Easter in Castiglion

So now for the Easter story...

Our adventure this time starts on Tuesday (March 22) with Jim and I running to catch the Easter Procession through town. I caught this first glimpse of the procession...

The easter procession coming down main street... looks kind of odd

Then Jim ran up behind me and told me a bird had crapped on him. Sure enough he turns around and theres a little dab of bird doo on his back. I was like "haha oh man that sucks!" (SPLAT!)

They got me too :(

Darn birds! They say this is good luck here or something... Oh well, we caught back up to the procession and watched it for a long time. I took a long video of the whole thing and a few snapshots.

The front of the procesion moving down the corso

Each night the people carry a different statue of Jesus, representing the events of the last week of His life. We saw the processions on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Friday was of course quite solemn.

Ok, yeah, it looks like a KKK rally. It's not. It's Italians on Easter...

The whole town was very solemn watching Jesus body be carried through town

The weeping Mary follows Jesus on Friday

Then on Saturday night at midnight the church bells go NUTS and the people all run to the cathedral where they have fireworks and stuff and they unveil a statue of Jesus kind of radiant with the marks of crucifixion but clearly alive and blessing the crowd. The kids are the most excited of course, but literally the whole town shows up to see it. The easter services are packed just like in the US, and then the entire city goes home to eat with their families like we do at Thanksgiving. Monday is a national holiday also (called hangover day maybe?) where the people recover from their easter parties. So that's Easter in Castiglion. Cool huh? Alright, now I finally FINALLY am caught up to the present. Go blogger! More exciting adventures to come as we have two major field trips this week and a cool trip this weekend, so ciao for now!