Sorpresa sacerdotal

Last night another earthquake, about 7:15pm.  Felt the wall shake.  We went immediately to the USGS website and saw that it took about ten minutes for an official notice to appear there.  We posted our "I Felt This..." report on the site a few minutes later.  It's epicenter was down towards Acapulco, in the state of Guerrero.

Saturday, 10 Dec. Dan got an appointment with the dentist in Cordoba that Frank and Ania go to.  He said it was the best cleaning he had ever had, and it cost about USD$30.  The dentist gave him a colorful tooth shaped box of chocolate candy for a Christmas gift.  Not much happening here for us, what with the waiting for banks and notario to get all finished up for us.  There have been hundreds of loud fire crackers going off sporadically this past week.  Also a couple of parades each day.  Probably all for the Lady of Guadalupe who is celebrated on Monday.

Sunday, 11 Dec.  In the evening we went to the park to enjoy that Sunday special time of families strolling and playing there.  The Christmas tree there was lighted up, as well as wreaths of decorations on the city building behind it.  We had expected few outdoor decorations here.  But it seems that was wrong--guess the few Xmas lights we normally put up wouldn't be out of place here.   Some homes and stores are highly decorated.  Dan will be putting in pictures of one of the tiny front yards a block or so from the park, which had the biggest home display we saw.  It had various types of manger scenes and a multilevel landscape in model scale.

Monday, 12 Dec.  Everbank notified us that our bank wire will be coming thru on Thursday, and we walked up to Santander bank to advise Maria, but found it closed for the religious day.  Since the bank faces Parque Central park, as does the parish church, we heard and saw that much was happening there today.  Figured there were over 2000  people standing out in front of the church, spreading back into the southern half of the park.  There was a platform or stage erected just to the east of the central door, set up as an outdoor church chancel.  All the stage draped in white, and clergy in white robes and a huge display of flowers. In the crowds watching the service, many of the littlest girls were dressed up in colorful  peasant dresses and scarves, and the little boys had white peasant clothes, along with straw hats and perhaps a mustache and goatee drawn on with charcoal.  We were not able to get near the church so were standing up in the park, rather near the back section of people. We are not Catholic, but we could easily understand what was happening.  It was a beautiful service, with joyful and upbeat music that was from no church we had never been in.  One song seemed to have come straight from Israel, but with Spanish words instead of Hebrew.

Part of the way through the service, one of the younger priests left the stage and quickly was weaving his was back towards where we were standing.  To our absolute surprise, he came directly up to us!  He was trying to get us to come up front and stand in the shade right below the stage.  He said the sacerdote (parish priest) had sent him back with the invitation--he must have spotted our norteamericano faces out of all that crowd!  My but we were embarrassed, and we politely declined the invitation.  Bet everyone in town knows us now.  We dropped some pesos in the collection baskets being handed around.  We left just as the service ended, after a communion sacrament and while the father was sprinkling holy water out onto the crowd nearest the church.  Just before this, everyone shook hands with all around them.  Figured we best scoot out of there before one of acolytes located us again.  By the way, the rebuilt kiosk in the middle of the south block of the park seems just about ready to be reopened.  It's been obscured by tarps and a swarm of albañiles (masons) working on it every since we got here.

Alonso, one of the realtors who has toured us about, just stopped by to see if we had decided on a house yet.  Dan briefly explained the hassles we had been having with straightening out some of the parcel description errors in the earlier escrituras for the blue house, and he advised us to walk away.  And, of course, buy the white house he had shown us.

Seems we have lived thru the cold snap we have just had here--it's been taking two days to line dry our hand-washed laundry.  Dan saw on tonight's news that Tlaxcala dropped to -1ºC last night, and that residents of central Mexico were suffering due to the unnatural cold spell.  Today, however, daytime temps are now back into the low to mid 70s and forecasted for three or four days that way.