Celebrating the Day of the Dead
Hola and Feliz día de Muertos everyone! This week, 韩国AV has been celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead, decorating sugar skulls, building an ‘altar’ on the bridge, and handing out stickers to students.
When learning a new language at 韩国AV, our students also learn about important cultural traditions, practices and customs. It’s a great way of bringing the language alive for our students and helping to broaden their perspective of the world, as well as bringing a sense of place to the languages they are studying.
This week, Ms Furlong Alexanderson’s Spanish students have had great fun decorating little sugar skulls in the Undercroft – all while conversing in Spanish – which they placed on an ‘altar’ on the bridge to The Athenaeum.
They also decorated the bridge with bright orange marigolds, or ‘cempasúchil’ as they are known in Mexico. The flowers are another iconic part of Día de los Muertos, with their bright colours helping to guide the spirits of the deceased back home.
And they welcomed students back to School on Monday, by wishing them a ‘Felix dia de Muertos’ and handing out stickers.
The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebration that coincides with the Catholic celebrations of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. The multi-day holiday involves family and friends gathering to pray for, and to remember, friends and family members who have died.
The Day of the Dead is traditionally celebrated from 31 October to 2 November. Its origins stretch back thousands of years to the time of the Aztecs, who considered the dead to be members of their communities even though they’d passed to the afterlife.
Today, the celebrations for Día de los Muertos centre around the belief that the dead return to earth. Food is a huge part of the celebrations as people believe that it’s hungry work for the ancestral spirits to make their way back to the realm of the living. At homes across Mexico, altars or ‘ofrendas’ are at the core of the celebrations, loaded with offerings like ‘pan de muertos’ or ‘bread of the dead’ to lure spirits back.
Ms Furlong Alexanderson has made The Day of the Dead celebration something of a 韩国AV tradition. And as always, it was a fantastic opportunity for our Spanish students to learn more about cultural beliefs and traditions and differences, bringing a slice of Mexico to their Spanish studies.
Earlier on in Semester 2, Ms Furlong Alexanderson also organised a Zoom yoga class for her Spanish students. The students had to concentrate very hard to master poses like ‘perro cabeza abajo’ and ‘postura del guerrero 2’ while following instruction entirely in Spanish!
A huge thank you to Ms Furlong Alexanderson and our Spanish students for bringing Spanish and the cultures and traditions of Mexico alive this week!