Dias de Los Muertos Preparations at Calpulli

The Days of the Dead (Dias de los Muertos) spans October 31st - November 2nd. It is a traditional holiday in Mexico that honors and celebrates the people in our lives that have died by creating feasts of their favorite foods and other sweets, decorating altars with local flora, and generally making merry. I am so excited that our time down here coincides with a holiday so rich in tradition, new and old. We have been able to witness the city get ready for the holidays and we look forward to some events that we will be attending in the next days. We will certainly be writing about them and taking lots of pictures with the nice camera. This post is about Calpulli, the preschool where I have been volunteering.

On Wednesday we began preparations for the traditional altar for the Days of the Dead. We took all the students from the 2nd and 3rd year preschool program out on a field trip to a valley near the school that was covered in small, yellow wild flowers. Thankfully the mothers, aunts, sisters and other family members also came along to help with the flower gathering and general safety of the students. The plan was to be gone for the whole morning, but with some many big and little hands helping out, we had mountains of flowers within an hour. After a brief picnic in some shade we carted them up the hill back to the school.

This is Jazmin, the lead teacher of the class that I was in. The giant next to her is yours truly. (We have gotten quiet accustomed to being at least a foot taller than pretty much everyone.)



I don't usually go to Calpulli on Thursdays, but Jazmin, asked that I come if I could. Once I arrived that morning I completely understood her desire for another set of hands. The project for the day was cutting the flowers down to a more manageable size so that they could be incorporated into the arches of the altar. Thus we gave each child a pair of scissors, an approximate length of flower and stem, and a mini-pile of flowers. The end result was about 20 fist sized bouquets of flowers, two sugar cane arches, a classroom floor COVERED in flower bits, and students covered in flowers, building nests out of flowers, pretending to die in the flowers, wrestling in the flowers, and sneezing because of allergies to the flowers. Quite a morning!

The end result was quite lovely and totally fascinating to the kids. You can see the traditional sugar skulls along with roasted peanuts, mandarin oranges, regular oranges, pan de muertos (special bread for Days of the Dead) and other candies on the altar that Jazmin put together.



Friday was another day of crafting for the holidays. Chocolate is a pretty big deal for Days of the Dead too, so after our usual Friday foray to the basketball court, we gave the students chocolate paste the consistency of playdough. I was actually surprised by how many of them crafted and made the cookie cut-out shapes with the chocolate, instead of just stuffing the chunk of goodness into their mouths. Of course there were some "browsers" who took their time getting lined up to wash their hands for lunch, picking up and enjoying the little pieces left behind by their friends (myself included, though I chose to eat from the extra chocolate unmolested by students). Daniela ended up with some especially well-done chocolates to take home.


The party and parade for the kids will be Monday and Rory and I will both be in attendance.