Good Friday and the Equinox celebration

March 22, 2008
11:23 AM
Tabacundo
Internet Cafe

Since we are leaving for two weeks later this afternoon we figured we should post the rest of the photos that we had taken yesterday before we left.

So, in this post we have pictures of Good Friday. There were tons of people walking the stations of the cross during the day in Tabacundo. The stations were set up all around town and there was a procession of at least a thousand people led by the priest with a megaphone. It was quite an impressive sight.

During the day we went to a Kichwa festival but arrived early so we went on a hike to nearby waterfalls and then returned to the festival and ate some super yummy empanadas.

We have pictures of the traditional soup (fanesca)that everybody eats during Semana Santa, we described it in the last post if you want more details. We also ate delicious homemade humitas (there were sweet and salty varieties), which are really tamales if you´re more familiar with Mexican food. The humitas and fanesca were cooked in a super old lena (firewood) stove that they have, I think it made everything taste even more delicious. Check out the ´modern´ equipment used to grind everything up.

Finally, we have pictures of events in La Esperanza. First, there are pictures of the altar which yesterday was covered in branches but today will be replaced by thousands of white roses (we won´t have pictures of that). Then we have pictures of the procession after the final mass of the day yesterday (there was a total of 5 hours of mass). The people dressed in purple with hoods are called Cucuruchus. We were told their main jobs were to poke people with sticks if they are sleeping during mass and to carry the cross after the mass. I could´ve used them when we were teaching :)

That pretty much sums up Good Friday. Hope you enjoy!

Below is a brief overview of where we will be the remainder of training:

Saturday March 22 - Sunday March 30: Puerto Quito
Monday March 31 - Saturday April 5: Cuenca, Canar, and Rio Bamba
Sunday April 6 - Sunday April 13: La Esperanza
Monday April 14 - Friday April 18: Quito

Of course these may change a little and some days are spent traveling on a bus so we´ll really be in between places but that´s the general idea!

For more details, check out the post we put up yesterday titled ¨Semana Santa¨

Love to you all and Happy Easter, tomorrow.