Days of the Dead - Nov. 2nd

November 2nd is the Catholic holiday All Soul's Day, and Karl had the day off from school.  November 1st is All Saint's Day.  The Days of the Dead are centered around these Catholic holidays, and they are mostly celebrated by Catholics; however, the traditions (like the ofrenda) are Aztec and are actually thousands of years old! 
On Monday, Nov. 2nd, we decided to take a trip to a very old town near Puebla called Huejotzingo.  It was only about 45 minutes away.  There is a very old fortress style monastery there which was one of the first ones built in Mexico after the Spanish conquest.  Unfortunately it was closed, but we still got to see some fun things.

Popocatepetl was looking beautiful that day.

We decided to check out one of the cemetaries in Huejotzingo.  These cute girls were bringing flowers to the graves of their ancestors.  The Days of the Dead are a time to fix up the graves of your family, and the cemetary was really a happening place.  There was music blaring from a sound system in the center, and people were painting, sweeping, and decorating tombs with flowers.

The cemetaries here are full of tombs, so we were suprised to see these fresh graves out in the open.  It looks as if the coffins were placed above ground and then covered.

This picture gives you an idea of the size of some of the tombs here.  We saw even bigger ones in Puebla, but also smaller ones.

Someone had hired a Mariachi band to play at their family's tomb!

We stopped at a private school where they had public bathrooms (for a small fee), and Karl noticed this wasp nest hanging from a second story balcony.

Notice that the door next to the nest is open!

This is still at the school.  There was a man cutting down a tree with a machete, and the boys were facinated.  They didn't want to leave until the big branch that he was working on had fallen.

A small market was set up in front of the cemetary.  There was all kinds of food and treats for sale (cotton candy, ice cream, etc.).  One young girl was selling nuts and other snacks including chapulines, which are a kind of grasshopper that has been roasted in some kind of seasoning.  We decided it was time to try some, since they are very well-liked here.  Everyone, even Chiara, ate at least one . . .

Elena wanted to make sure that we got a picture of this!  She was our child who was the most picky about anything "spicy" before coming to Mexico, so we have been pleasantly surprised at how willing she has been to try new things.

Stephen has also been a champ at trying new things.  Some other interesting foods that we have tried have been snail, octopus, and shrimp tostadas (the snails were kind of slimy), fried cactus, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus (it tastes like honeydew melon, but has seeds throughout it that you just swallow), and mamey (a sweet orange colored fruit).

Karl wasn't too sure about this, but the pressure was on since everyone else had tried one.  They didn't taste too bad - kind of crunchy and salty like eating a sunflower seed with the shell - but the thought of eating grasshoppers was a little too weird for all of us, so no one ate more than one or two.

This was a five hundred year old church at the town center of Huejotzingo.  The front has the famous blue and white talavera tiles on it.

Here's another church that we saw in Huejotzingo.  The state of Puebla is known for it's churches.

We returned to Puebla in the afternoon, and that evening we went to the cemetary in Puebla for a fun family-oriented show.  This picture isn't the best, but there was the host (with the red wig) and several other monsters like the mummy in front and a werewolf, frankenstein, yorona, etc.  They told jokes and sang songs, including the Monster Mash in Spanish.  It was fun.

This picture with Daniel gives you an idea of how big some of the tombs in the Puebla cemetary were.  They almost look like small churches!