Day of the Dead and Day of the Saints

It was a little bit odd waking up Sunday morning and know that once again we had to walk to school. Of course it wasn't as early as on a normal school day, and the streets were a little less crowded, but essentially it was the same thing. November first is Day of the Dead, so we were going out to Sumpango, which is a place famous for their kite festival on the Day of the Dead with the school because originally we thought that that would be safer. David was the only teacher or staff member that came, and there was about 15 other people. I was a little bit surprise more people did come, but I think it was a good thing just because this way it was a lot easier to find everybody at the end of the day.

The bus ride from the school was only about 15 minutes, and as soon as we arrived we were impressed by the mere number of kites in the sky. They weren't the really big ones yet, but it was still cool to see so many up there...not running into each other every five seconds. We expected that it would be an organized trip, but as soon as we had established a meeting place they said we'll meet here in 5 hours off you go! And that was that. We didn't know what we were going to do with ourselves for 5 hours. At first everybody stuck together, because I think we were all remembering all the stories of pick pockets and it not being safe and everything. Gradually we became more comfortable and split into groups. Mom, Riss and I went with 4 other people. An older couple, another single lady, and a young guy just out of college. We're still not sure why he chose to spend the day with strangers and not his friends.

We found out that the big kites weren't set to fly until 2 o'clock, so we decided to visit the town graveyard to see all the decorations, because I'd heard that it was a really pretty sight on Dia de los Muertos. It took us a little while to find the grave yard, surprisingly, but it was still fun because everybody in our little group was fun to talk to. When we did find the graveyard we weren't disappointed at all. Though it was very different from graveyards back home, it was very impressive and pretty. It made me feel a little odd and lost though, because these people have so many traditions and everything and Americans are just like floating and being snobs and ruling the world. I suppose that's putting it a little harshly, but it really was an interesting experience.

We walked through the graveyard into the town, which we called cement city becase we didn't see a single building, at least at first, that wasn't made out of cement blocks. We wandered around there for a while, before finally realizing that we probably shouldn't wander around to much because we needed to be able to find out way back. And we were all getting hungry. Though some of the food on the streets didn't exactly look appetising, the smells did make us realize we'd been wandering around for a 2 1/2 hours, so it was time for lunch. We found a nice grassy spot right underneath the biggest kites which couldn't fallen on us any second to eat lunch. We introduced the rest of the group to Habas, which has become a bit of an addiction for us, and they all loved them too.

After lunch we starting looking for a good place to view the kites from. Then we realized that there was still space in the bleachers, which was really surprising, because there had to be over 500 hundred people just in this little town! When we go there we realized why...you had to pay money to sit in the bleachers, and I guess most people didn't think it was worth it. Well we're not sure exactly why, but the kites didn't start flying until about 3:30, so we sat in the bleachers for an hour and a half talking and half listening to the loud speaker, which was in rapid spanish, so none of us could understand. I think that the 2 o'clock start time was the entertainment, because there was definitely people talking on the stage, and then a band after a little while.

By the time the first kites started flying, we only had about half an hour left, which was definltey disappointing. It was a really fun experience, because the entire crowd got into it, encouraging the kites to fly. Most of them even got off the crowd, which I thought was impressive in itself. All too soon it was time for us to leave, because the 5 hours had flown by very quickly. It was probably a good thing, because a bunch of people were sunburned and thirsty and tired since it had been a hot day, but it was really fun.

I expected something more on Day of the Saints, and there was supposed to be a parade through town and everything, but I guess we got the wrong time or it never happened or something. Either way, nothing out of the ordinary happened.