Sunday, 12 April 2009

Happy Easter 2009!

Car aside here is other news...

Comayagua is a very old, traditional town about half an hour from here. It is truly beautiful. Now, every year they have a tradition (that is also common in Guatemala) where they make 'carpets' in the street from coloured saw-dust. They stay up all Thursday night making them - there are about 30 carpets on the streets - and the detail is phenominal! I went with my friends Lorena and Johanna. Johanna went and spoke nicely to a man to ask where the best place to view the parade was and he offered for us to got to the top of the bell tower! Amazing views indeed!
Then, mid morning there is a procession over all these carpets - A Catholic procession where they carry Jesus through the streets. We left at 6.30am to avoid traffic and to see the carpets without too many people in the way. The carpets were simply beautiful. The procession...not so beautiful. Small children were all dressed up as Jesus with a crown of thorns on their heads, blood drawn on their faces. Then, an over sized statue of Mary, which was a very scary sight indeed. The procession started off with men walking over the carpets swinging copious amounts of incense everywhere, then a small boy pretending to be Jesus carrying a cross. Then came the famous part of a big float being carried by lots of men - bad description. For some reason this year they had 2 black horses on it too (not real ones!) and instead of the men wearing purple they wore white and looked just like the Klu Klux Klan! Was all too much for me and so we left!!

Then, I just hung out with my friends back in Sigua again. Saturday was spent watching the finals of the weeks sporting championships.

Today I got up at 4am to go to the sunrise service at the seminary. It was my favourite service last year and yet again was great. Hundreds of people together from different churches in Sigua. This year they didn't sing the old favourite hymns as I was hoping - but heh! Then it was back to church for breakfast, and then our normal service!

So, Happy Easter everyone - but I need to go to bed now! We have tomorrow off school and then we are back on Tuesday - we only had a week off!!

Here are the links for my photos....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=240887&id=876635272&l=6eab5b8215


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=240904&id=876635272&l=6ad981da27

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those carpets were absolutely amazing; as you said - the detail is incredible.Fancy going to all that trouble just for people to walk all over them. Have seen the flower carpet at Arundel but yours looked better, and outdoors too! Have enjoyed reading your blogs again, hope you'll be able to keep them up when you are back at school! Belated Happy Easter! Love Barbara x