Semana Santa

I have two weeks off of school for Easter & all the holy days that go along with it. We don't get any days off for Easter at home! It helps that basically the whole country is Catholic so everyone celebrates the same holidays I suppose. The week of Easter most people get off work, hence the name Semana Santa, or holy week. Holidays are a lot less commercialized here. At home, I feel like the meaning & significance behind the Easter holiday easily gets lost with all the chocolate, decorated eggs, and Easter bunny. You can't forget the real reason for the holiday here. There are full blown reenactments in the streets with people carrying crosses and reenacting everything down to the crucifixtion of Jesus. It's intense. My family told me the first day or so I was here that they considered themselves Catholic but weren't very religious. The only time I've seen them go to church so far was on Ash Wednesday but for not being very religious they sure know a lot about the Bible. We were watching a show on the history channel about the birth of Jesus and my mom started naming obscure people and places from the Bible and details about them. She knew things about Jesus's siblings, cousins, it was impressive. And everytime we get into the car to go somewhere, my sister does the sign of the cross before pulling out of the driveway, along with other times throughout the drive but I haven't figured out a pattern to the other times yet. It was almost impossible to make reservations to travel during Semana Santa because the whole country has the same week-two weeks off. It's not like Spring Break in the states where it's all random weeks in march & then the breaks are really only for students. It's a whole country on a break at the same time. I could get used to it.