Independence Day Celebration

On September 11th, our ward had a party to celebrate Mexican Independence Day (which is on Sept. 16th).  We dressed the boys up as jarochos, and taped some crepe paper flowers to Chiara's dress.  One of the sisters in the ward taught me how to make pozole for the event.  She took me shopping and called several times to see how it was going.  Pozole is a soup made with hominy (which looks like huge kernals of corn).  You can add either chicken or pork.  We made ours with pork, and bought the head of the pig to give it a good flavor!  It was the ears and some bones from the head -- not an entire head.  Other people made tostadas, elotes (corn on the cob on a stick with mayonaise spread on it and chili and cheese powder sprinkled on it), chalupas (salsa and meat and onion fried on a tortilla), and chips or popcorn with chili sauce on it.

I participated in a dance with the relief society sisters.  I told them that I wasn't really a dancer, but I thought it would be fun to learn a Mexican dance while in Mexico, and they informed me that we were dancing a polka!  It was fun, even though I'm really not much of a dancer. 

Four couples performed this traditional dance called something like "The Dance of the Old Men."  It was so funny.  I didn't get a very good picture, but they were wearing masks that made them look old, and leaning on canes while they danced, and then the women would weave in between them and dance around them, and they would pretend to lose their balance and stuff.  This picture is from the end of the dance when they joined their canes together to form a chain.  It was great!

The ward hired a mariachi band.  These are two of the women who were in the previous dance, dancing with them. 

Other people got up and danced, too, including Chiara and Stephen.  Everyone here can really dance -- like they know real dance steps.  And every party has music and dancing.

Here's some of the mariachi band.

Here's some more members of the band.

They had brought some costumes and props for people to take pictures with.  Here's Stephen in a sombrero.

Here's the whole family.  Joseph is welding a machete and Chiara and Daniel pretend to grind corn with metates.  They are wearing hats which say delicious corn (rico elote) and have a picture of a corn.  That's because the different catogories of food were also supposed to be a competition -- so they made hats for the kids so they would get extra votes!

The next evening, Karl and I went downtown to see some of the decorations.  The streets all had lights up.

This sign was on some government buildings across from the cathedral and the town center.

Here's a picture of the cathedral at night.