Day of the Dead UMAR Hatulco 2017

Hmm.  First post in quite some time.  That's hardly responsible of me considering Mexico has been hit with two devastating earthquakes this year.  People might assume I just went off the air for good.

The first quake from down in Chiapas convinced me I was going to die.  It started off like any old minor earthquake (sometimes you sleep right through them) except that it didn't die away in 5 seconds.  It kept coming and getting stronger.  Godzilla himself was stomping outside my narrow residential street.  All I could do was brace myself against my bedroom door frame.  There was nowhere to run.  For all that, the damage was almost nonexistent and I have no visual proof of how strong that quake was. 

 That's all.  A few items came off the shelves.  Nothing was broken.

Huatulco fared quite well.  We had no human casualties and amazingly little structural damage.  A few terra cotta shingles hit the streets and not much else.  The internet didn't even go down and traffic was heavy with people checking on each other's safety.

On hearing that the local hospital was evacuating in case of a tsunami,  a lot of people, including myself,  headed to UMAR Huatulco for higher ground.  I was never more proud of my university than that night.  Our doors were thrown open for all refugees.  Classrooms and the auditorium were opened to serve as sleeping quarters.  Someone provided water.  Everyone felt safe and sheltered.

So, here we are getting ready once again for our annual Day of the Dead celebration.

Because of low lighting, most of my pictures did not turn out at all.  Here are a few that did.

Day of the Dead is really about celebrating lives lived and remembering those who have passed on.  There's nothing morbid about it.  I remember these four ladies.  It seems I saw them among the living just yesterday or maybe even earlier in the afternoon.

Being from Canada, I'm a little wary of walking among dead people so I like to pose as the undead, sort of an honorary dead person.  By the time they find out how well these pictures turned out, proving I wasn't a real vampire, their day has passed for another year.