Día de los Muertos (day of the dead)

This Saturday, Riverside held their annual Dia de los Muertos festival. This Day of the Dead Mexican festival honours those who have died and is celebrated the day after Halloween. Riverside, and Southern California in general, has a big hispanic population, so it was a very popular event!


We arrived in the afternoon and a whole street in Downtown Riverside had been closed off for the day. When we got there, the adjoining park had also been sequestered by the event and was full of family altars, covered with flowers, food, brightly coloured tablecloths and decorations and pictures of their gone-but-not-forgotten family members. 

Outside on the road, there were a huge amount of food and craft stalls selling all sorts of Mexican foods and Day of the Dead objects and memorabilia. We shared a cup of traditional horchata, which is a cold, sweet drink made from rice milk and flavoured with cinnamon. 

They had four stages with entertainment throughout the day. There was one which had musicians and was holding a pageant later in the day, a small stage which held children's dance groups, a larger adult dance group stage, and a Mexican wrestling ring! 

We saw some very pretty dancers in their traditional brightly coloured long skirts dancing and stamping away to mariachi music. They had their hair whirled up in buns with ribbons and their faces were painted as skeletons in celebration of the day. 


We then saw something very exciting, a traditional Aztec dance! They wore huge feather headresses and danced only to drums. They wore short outfits in geometric prints and had what looked like brazil nuts wrapped around their ankles which shook like marraccas each time they stamped. They held feathered shields and short sticks which also rattled in time with the drums. 

The wrestling was fun, we only caught the first fight of the day at 5pm and it went on until 9pm. It was very obviously choreographed and functioned more as a pantomime. There were two men in shiny black outfits and silver masks who roared at the crowed and took turns pretending to fight and throwing each other to the ground. It was great fun to watch and cheer them on.


On Sunday we went to the Botanic Gardens to show some of Mitchell's coworkers the popcorn cassia which actually smells like popcorn. We found the turtles and had a little picnic before heading home.

Mitchell's note: I went to improv again on Wednesday and for the first time Emily didn't come with me, so I had to drive all on my own! I was stressed, but I'd been driving fine with her there without needing any help so I was really worrying without reason. I'm basically fully an adult now though. 

This Thursday (11/11/2021) was Veteran's Day which is a public holiday here and Mitchell had the day off. We went out for breakfast at a local Italian Deli we hadn't been to before and then went for a walk around Sycamore Canyon park. Unfortunately, Mitchell hadn't realised he had the day off until this week, so he still had experiments to finish up in the afternoon, but we had a lovely chill day anyway.

This weekend I'm off to visit my friend in San Francisco which is super exciting! I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

Lots of Love,

Emily and Mitchell

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