Christmas Day was different here than back at home in Berkeley. We started with a parade we knew about (from our earlier trip to the Catholic Archdiocese). While taking a nap (ah… the life of Riley!), we heard a band and ran outside to find another parade going by our front door. Later, we attended a party about 5 feet from our front door, of residents of our apartment building, organized by one of the gringos here.
In the middle of that party, the weather turned from warm & sunny to dark and cloudy. A few minutes later it started raining… and then hailing (almost unheard of here, but it didn’t last long)… then the rain turned into a deluge… and then into a monsoon! While we were all watching the rain fall over the awning in amazement, lightning struck a tree about 20 feet away, knocking off a large branch. Wow! What a way to end Christmas Day! 🙂
The first (scheduled) parade was a standard Pase de Nino parade at Igliesia San Francisco. It was scheduled for 10:00, so we arrived a bit early… and found no indications of any celebration about to happen? We walked around the plaza for awhile and pretty much gave up. We then walked into the church and saw a schedule on the vestibule board saying that there would be a parade at 10:00. It was 10:10 at the time, and we were just wondering if we misread the Spanish when we saw the priest and some parishioners coming out. The parade had started!
They walked out of the church, circled a few blocks and returned to the same church. Apparently these are not passing the statue from parish to parish, but rather just walking it around the block and returning. We haven’t quite figured out the details of how this all works yet. That understanding will probably have to wait until our Spanish improves a fair amount…
As I mentioned earlier, we then had lunch, went back to our apartment, and laid down for a short nap (yesterday was exhausting!). Around 2:00, we heard the band and I ran out with my camera (of course…) to see what was up.
This was a fairly small Pase de Nino parade. We were later told that this was from a neighboring village that had been in yesterday’s parade, and they decided on one last fling before returning home. Same small car-floats,donkeys and costumes as before.
