Hello fellow travelers and wanderers!
As many of you know, we are just days away from our big move to Spain! Literally, getting close to counting hours before our flight takes off to Rota.
Now, what many of you don’t know is that I LOVE holidays. Mostly Christmas and cooking for Thanksgiving but when it comes to celebrating festivals or holidays from other cultures and religions…I’m all about it!
Our first holiday we will be celebrating in Spain is Halloween.
With all of the research and reading I’ve been doing on what to expect with this holiday in Spain I am gathering it is not at all the trick-or-treat/playboy bunny version of Halloween I’m used to seeing in America. This holiday is celebrated over a three day period broken down by:
Oct 31st – Dia de las Brujas (Day of the witches)
Nov 1st – Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day)
Nov 2nd – Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
Personally, I could care less about the 31st – not really been a Halloween fan (I blame Hollywood and growing up in Alaska, too cold to trick or treat, for that). But what I am very excited about is the 1st and 2nd of Nov. I remember when I was raising money to go to Europe with my art group when I was 16 and one of the fundraisers we did was make sugar skulls and paint them for an event. At the time (once again being from Alaska and slightly sheltered) I had no idea what Dia de los Muertos was or why we would make sugar skulls in honor of the “holiday”. Totally foreign to me, this was especially sad because I wasn’t sheltered from other cultures and had traveled to Mexico when I was 10 – but we had gone during Christmas time and there wasn’t much explanations for the decorations around the city at the time for me…so then six years later – I was still a wee sheltered and a wee lost.
Then I met my husband years later and learned more about this holiday due to his LOVE of sugar skull art. Needless to say, this has all been a lifelong learning experience to what we are about to walk into in a few weeks as our first holiday to be celebrated in Spain (I think, I don’t believe they celebrate Columbus day…cause that doesn’t make sense telegraphically to me lol – however on that same day Spain does celebrate “Fiesta Nacional de Espana” in Spain…sorry squirrel moment)
I am very excited! Not only for us to finally be starting this new chapter of our lives in Spain but also because we are arriving in this new country as the big holiday season is starting for the year…or I guess the end of the year depending on how you look at it.
I am ready for cameras blazing and out capturing all the colors, the costumes, food, faces – you name it and I’m clicking it!
Off for another adventure!
Traveling Photographer Out!
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