Viernes Santo y Pascua (Good Friday and Easter)

The whole “spring break” that we have at home is here called Holy Week. We started it off the weekend before with a camping trip. Then, the whole following week was filled with religious activities, mass, and things like that. Good Friday and Easter Sunday were the two main days. On Good Friday, the kids at the ranch acted out the Crucifixion, which was really interesting and the first time I have seen it. It started with Jesus being “convicted” and ended with him dying on the cross, where they literally tied someone to a huge cross and leaned it against a wall so he was really mounted on the cross. We walked all around the ranch to each different “station” where kids, younger and older, helped act it out. Here are some pictures I took.

Then Easter Sunday, obviously the most important day of Holy Week, we all got up at 3:30am, to meet down by the boys hogares at 4am. By 4:30am, we were all there, and started the ceremony of a prayer, lighting candles and walking together the 5-10 minute walk up to the church, in totally darkness apart from the candles. They say that Jesus rose from the dead before the sun came up on Easter Sunday, which is why we do the mass before the sun rises. We then had a mass that lasted a couple hours with lots of songs and praying. Most of our candles melted all the way down to nothing, a couple kids almost started fires, but it turned out okay! After mass, around 7:30am (if I remember correctly) we all went to the girls soccer court and had a big breakfast together. After breakfast, the day was pretty much done because everyone was super tired from getting up so early. But, it was interesting and turned out to be very nice. Then, Sunday evening we had a big dinner for the volunteers. Each of us signed up to cook or bring one thing, and we got together to have a big nice dinner together, and something other than beans, chicken and rice! (even Easter breakfast was rice, beans and avocado). I made banana bread, (from SCRATCH! If anyone knows me, you know this is something to be proud of! And it turned out perfect.) Everything was sooo delicious and we all had a lot of relaxing fun!

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