A Year Being Honduran: Dia de Los Muertos

So for those of you who don't know much about the Spanish culture, November 1 & 2 are (translated) All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Both "Day of the Dead" I'm sure you've heard of. So, it wasn't as big as I expected here, I guess it's celebrated, but not like in Mexico or Spain. (it's always right after Halloween, which they don't celebrate here because it's the "devil's holiday). However I did see some children running around yelling something that I guess is similar to "trick-or-treat" according to a Honduran. Also, a BIG THANKS to my family who sent the birthday package! That was sooo nice! I will try and call this weekend to Grandma's, but the power's been in and out so the phone & skype have been terrible connections. We almost have devoured the candy.....we had to in honor of Halloween haha. Anyways, it was still pretty awesome to see the graveyard though. So it was Tuesday and Wednesday and we went with Mandy's classroom aide (Ffarah), her daughter (Megan), and Ffarah's sister who works in the caseta, Raquel. Megan is also in Mandy's class, she's adorable! Anyways, Mandy had mentioned we wanted to see what it was all about and they invited us to go with them. When we got there it was just as I expected, families eating and having basically having a party, there was live music too. And of course I saw a couple students. Then we walked through the gate, I guess, but it was covered so I don't really know what to call it, to get into the cemetery. Once in, I forgot that the graves are above ground and some of them weren't filled to capacity haha. Everything was so decorated and colorful though, it was really pretty! There were flowers and families everywhere. We saw a tiny bit of families decorating, but for the most part everything was already decorated. There were some nice, marble graves, and then some just regular looking graves. Some of the graves were behind a locked gate, these were important people of Copan at one time. Ffarah and Raquel are funny, they were looking for their grandma's, grandma grave, and kept yelling "abuela, abuleaaaa, donde estaaaa?" (grandma, grandma, where are youuu?) It was cute. I have pictures to show of course, there is more on facebook, shocking, but they're from Mandy's camera, so there wasn't 2 gringas at this day of honoring the dead taking silly pictures. It really was an awesome experience though & I'm glad I went. Also, we invited them over for dinner next week, it helps me with my Spanish when they come over and then they'll return the invite by having us over because their mom's a cook, so we'll have delicious, authentic food! yesssssss. And I finished & turned in my first quarter grades tonight, big weight off my shoulders. My first year of teaching, very first grades, done! Now I just have to make recuperation exams for my students who failed. They get like a homework packet or make-up test basically, in order to get a passing grade for the quarter. Way more work for me, so I did everything I could to get my students to pass lol. Ok, so that's about it for the week, this weekend we're going up the mountain to La Pintada (it's like an hour hike) to help some of the students up there and really I'll pry just end up playing with them haha. Who wants to do school work on the weekend? Not meeeeee. And it's the 2 teachers upstairs birthday weekend, so I'm sure all the gringos will be getting together. Only 40 some days until Christmas break I was told, so I'll be seeing you all soon! Have a nice weekend!