Amor y Amistad

As I understand it, they don't celebrate Valentines Day here in Mexico. Instead, February 14th is celebrated as "Dia Del Amor Y Amistad" -- the day of love and friendship. As the name suggests, the focus is not just on romantic love but on more general types of affection (which makes it a far less weird holiday for preschools to be celebrating, but I digress). Here in Oaxaca, it is celebrated as a big party, with music and chocolate and revelry.

And balloons. Lots of balloons. Now, I'm pretty sure that on a normal day Oaxaca has the largest number of balloon vendors per capita anywhere on the planet. But yesterday things kicked it up a notch or three. Throughout town, you could not walk more than ten yards without passing someone with a huge set of balloons for sale -- hearts and stars and "Te Quieres" and "Mil Besos" and the like, in addition to the normal balloons featuring superheroes and Elmo and Dora. There were also people selling flowers and even the people who normally sell bubblegum and scarves where pitching it as a special gift for Dia Del Amor y Amistad.

We spent some time in the zocalo, and it was more crowded than I have seen it since New Years Eve, including one stage set up with senior citizens doing Guelaguetza dancing and another stage set up where it appeared that a series of Quincenera girls were doing elaborately choreographed dance routines with the same set of five male dancers -- who later put on masks and started dancing to Gangnam Style, because we haven't left American civilization THAT far behind. We quickly ducked into a museum in search of a bano and it was filled with a salsa band and many many people. We also saw a number of mariachi bands wandering the zocalo, but unfortunately did not get to hear any of them play.

All in all, it was a pretty wild party (and from what we heard from our apartment it went on far past our early bedtime), but what else would one expect from this fun city.