Soooo my apologies for not posting in a while, and my apologies in advance for the brevity of this post. Life has suddenly gotten very busy here-but hopefully I'll have time to catch you all up soon.
This random little tidbit from my weird life requires 2 crucial pieces of background information. 1) My host mother is pregnant. This is super exciting!! It's their first kid, and they are just the sweetest people, so they will definitely be wonderful real parents in addition to wonderful host parents. 2) It is almost November 2nd, which here is known as "El Dia de los Muertos", or The Day of the Dead. Sort of like our Halloween, but way more focused on respecting the deceased and way less on consuming an obscene amount of fun-sized (or if you hit up Highland Circle, KING-SIZE) candy bars.
Tonight the host rents had gone to mass to pray and stuff, leaving my host cousin, Gabby and I to eat alone. We were chatting away when the host parents came back. They were carrying some bread and told me that it was a gift for me. This was nice! They then showed me the bread loaf, which apparently is traditional Day of the Dead food. It is shaped like a baby with icing etchings of a baby's general features. So that's sort of weird. I try to be open to new cultures, but typically eating babies is frowned upon in the States. Whatever though, I'm not one to look a gift pastry in the mouth. I had just gotten used to the idea of eating a baby (hahaha I can't believe I just typed that), when they went on to explain that it was also filled with blackberry jam. I don't need to point out that this looks like blood. At this point, I felt like I had to speak up. Eating a blood-filled baby pastry? What kind of country is this!!??
"Isn't that a little sad to eat a baby-shaped pastry?" I inquired.
"Hahaha, yeah I guess so, but it's tradition. All the gringo students have the same reaction as you, but try it! " My host dad answered.
Here, my host cousin chimed in, "we love them here, just tear the head right off and dig in!"
*Side note: I am still working on identifying sarcasm/some more subtle types of humor in Spanish. Sometimes I'm a little too focused on the literal translation that I miss the sentiment/mood of the words. Keep this in mind*
After being given the advice to "tear the head right off", I of course did so!! I was trying to follow tradition! Apparently, this is not a tradition. Upon seeing that I had mutilated the baby, my whole family gave me this look of disgust.
"I said to tear the head off as a joke...but you just did it" said Gabby. They all laughed uncomfortably. Great. Now my host family (who is expecting their very own infant in a matter of months) thinks I'm some creepy heartless American who tears the heads off of babies with nary a second thought. Will have to work on this.
