Way behind

Hi all. I'm way behind on posting because our Internet connection has been spotty, and I've been fairly busy. Last week was my last week of Spanish classes, and I decided to actually do some studying in the afternoons. As a result, I got a 90% on my final exam. The significance of this is minimal, but having spent most of my life as a student I would have been disappointed if I had received a low grade. This Spanish school offers one more level, which I may take, but not next month. I'm planning on spending the month of April taking art classes which, unlike these Spanish classes, do NOT start at 8:30 a.m.

There's so much I need to post on. We made a trip to Guanajuato, we are taking care of some incredibly cute little kittens, and we attended 2 exciting Semana Santa (Holy Week) events. Semana Santa is a very big deal here in San Miguel de Allende, and seems to start about 10 days before Easter. Schools are closed both the week before and the week after Easter, which our little munchkin is actually disappointed about. ("But I like school," she says.)

I'll go chronologically backwards and start with yesterday, Palm Sunday, which is called Dia de Ramos here. Palm Sunday, which all educated people know (I didn't), celebrates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem where He was welcomed by people carrying palms. There are two processions, although one of them occurs so early in the morning that the gringo newspaper we read doesn't even mention when, presumably because gringos are not capable of getting up that early. They're probably right -- I saw a sign about it on the bus which said that it started at 4 a.m.

It would have been nice to see, though, since that procession consists of a man portraying Jesus riding on a donkey followed by 12 apostles. Nevertheless, we chose to go to the later procession, which started at 10:30 a.m., and of course we took lots of pictures.

There were lots of palms of all sorts available. There were plain ordinary palm fronds, and all sorts of stuff made out of them:


Here's Indigo getting into the spirit of the thing:


The street that the procession came down was lined with palms, including these arches:


Almost every house on the route was decorated with palms and (mostly) red flowers, although these residents have taken some liberties with the color scheme:


The procession started with a guy setting off (very loud) fireworks. I suppose the cigarette is convenient if you've got to set off a rocket ever few minutes. Did I mention that occupational safety regulations were a little lax here?


Next up are the priest and altar boys and other palm-waving folks from La Parroquia, the main church here:


Apparently, it's traditional to throw rose petals all over the marchers:


One of the ladies with a basket of rose petals let Indigo throw a few:


The next few shots are of groups from various churches who marched in the procession, some with indigenous dress and swords and other exciting stuff:








The big event of the procession is this 18th century sculpture of Christ riding a donkey:




This priest is obviously one of those cool young priests whose job is to get the kids involved. You can't really see the group of kids in front of him, but he was exhorting them to cheer for Jesus, halftime-style, yelling (but in Spanish, not English) "Give me a J! Give me an E! Give me an S!," etc.


And, as in every parade, someone has to clean up afterwards: