was something that I noticed almost immediately in.  Most Caucasian patrons were in small groups, ranging anywhere from 2-6.  In the groups of two, it was either anyone from age 16-25.  After that age group, kids began to appear and make the group go up to around 4-6.  Once the parents were elderly, above age 60 or so, it was just the two of them again.  This demonstrated a more nuclear family with the size and kids present.  However, for the Hispanic families, I noticed that the size of the family ranged anywhere from 6-20.  This appeared to be more of an extended family, with the grandparents, their kids, and each of the kids having their own family, maybe even more.  The Hispanic families were a much larger size, which appears to be a cultural preference, as I have noticed this in some of my previous observations.