let´s see, where to begin about the day of the dead (día de los muertos) which is really two days, tomorrow and wednesday. first off, i get a day and a half off of work. that is the best part for me. the kids down here know what halloween is and do stuff like carve pumpkins but no one is that into it, mainly because they have a holiday equally as interesting if not more so that follows the next day.
so tuesday, november 1, is the day for remembering dead babies and children. people take candy, mementos, all sorts of stuff to their graves. in truth i do not know much about tomorrow day, but on tuesday, preparing for wednesday, things get crazy. wednesday is the day for the adults, so the family brings alcohol, music, cigarettes, favorite foods, guns(?) sometimes and all sorts of other things that remind them of the dead person or that the dead person was fond of in life. essentially, this is the night that the dead come back to enjoy what they once enjoyed in life. thus, eat drink and be merry. some people spend all day and night in the graveyard, eating, drinking, passing out, waking up and repeting it all over again. there is music and dancing both inside and outside the graveyard. there are vendors selling food and alcohol as well.
instead of being afraid of ghosts, this is the one day where everyone welcomes the dead back. kind of a cool concept really.
once i learn more about it i will write more.
super busy trying to cram lesson plans in this week because i lose two classes with level 2 and one with level5. hope all is well stateside. i kind of miss not having halloween, but hopefully the next few days will make up for it!
i am doing well. james, what is your next favorite word of the day? feel free to post a weekly update on here as i am always interested in learning new vocabulary words as well.
did someone say go hokies? we need all the help we can get this weekend when we play miami, so i hope all you yahoos, i mean wahoos, rally around your state and cheer for us. after all, if we beat miami and you manage to beat us, wouldn´t that make you as good or better than both teams?
happy halloween up there!
2 comments:
I like the idea of welcoming the dead back. I think it is good to celebrate their life and remember them.
Your post made me think about something I read somewhere. In some cultures the ritual of preparing someone for burial is done by the family members. This ritual must be hard on the family members, but it gives them a chance to grieve and accept that the person has died. In America we take our dead to a mortician. The ceremony is done by someone else. The family is distanced from what happens to their love one. I wonder if America's practice makes the grieving process harder in the long run.
I think we distance ourselves from lots of things in America. For example going to the grocery store and buying a steak in a nicely wrapped cellophane container is a lot different than killing and butchering your own cow. Not sure how I jumped to this topic from the previous paragraph but just thought I would throw it in there anyway.
Anyways I was just going to post my word for the day. Not sure how I got off track.
I liked the word susurrus. It sounds like what it means, a whistling or rustling sound. Is there a term that describes this kind of word?
Onomatopoeia: formation of a word by imitating the natural sound associated with the object or action involved; echoism...
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