The Easter bunny found the children in Mexico! That bunny sure does travel. The kids all got little baskets with jelly beans (carried from VT), a chocolate egg with a surprise in it (kinderchocolate from Germany), and a little gift. Mexicans do not do Easter baskets as Easter is strictly a religious, solemn holiday. As my Spanish teacher said...."no Easter baskets. This is a day of sorrow since Christ suffered so much and he suffered for us." We decided to take a different approach to Easter and enjoy the day, eat sweets, and do more sight seeing!
In the afternoon, I took Hannah and Alex to the jardin (main square) where there were huge paper mache figures (about twice the size of a man) hung in the square. Each figure was grotesque in some way...big ears, horns of the devil, large features, etc. The figures were supposed to represent Judas and his betrayal of Jesus. The figures are then blown up with firecrackers one at a time (do you see the theme of loud firecrackers in Mexico??) to represent the blowing apart of the bad so that only goodness remains. Anyway, each of the figures had a circle of fireworks around them which made the figures spin quickly and then after about a minute the figure would explode with a very loud bang and the pieces of the figure would be scattered everywhere. What was quite grotesque was that the bodies exploded into small pieces (well sometimes there would be an arm or leg left) but the heads always remained. At the end, there was just a pile of heads which you can see in my picture...then they sell them to people in the crowd! Quite bizarre!
Here are pictures of these figures, then nothing, then the pile of heads!
The Easter bunny found the children in Mexico! That bunny sure does travel. The kids all got little baskets with jelly beans (carried from VT), a chocolate egg with a surprise in it (kinderchocolate from Germany), and a little gift. Mexicans do not do Easter baskets as Easter is strictly a religious, solemn holiday. As my Spanish teacher said...."no Easter baskets. This is a day of sorrow since Christ suffered so much and he suffered for us." We decided to take a different approach to Easter and enjoy the day, eat sweets, and do more sight seeing!
In the afternoon, I took Hannah and Alex to the jardin (main square) where there were huge paper mache figures (about twice the size of a man) hung in the square. Each figure was grotesque in some way...big ears, horns of the devil, large features, etc. The figures were supposed to represent Judas and his betrayal of Jesus. The figures are then blown up with firecrackers one at a time (do you see the theme of loud firecrackers in Mexico??) to represent the blowing apart of the bad so that only goodness remains. Anyway, each of the figures had a circle of fireworks around them which made the figures spin quickly and then after about a minute the figure would explode with a very loud bang and the pieces of the figure would be scattered everywhere. What was quite grotesque was that the bodies exploded into small pieces (well sometimes there would be an arm or leg left) but the heads always remained. At the end, there was just a pile of heads which you can see in my picture...then they sell them to people in the crowd! Quite bizarre!
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