Hola! Hemos
estado trabajando mucho para nuestros eventos del
Día
de Muertos en
Jalpa y en La Palma. La semana pasada, en las escuelas, hablamos de
las celebraciones tradicionales que han experimentado los nios,
escribimos calaveras literarias y hicimos crucigramas de términos
importantes de esos días
especiales. Afuera de las escuelas, Catherine, Erin y yo hemos
organizado las cosas para las fiestas del la organización en ambas
comunidades. En Jalpa, porque no hay tanto
apoyo de las familias, sólo
vamos a hacer una pequeña
fiesta para los alumnos, y esperemos que vengan algunas padres y
madres de familia tambien. En preparación,
ésta
semana vamos a hacer y pintar calaveras de papel mache como un
proyecto de arte que pueden mostrar a sus familias. Ya estoy
preparándome
para un gran desórden,
especialmente en Jalpa...
En
La Palma, tenemos un evento más
grande. Vendimos boletos los últimos
dos fines de semana para que vengan gente de San Miguel y otros
turistas a conocer el trabajo de la fundación,
apoyar a los
estudiantes y ayudar nuestro
programa de becas. Los niños
van a mostrar proyectos de arte, y mi
coro va a cantar una versión
de “La llorona” (vamos a ver como sale
– son muy tímidos..).
Unas familias van
a presentar sus altares y las mamás
traerán comida
tradicional como el atole,
el pozole, los
tamales y los
bolillos. Tenemos la ayuda del maravilloso
guitarrista Salomón
y su novia talentosa Cinthia, quien va a pintar las caras del coro
como Catrinas y Catrines. Ojalá
que vengan muchos; los estudiantes han trabajado mucho para hacer el
evento y creo que va a ser muy chido.
Hey! We've been hard at work the last couple weeks planning our events for Day of the Dead in Jalpa and La Palma. For those of you that don't know, Day of the Dead is a traditional Mexican celebration honouring departed friends and family members. It is a Prehispanic custom which has mixed with Catholic European traditions to form a celebration not found anywhere else in the world. It is NOT Mexican Halloween. Day of the Dead actually takes place over two days, November 1st and 2nd - the first being a day for children and the second a larger, more general celebration. Families make altars for their loved ones, covering them in flor de cempasuchitl (marigolds, I think?), pan de muerto ("bread of the dead", a special kind of sweet bread), crosses made of salt, calaveras (candy skulls made of sugar and marzipan), and laying out offerings of all the things the dead ones loved in life... including cigarettes, tequila, or certain kinds of food. In some parts of Mexico, families may exhume and clean the bones of their deceased relatives every year. Judging from the looks on the faces of my primary class when I told them that, it doesn't happen in Guanajuato!
This year, we are having two events: one in Jalpa, just for students and their families, and one in La Palma, for which we sell tickets in San Miguel to raise funds for our scholarship program. This week we'll be making paper mache skulls with our students in both communities as an art project they can show off to their families and hopefully to some visitors from San Miguel or elsewhere. My middle schoolers are going to have their first choir performance, too - they'll sing "La llorona", a traditional Mexican folksong, with the accompaniment of the talented Salomon on guitar and, hopefully, I'll add some spooky keyboard effects. We'll see how it goes.... they're pretty shy. The moms in the community are bringing mountains of amazing traditional food for the guests, and we'll have four altars set up in the front yard by various families. I think it'll be a really special, moving event, and I hope lots of people come because our students have worked hard to prepare for this.
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