Mark Middleton’s Blog

Muertos…

We have spent the last three nights celebrating the dead.  Late night vigils in the cemeteries, meals with families, playing on the roof of a cathedral with 15 children (whose job is to take care of the church and ring the bells all day long during the festivals), fireworks sounding like bombs at all hours of the day and night, and more seemingly ad-hoc parades than you can count.  Every neighborhood has a few parades during the festival, some just going all around the neighborhood until 7 in the morning…. full brass band, kids in costumes, shouting, dancing… all of it. We spent much of the day yesterday with a youngman named Samuel.  He spoke fantastic english, and took us into his home.  His mother (who can´t be an inch more than 4 1/2 feet) made the most amazing mole I have ever had.  The process takes three days including roasting the ingredients her self before she takes the items to the mill to be ground.  She bakes it all in a huge couldron that was boiling for another ten minutes after it was taken off the fire.Samuel introduced us to the local cathedral and took us to the roof, where the boys were ringing the bells.  These little monkeys were so cute as they continued rough-housing and rolling all over the curved roofs, its amazing that any of them reach their 8th birthday.Xoxo (pronounced ´Ho Ho´) was the popular cemetery where we spent much of the day of the November 1st.  Although it was a large cemetery, many many hundreds and perhaps a few thousand people come and visit - including many tourists.  The children wear their costumes, run and dance around the place and beg for coins from anybody.  We met many families, learned the stories of their loved ones - they are all so happy to share about their families.We are packing everything up tonight to begin the journey back to the states.  We have recorded more than 15 hours of video, hundreds of pictures and many stories to tell.(Nick has the camera with the pictures in the market right now, so I cannot upload anything… sorry)

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