{"id":16,"date":"2007-10-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-28T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-10-28T22:21:36","modified_gmt":"2007-10-29T02:21:36","slug":"the-party-of-all-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/2007\/10\/28\/the-party-of-all-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"The Party of All Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mexicans know how to celebrate.  In September, we had an awesome opportunity to experience this first-hand. <\/p>\n

Mexican Independence Day is super-duper important in Mexico, but especially here in Chihuahua, where they have the biggest grito in the whole nation. <\/p>\n

The festivities begin somewhere around 7:00 in the evening when parties break out all over the city.  We went to a party at the church we attend here in Chihuahua.  At this party, Wesley got his face painted, the men had to get on stage and take turns competing for who has the best Mexican "grito" (yell) …which was a hilarious event for Aaron to participate in, we got to hear some of the history of Mexico recounted, we tasted a delicious Mexican soup and enjoyed watching all the kids sing songs.  It was way-too-funny to watch our two boys lip-sink patriotic songs in another language, but at the end of the songs when the lady held the microphone up to Wesley’s mouth, he didn’t hesitate.  As if scripted, he announced, "Viva, Mexico!"<\/p>\n

That party went on until somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00, but the night was young.  After that, I got the chance to go with some friends to the Chihuahua "grito."  This was an incredible experience.  Around 80,000 people packed into the city square.  People were literally standing so close that for much of the time I could have only moved LITERALLY three inches forward or backward, and ZERO inches from side to side.  When we arrived (somewhere around 10:30, I think) a lady with a positively amazing voice was singing many patriotic songs for Mexico and for Chihuahua.  Following her performance, the governor stood on the balcony of his palace (which is there in the city square) and gave a brief speech, followed by the "grito."  "Grito" simply means yell, but there is a lot of tradition packed into this thing.  The short version is this:  the governor shouts cheers to the people, which they enthusiastically shout back.  "Viva Mexico!  Viva Chihuahua!  Viva!" etc.  This description is just not doing anything justice.  It was incredible.  The best part came next.  Think you have seen some cool fireworks on 4th of July or at Disneyland?  I would beg to differ!  I have never seen anything like this in my life!  We watched about 20 or 30 minutes of fireworks being shot off of rooftops right over our heads.  These fireworks were unbelievable and I have no idea how many millions of dollars were spent on them.  It was so incredible that I finally just started laughing, because I really couldn’t believe it was real.  I could not have imagined a firework show this amazing, and I have a very good imagination!<\/p>\n

Following the fireworks, we were entertained by another amazing musician.  He sang and sang and sang and…. I don’t know how his voice held up, but the people loved him.  I don’t know when the party ended, because we finally couldn’t take it anymore and we went home at, I think, around 2:00am.  I was exhausted, but what an incredible experience!  Aaron couldn’t go, but he definitely needs to be there next year.  Come visit us next September and we’ll take you along!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bet you’ve never celebrated anything like this before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/aaron-knapp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}