Dia De Los Muertos

Before reading my blog please watch this Sedaris clip. It starts in Portuguese, but stay with it for a minute, it reverts to English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-CrQXgHHhk

I had seen this video the day before my meeting with Pedro, my Mexican student/tutor. We do an intercambio where he speaks English for awhile, then I speak Spanish. Pedro came to "class" last week prepared with a similar story about Dia De Los Muertos. He even came equipped with a sheet of important translations such as "pray", "soul", "grave", "cemetery", but mix the complexity of religion, customs, culture and add a lack of proper conjugation and you get hilarity. As David illustrates, our customs are ridiculious enough
before translation.

It is extremely important at me not to laugh at Pedro....I would feel humiliated should he laugh at me. The combination of previously watching this video and the actual story was just too much to bear. Before I knew it I felt like my stomach was going to explode with laughter and my eyes would pop out of my head.

What is especially cute about his gesture is that I am already very familiar with Dia de Los Muertos becuase of growing up in New Mexico and traveling to Mexico (but I didn't tell him that)!

For those of you who don't know, Day of the Dead is when the peoples go to the grave and have a picnic. The peoples eat a lot of candy and rice after to go to church. Then, the peoples see a dead soul in the cemetary and eat lunch with the soul.