The Big Procession

 

This picture was taken the actual feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe at procession approached the seedwork designs on the street ( calle Guadalupe Victoria of course). It's very much a religious procession grouped by local parish with multiple images and floats of La Senora. Many are dressed in traditional local costume whether in the parade or just watching. 

There were many floats with young girls dressed in green robes as Our Lady, many young boys in traditional costumes with mustaches painted on their faces and many girls in colorful costumes carrying baskets of fruit.

December in Mexico

The days from the 1^st to the 12^th of December are celebrated all over Mexico in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe or as they call her La Reina de Mexico. It’s been a big event here in Los Reyes with certain churches or parishes assigned certain days in which they are given the honour of having a special framed portrait of La Senora. Each area organizes their day with street decorations that go up that night, dances and music. Individual home owners will also have a special area usually outdoors in their yard, driveway or even on the sidewalk set up with a grotto to her. This can be decorated with flowers, pictures, lights, small ornaments and always roses and a special portrait in the middle. Some people buy a large printed piece of fabric with Our Lady of Guadalupe on it and hang that on an outside wall.

There are local co-coordinators for each area and street decorations are meticulously planned in many areas and the papers, ribbons etc. needed to make them are distributed to residents. One of the main down town streets here has rows of plastic glasses trimmed in gold glitter strung across the street. It sounds a bit weird, but actually looks lovely. In wealthier parts of the city homeowners string lights across the street. However, I much preferred the home-made decorations done on streets such as Abasolo poniente where they used small yellow disposable plates to make flowers and then coloured in the center with black marker.

Early in the morning around 5:30 am people gather in the street again to pray before the image. Then another procession starts through the streets of the city back to the main cathedral. The procession is led by the image, a banner and special ornate cross with a priest and local people chanting. At the rear are local dancers in costume who perform along the way and a mariachi band. Inside the cathedral everyone cheers and claps when the local group arrives and proceeds to the front of the church. The dancers follow performing up the center nave and down the side aisles.

One of the other teachers and I got up at 5 AM in order to join in with the Abasolo Poniente neighbour which is about 3 blocks south of our house. It was a very moving experience especially as they asked us to carry some of the floral arrangements in the procession to the cathedral and afterwards there were huge vats of freshly brewed real coffee and pastries for sale just outside the church. 'Yum, yum' to quote one of my students.


NOTE: This is very late posting as my blog site had posting 'issues' for a while

Noises in Mexico

I never imagined that a Mexican small city could be so noisy. We have a constant parade of talking and ringing trucks during the day and during the night it´s the dog choir....with solos! When I arrived the first night and the other teacher here told me I would be having one of the room as the rear of the house and I would just have to get used to the dog barking, I thought it would be no problem. He told me the front side was very noisy too due to traffic. Having lived in downtown Toronto I didn´t think the street noises would be an issue.

But in Mexico street noises are all part of marketing! This is just a small place ....only about 65, 000 at the most, but it is the noisest place I have every lived in. It seems like every official vehicle and some not so official has a special sound, horn, music or just a steady stream of talking from a rooftop speaker. Even the garbage pickup is a sound experience. First, you hear what sounds like a broken kazoo horn, then as the truck approaches the speaker voice says ´Basura´in long deep drawn out tones. The men themselves are very friendly and helpful, one even speaks very good English. It was very surprising to be running out with the garbage early one morning and hear, ´Hi, how are you?´

We have a daily litany of service vehicles all with attached speakers spouting the name of the service or often just a distinctive musical song. One gas company truck just says 'el gaaaas' in a long drawn out voice followed by a distinctive 5 note melody, but another plays Christmas songs, usually 'Santa Claus is coming to town' or some other non-religious carol.

There are also regular cars going by representing the local media. These spout the daily headlines and sometimes hand out freebie copies of their newspaper. The other day there was a truck on the corner filled with potatoes and they used a recorded speaker to announce themselves. Lately I've seen something new around town. A vehicle with a television with screen on all four sides. This TV is perched atop the car and advertises home renovations and furniture. I'm still trying to capture a photo of that one!

Mi Casa

I´ve had a few requests for more info about the city of Los Reyes and where I´m living. Here´s a picture of our place on Calle Orquidea . It´s a very typical looking house for the area and this day looked better than average as it had just finished raining and there are some very tipico hombres passing.

The house is only about a 7 min walk to the school and is close-by lots of local shops selling all manner of things: tortillas, fruit, chicken, a beauty wholesaler called Gato Negro, plus there is an abbarotes , a local convenience store on every corner. Tomorrow they are even opening a pharmacia right across the street. We already have a hospital and 2 other pharmacies within 2 blocks plus the ambulance station and the firemen side x side on the corner behind the hospital.

Our house has 4 or 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms but is very dark. Making it nice and cool in the hot humid months but decidedly cool in the morning now as all the windows are the typical jalousie-type with screens and slats of glass. Since there are 4 teachers in the house the 1st one to arrive got the choice. Brandon, the only man, has this beautiful large room with tons of built in cupboards as well as a bathroom the size of my bedroom with a huge jacuzzi tub! We are all envious of course. The only negative is that room is at the front and we are on a rather busy street. (car driver seem to blare music at the loudest possible volume and those same drivers don´t seem to bother with air conditioning which would keep the sound to themselves. ) Plus he does get the full blast of sun till about 1 pm.

My room is the smallest but I do have my own bathroom and the room next to it which is empty has a door to the back patio where the Kitten spends most of his afternoons....especially now as it has a plastic corrugated roof and gets nice and warm. Temperatures in November are much more moderate...around 22-22 and much much less humid.

Here are some photos. Most of the furniture in the casa is very dark so I, being the 2nd to arrive, snapped up the bright blue shelf. I´ve also added the poster from the Zacan Festival to the window wall.

Zacan or Festivals Mexican-style

                      I had heard a lot about the  Zacan Concurso Artistico de la Raza Purhechepa.
The weekend before I had been in a small puebla (village) called Pamatacuaro and there were signs everywhere for entries in it. I even managed to score this awesome poster that I now have on the wall of my room. I did offer to pay for it, but when I told the women in my broken Spanish that it was to mail back to Canada (eventually) she gave it to me. Several people in Los Reyes we know were going plus some artisans we have met were going to be set up there.
The festival title translated as a celebration of the Purhechepan lifestyle so it sounded great to me....and to about the 8,000 others there last Sunday as well. There was a massive traffic jam as vendors displayed up and down the main street.

The town (puebla) of Zacan has been putting this on for 38 years. It is a 3 day event but I only went on the Sunday. Saturday was the setup day with preliminary judging and Sunday was the big day with final judging and lots of music and dance performances. There was an amazing array of traditional foods, crafts and music. Most of the indigenous crafts were set up on the lawn in front of the big cathedral. Each person was displaying their specialty. There was an abundance of honey, displayed with the actual combs, wooden ware, beautiful hand-loomed rebozos and the hot item of the year, souvenir cows in all different colours and sizes. Actually most people that purchased the cows seemed to come from the small towns in the area. It was fascinating to see how women's clothing varied so much from town to town. Some wear a very simple skirt/apron/huiple combination, while others have a fancy almost sheer blouse with puffed sleeves. Not very figure-flattered to my taste, but that's just in my eyes.

The town of Zacan is renowned for its music and singers. I stumbled upon a concert by Dueto Zacan in the beautiful small chapel off the plaza. The duet is 2 men who play guitars and sing traditional songs. They have travelled and performed throughout Latin America, Spain and the U.S. There were also many small performances of local bands throughout the day.

I'm going to post several pictures from the festival....but uploading is very small here so this may take a few days

My classes or the good, the bad and the just spoiled

I haven't written much so far about my teaching experiences in Mexico because even though I am in a fairly small city of about 50,000 I don't think they are so different from other kids in this country. My students range in age from 8 to late 20's and a good majority of them are sent by their parents and would obviously rather be elsewhere after school.

This is probably no different than in many other countries but Mexican culture does not seem to put such a high priority on English language education especially for girls. Many of my teen students are smart enough to be moving on to higher education and a good career, but the motivation seems to be lacking in many of them. Several tell me that they want to be decorators or work in the beauty industry. When asked why they learn English they tell me that their parents expect it will be useful for them in the future.

The younger kids are fun and quick , but generally not well disciplined so much of class time is spent just keeping everyone busy and under control. My youngest class is composed of 2 very active boys, one very sweet quiet girl, one other strong-willed girl who tries to speak Spanish most of the time and another boy who is usually late and is a daydreamer to boot. They are generally good learners but it is a challenge to keep them focused. Recently I've discovered that they all love to write things on the board and to make extra craft items so I've been working this into the lessons. They loved the table setting lesson and this week for their 'cut, mix, add' lesson we will make peanut butter and banana sandwiches. 'Yum-yum' to quote one of the more advanced students in the class pictured here. They are all in Colors 3: Karla, Luis, Alan, Jorge and Leonardo

Tianguis or Farmer's Market

Even thought this is a fairly small city there are 2 tianguis markets. These are local markets where almost anything can be sold. The word tianguis is from the Nahuatl language and was originally used just for markets of indigenous farmers and craftspeople. In Los Reyes the Wednesday market is the food one and the Thursday one is mostly clothing, new and used, household supplies, cosmetics, jewellery, dvds, kids toys, in other words anything not food. One day there were even 3 spaniel puppies for sale!

I try to get to the Wednesday morning market by 8; even at that time many things are picked over or gone. I have only seen peas once and there were just a few remnants. The market is a great place to buy seasonal food from the area, but caveat emptor. Such things as apples and peaches are not always local. In fact in August and early September those were from California. Local Mexican apples are now ready and they taste great...just like those apples I used to eat from my relatives backyard tree. They are no special type, just a great somewhat small juicy eating apple. They are probably fine for cooking too as they are somewhat tart.

I spent 22 pesos at the market today which is about $1.75 Canadian. My bag was filled with a small broccilli, an enormous green pepper, 7 bananas, 8 Roma tomatoes, about 1/2 pound of tomatillos, a complimentary bunch of cilantro and 4 small pieces of ocean perch which is called mojarra. On my way back to the casa I also stopped by a local aborrates and picked up 2 freshly made large buns for 3 pesos. Buying groceries is incredibily cheap and fun in Mexico.