dia de independencia

i know this entry is late, but last saturday night, the 15th, the four of us went to the Mexican independence day festivities downtown with the young single adults from our stake from the Church. it was a lot of fun, and way exciting. it was packed. there were tons of food vendors and people selling noise maker toys that were colored with the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green, and there were also people selling some spray foam in cans. after a while, everyone gathered in the plaza near ´la presidencia´, which is the capital building, where supposedly at midnight the president of Irapuato was supposed to come out and do the ´grito´. the grito consisted of him yelling ¡viva miguel hidalgo! and then everyone else yelling ¡viva!, and then him yelling the same for some other person in Mexican history and the crowd doing the same. then at the end, he yells ¡viva Mexico! and everyone yells ¡viva!. it was hard to hear the president at all, so we just kept yelling ¡viva! with everyone else. it was a lot of fun.

so while we´re all waiting in this crowd for like two hours for the grito, people would start shooting off this canned foam, and once one person started, everyone in the crowd started, and so we all got foamed, then it would dry off pretty quick. it was like snow covering everyone.

the four of us gringos left right after the grito, and as we were making our way through the crowd we came to a big opening right in front of the church on the other side of the plaza. we thought it was strange that no one was standing there. then, before we knew it, fireworks and firecrackers exploded off the front of the church. there were no barriers or anything, someone people just knew not to stand there, everyone except for the four gringos there. there were huge fireworks shooting out of the top of the bell tower of this church and exploding right over us. it was crazy, but way exciting. finally, we gave up watching them and went back to the hotel.

here are some pictures from the festivities:

first, the four gringos: from left to right, emily, angela, matt, brandon. we were trying to show off our faces that are painted with colors of the Mexican flag. second is angela and matt after being foamed, then brandon and emily after being foamed. the last one is just a picture of the crowd and all the flags and things people had. good times.