Halloween and All Saint's Day

Just a bit late on this... Halloween was a very average day here in Spain. However, in the evening my sister and I found a little pumpkin at the grocery store and my host dad carved a jackolantern. Then my whole family put on weird black clothes and had a photo shoot. (My sister and I ended up using up 3 1/2 camera batteries and never did get any good photos, but it was really fun). These are the ones that came out sort of decent.

Antía, me, the jackolantern with eyebrows, and Elena

hahaha Lois

Babi and I looking good in the flash

the dog doesn't make a good photographer (but the pink slippers are a nice touch, no?)

Witch and Assassin (and jackolantern)

The day after Halloween is All Saint's Day. In the morning I made attempted to make chocolate chip cookies. In a few weeks there is an AFS get together and the students are supposed to bring a dessert from their country, so of course I picked on of my favorites that I've made tons of times.   ....They were disgusting. I don't know if it was a weird butter or flour or brown sugar or vanilla or what but they tasted weird, and it didn't help that they were also slightly burned and ran together. My mom seemed to like them anyway though... she ate 4 (I could barely manage 1) and kept saying "están buenos!" (they're good!). She just doesn't know how much better they can be.

chopping up a chocolate bar for chocolate chips

 All Saint's Day is about remembering and honoring the dead, so we went to the family cemetery with flowers and candles and greeted everyone else in town (because everyone goes to the cemetery that day) and listened to a short mass at the church while standing under umbrellas in the rain. Cemeteries are very different here in that the graves are above ground more like family tombs. Only the oldest graves (several centuries old) are in the ground.

For dinner that night, all the family came over to eat a special traditional meal with bacalao (a type of fish) and potatoes, and at the end, chestnuts. And that night it's a custom to not clear the table- you leave everything overnight for any hungry spirits.

This is a different but similar cemetery from the one in Marin. Sorry the picture is weirdly tilted, I took it by accident and it happened to show up better than the ones I took normally. But you can see the above ground tombs.

 That was the first half of that weekend, part 2 coming soon.