Not all who wander are lost: Holy Week

Sunday, 4-24-11

Today is Easter! Feliz Pascua! I’m not sure anyone says that here but I still felt like saying it. It has been a good day but much different than the Easter that I’m used to in Iowa. Easter is an important day here in El Salvador but there aren’t as many things going on during Easter Day as there are during the rest of Holy Week. People don’t get dressed up in their finest clothes on Easter like we do in the States. They don’t eat any special food for their meals. There is the torta de pescado (fish cake soup) that they eat on Fridays during Lent but not on Easter. It was pretty much a normal mass and only a little longer than usual. We didn’t do any processing before or after the mass. It felt weird not to be processing around town. We’ve been processing the past three days so I’m not sure what to do with myself now that the processing is over.

When I walked into the bathroom this morning I found a little Easter basket sitting on the sink. How exciting! I figured it had to be from Kathy. I looked through all the things in my basket: chocolate eggs, Cadbury eggs, egg-shaped gum, malted milk ball eggs, jelly beans, a little maze, and a plastic, wind-up chicken that lays gumball eggs. I showed all the ladies my wind-up chicken and we had some of its egg gum. It was fun to have some of the usual Easter traditions here that we have in the States, like dying eggs and Easter baskets.

My Easter Basket

The chicken is laying eggs!

So happy!

Three turtles. We're still missing the fourth

We went to church for the 10:00am mass. It was Alejandría’s turn to sing so we all sat up the front. I knew some of the songs but not all of them. I like being up at the front because I can see and hear better. Plus there were lots of gorgeous flowers today at the front. I noticed a small baptismal font at the front as well. I asked Kathy why it was there. She said there was probably going to be a baptism or a wedding. A baptism I understand but a wedding during mass on Easter Sunday seemed unusual to me. When I looked over there was a kneeling bench at the front of the aisle and a bride and groom sitting behind it. We were going to have a wedding.

Like I said, it was pretty much a typical mass. We had the readings, singing, and then the homily. Father Cándido was preaching but the homily didn’t go much longer than usual. After the homily came the wedding part. The couple exchanged vows and rings. Then the parents put “lazo” (a special wedding lasso/rope) around both the bride and groom to symbolize that there are bound together for life. It only took about 10 minutes and then we got back to the rest of the mass. After mass was over people went up to congratulate the bride and groom.

The front of the church

Lots of pretty flowers

The church eventually filled up

The bride and groom

Everyone gathered around

After the vows and rings

Holding up the Eucharist

The rest of the day was low key. I worked on the computer for a while and took a walk in the afternoon. Kathy took a much needed snooze. We’ve all been up late since Thursday and the days filled with things to do to celebrate Holy Week. Everyone needs a break. No school yet for me tomorrow so I get one more day of vacation. I’ll probably work on getting things ready for school. Chelita thinks she belongs inside the house and has been trying to sneak in while no one is watching. I have to keep chasing her outside. Hopefully this is just a phase and she’ll learn to stay out of the house.

Cecilia put Kathy and me in charge of dinner tonight. I thought it’d be fun to make pancakes. I had explained to Cecilia last week that sometimes people in the US eat breakfast food for dinner. She thought it was a strange idea but she does like pancakes. So I got a box of pancake mix that’s popular here in El Salvador. I read the directions and mixed it all up. It looked strange and really thick. Then I realized what I did wrong. The instructions were for only half the box of pancakes and I’d dumped the whole box into a bowl. I guess they do instructions for mixes here a little differently than in the US. So we wound up with twice the pancakes we needed but that’s okay.

It took a while to make all the pancakes but everyone was patient. When I’d finished most of them I told everyone it was time to eat. Kathy had set up some toppings for us to add to our pancakes. Just like a buffet. We had chocolate chips, bananas, and peanut butter. Yum! Sometime I want to make pancakes here with strawberries. I think they’d be delicious. It was a good end to a good Easter day.

Chelita thinks she belongs inside

Here she is sitting outside like a good chicken

Making pancakes for dinner

Buffet-style with bananas, chocolate chips,

peanut butter, syrup, and honey. Delicious!

Saturday, 4-23-11

It’s been another day filled with special events and activities to honor Sábado Santo. One of the activities was more commercial than the others, but I’ll get to that later. The first thing we did this morning was go to church at 9am. But we didn’t have a mass. Today they had a special blessing of children, water, basic grains, and animals (Bendición de niños, agua, granos básicos, y animales). Someone told me about it earlier in the week and when Jesús gave Kathy a program for Holy Week we saw it listed in their as well.

I got a couple pre-blessing pictures with Chiquita and then we were off. I carried her in her cage to the church. There weren’t a lot of people when we got there and I worried that we had missed it. But thankfully we were just early and people slowly began to arrive. We learned that it wouldn’t be a full mass, just a reading and blessing with water. Before it all got started I took a couple pictures of some of the animals. There were 2 big dogs sitting toward the back of the church. One woman was holding a tiny puppy as well. At the front of the church were several birds in a cage and one woman even had a turtle!

When everything was ready Father Santos asked everyone to come forward and sit together at the front of the church. To do the actual blessing Father Santos read something and then blessed the objects by sprinkling water on them. The church here does not use a special or fancy aspergillum to sprinkle holy water like most Catholic Churches in the US. Instead they use a wooden dowel with a loofah sponge on the end of it. This seems to work just as well as a metal aspergillum. I saw this same type of aspergillum used on Palm Sunday.

The first blessing was the blessing of water. People went up to the front of the church with various containers full of water. People had plastic water bottles, empty pop bottles, gasoline containers, and other jugs. Blanca had cleaned off a nice wine bottle that was left by one of the delegations to use for holy water. Kathy took it up to the front to be blessed. After the water people could bring forward paintings and statues that they wanted blessed. Several people had pictures or statues of Jesus and of Mary. Jesús took up a picture of Romero that he had. Then people could take rosaries up to be blessed. A couple nuns had shown up to have their rosaries blessed.

Then it was time to bless the animals. There were 2 big dogs, 3 small dogs, 1 baby dog, a cat, a tiny turtle, 4 parakeets, and 4 conures including Chiquita. One of the kids with a small dog was a student of mine at school. He and his sister had brought their two small dogs to be blessed. All the animals did very well while they were being blessed. Although afterwards, Chiquita flew to the ground. I don’t think she likes being wet. But it was fun. Maybe now she’ll do a better job of behaving herself.

Next came the children. This was especially fun and Father Santos looked like he was full of joy. There were babies, toddlers, and children in grade school as well. They all enjoyed being blessed and Father Santos made sure to get all of them wet. After that he said a little more and then the blessings were over. I got a picture of my student and his sister with their dogs and one of the 8-day old puppy. Then Father Santos decided that he’d bless the adults as well. There was left over holy water so why not? Kathy and I went up to be blessed. It was a good service. When Kathy and I got home we took some of the holy water and blessed Chelita and Barbara since they weren’t able to go to church with us.

Pre-blessing picture with Chiquita

She knows how to give kisses

She loves sitting on my shoulder

Walking to church

Checking out the birds

More birds to be blessed

Water and animals

Talking to the little girl

Meeting some of the other animals

A nice-looking dog

She was a little shy

Soft puppy!

Ready to begin

Blessing the water

Reading from the Bible

There's Kathy!

A bottle of water for Blanca

Time to bless paintings, photos, statues

Jesus with a photo of Romero

Blessings for all

These girls enjoyed it a lot

Blessing rosaries

One more water to bless

A tiny puppy!

Only 8 days old

One my students and his sister with their dogs

They were excited!

Preparing to bless the animals

Blessings for the puppies

The kitty was also blessed

Talking to my student

Reading from the Bible

Waiting for water

I was really excited

Blessed water for all

Chiquita is being blessed

I had to pick her up because she flew to the ground

Blessing of the children

Reading

Prepare to be blessed

The kids loved this

Holy water all around

The priest enjoyed this as well

A happy day

More water please

Precious picture

The nuns enjoyed the blessings as well

Holding the tiny puppy

Goodbye nuns!!!

Holy water for Chelita

Holy water for Barbara

In the afternoon Kathy and I decided it was time to dye eggs. We looked for eggs at the market on Thursday. We couldn’t find any white ones (they are rare here) but we were able to find light brown ones so those would have to do. Since it’s not a tradition to dye eggs for Easter here this was the first time for Cecilia. Kathy had food coloring in her room and we had vinegar in the kitchen. We mixed up food coloring, vinegar, and water in coffee cups and went to get Cecilia. Kathy explained what we were doing and asked if she wanted to help. Of course!

We had all the colors of the rainbow and ended up with a beautiful assortment of eggs. I got lucky using the purple dye I’d created and dripping blue and red dye into the cup without stirring it. My egg turned out really neat. After dying one of her eggs Kathy decided to color on it using permanent markers. It was blue with little stars all over it. Once we were finished I thought we needed to put them in a basket. Kathy got some Easter grass she had stashed in her room and I got a basket that I use to put my tea in. Together we made a beautiful Easter basket!!!

Cecilia went to go get the bunny ears Kathy had brought back from the States. Cecilia and I both got a picture wearing the ears and holding the Easter basket. Kathy said she’d pass on the photo. Then Kathy said something to the effect of, “The past several days we’ve spent going to mass and having processions to commemorate Holy Week and here we are dying Easter eggs.” Very true, but at least we weren’t neglecting the religious part of Holy Week and Easter all together.

Then Cecilia showed us eggs where she’d removed a small part of the shell, dried it, and then stuffed it full of paper confetti. She glued the hole shut with tissue paper. This was a tradition here that people do on a variety of special occasions. She just happened to be drying some out for Easter. She had one completed and pretended to smash it on my head. I told her it was okay. On the first try the egg didn’t break. It had a hard shell! I told her to try hitting me harder. And it worked! Confetti flew all over the place. I picked a bunch up off the floor and threw it in the air. Yay! It was a big mess though I later swept it up.

Getting ready to dye eggs

My special egg!

We're getting there

Beautiful eggs!

Awww, Kathy's special egg

My special egg

The Easter Basket!

Easter Alisha

Easter Cecilia!

Making her special eggs

There it is

It didn't crack the first time

Smash!!!

Confetti hair

She did it!

Ready to go in the fridge so we can eat them later

In the evening we were going to Alejandría to have a special procession and service. We had a quick dinner and then were off at 6:15pm. I was excited because we don’t go out much at night and I’d never been driving in the cantons at night. In fact, this was only my second time being in the cantons at night. We parked the truck at Vilma’s house because her husband, David (a different Vilma and David than Corozal), said that we could park the truck there and David would watch it for us. It was pretty tricky backing the truck into the small “driveway” in the pitch black of night but Kathy did a great job and no one got run over.

From there we walked about a half a mile to Blanca’s house. It was complete darkness and there was only one “street light” in the area that was installed just this year. Thankfully, the three of us all had tiny flashlights to help lead the way. It was really hard to see but I enjoyed the walk. At one point I took a picture with the flash on of Kathy and Cecilia. Both started laughing and saying that now they really couldn’t see anything. Kathy told me to take a picture without the flash so people would know how dark it really was. Especially walking in the forest, it was even hard to see the stars in the sky at some points.

Along the way we heard a strange noise. Cecilia told us that it was lots of toads. It was a neat sound, a different sound than the toads in Iowa. Cecilia pointed out a couple to me with her light so I could get a picture. There were tons of them! The tough part of our journey came when we had to cross the little stream. We all had our lights on and stepped on rocks over the stream. Had it been raining, the water would be too high to cross so we could not have gone to the procession. But thankfully it had stopped raining.

Walking to Alejandria

Cheese!!!

This is how dark is was

Giant toad!

Trying to hop away

So cute!

Around 7:00pm we arrived at Blanca’s house. We dropped off our water and sweaters and walked on to Cecilia’s house where the procession would start. There was a big fire going outside the house and everyone was gathered around it. We passed out candles to be used during the procession. Then it was time to begin. Balmore started by talking about Holy Saturday and Jesus’ death. Then a few people lit their candles from Balmore’s candle. We walked a short ways and more people lit their candles. Then we walked a little further and when we arrived at Blanca’s house everyone else lit their candles.

Around 8pm the actual service began and we all blew out our candles. I wasn’t 100% sure of the entire meaning of the procession and the mass/service afterwards for two reasons: 1) some of the Spanish I didn’t understand, and 2) I’m not Catholic and have never done a Catholic Easter Vigil before. From what I can gather reading things on the internet there were four parts to the evening: The Service of Light, The Liturgy of the Word, Renewal of Baptism Vows, and the Holy Eucharist.

The first part is when a fire is lit and from that someone lights a special Easter candle. Everyone has a candle that is lit from the Easter candle one person at a time. From there someone chants the Easter Proclamation and everyone sits down for the liturgy part. That’s exactly what we did during our procession.

Next came the Liturgy of the Word. There were several young members of the community that came up to read seven different readings from the Old Testament. In between each reading we sang a song. I knew a couple so I got to sing along. After that Balmore gave a short homily since he is a Delegate of the Word (like a lay minister).

When the liturgy and homily were finished Balmore got out the holy water that had been blessed earlier in the day by Father Santos. He used a small bouquet of flowers to disperse the holy water over everyone at the vigil. This was to help us remember our baptism and the vows we took when we were baptized. Then came the Holy Eucharist. Balmore had wafers that had been blessed by the priest and we all took communion.

Balmore said a few words at end the service and we were done at 10:00pm. All together, the vigil was 2 hours, though I felt it went by fast. Someone had been in the kitchen area making coffee and putting pan dulce in bags for everyone during part of the vigil. Cecilia and Blanca came around passing out coffee and pan dulce to everyone. I went into the kitchen area to see what was going on. I don’t like coffee but they told me I should try some since it was made with chocolate and milk. I decided to give it a try and hoped I would like it. But I didn’t like it. All I could taste was coffee.

Around 10:30pm we decided it was time to head back to Berlín. I wanted to walk back to the truck with my candle lit. So I lit my candle and we were off. We were walking back with several other people so we all chatted as we walked along the road. Other people had candles lit as well. When we got to the river one of the women told her sons to help me across. Not wanting to be rude I allowed him to take my hand and help me across. Soon we came upon the open field sometimes used for soccer. Looking below we could hundreds of fireflies. They were beautiful! I didn’t know they existed in El Salvador.

We made it back to the pickup and gave a couple people a ride to Berlín. Getting the pickup out of the “driveway” was much easier than getting it into the driveway. By the time we got back to the house it was 11:00pm. I worked on my blog for a short while and then crashed.