dia de los muertos

So, day one in Oaxaca is over. Our training began today and will go on for the next three days. If today was any indication, that means three more days of sitting around a table (with a couple of breaks) from 9 am to 6 pm, with the advantage/disadvantage of it being the kitchen table in my apartment, which means I don't necessarily have to leave the place.

We basically spent the whole day eating, which is not so bad. We had the typical Mexican big lunch, tiny dinner thing, which honestly kind of weirds me out. Lunch was pretty good mole and dinner was some sort of fried tortilla filled with potato, which is maybe the best idea ever. I got the world's most useless, tiny fork to eat it with, but still.

I actually just wrote a paragraph about things I was annoyed by, but they're boring, so I erased it. In short, there are some boring things I am annoyed by.

Today after training we went to the zocalo to look at what they call "tapetes" (which I've only ever known to mean 'rugs'), big sand sculptures on the ground, mostly of skeletons, which are then spray-painted. We also tried to go to one of the cemeteries to see how people decorated the graves of their loved ones, but they were closed by the time we got there. Fear not! There was a tiny street festival outside, with hilarious carnival games, horribly unsafe rides for tiny children, and lots of food (including doughnuts and bacon-wrapped hot dogs). Then, we started to head home but one of my coworkers spotted what looked like another event, with a stage, so we stopped to look at that. It was actually a dance happening outside of a church where you could get your cumbia on and get your picture taken with the grim reaper, dead prom queens, dead surgeons, other sundry dead people, or Montezuma (definitely dead as well).

I took my camera out, but I realized that I forgot to buy another crappy flash which I could then break, so I'm stuck with my even-crappier on-camera flash. It kind of sucked, but I tried to make the best of it. I guess I'm stuck mostly taking daytime photos for a while.

Anyway, life is good for now. So I'm going to bed.

Yay! Happy Dead Day! I hope you fed your loved ones and they will not cause mischief upon you!