Shannon Harvey, RUAP Community Liaison,
interviewed Brianna Green:
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SH: Had you heard of Day
of the Dead before attending the Sugar Skull Workshop?
BG: Actually, no I hadn't but it was kind of cool
because when I went back to history class a few days after Day of the
Dead I was able to tell my teacher about it. I got extra credit too. |
SH: Describe the process of making
a sugar skull. |
BG: The sugar skulls at first
looked like they would be kind of easy, but then actually when I started
doing it, it was harder than I thought. It was actually pretty fun because
they had the skulls already made with the face. What we did was we decorated
them with frosting, and we took the different colors and used them to
decorate the skulls however we wanted. My second one turned out
much better than my first one. |
"I
remember they told us it's not about dead and gruesome stuff like that,
it's just the spirits of the people you love and people who passed on
and stuff. And I think maybe the skulls are in remembrance of the people
you like and love who have died. That's what I would think of them as." |
I think the hard part was
actually deciding what you were going to do and how you were going to
do it. It was easier because afterwards Cindy (Straw) brought out toothpicks
and we were able to get more detail. |
SH: What did you like the
most about the workshop?
BG: Probably sharing with my friends that I got to
do this cool thing and they didn't. No! (laughing) I liked being proud
of it because it was kind of cool. It seemed kind of interesting; you
don't get to decorate sugar skulls every day. |
SH: What do you think the decorating
of sugar skulls has to do with Day of the Dead?
BG: I remember they told us it's not about dead and
gruesome stuff like that, it's just the spirits of the people you love
and people who passed on and stuff. And I think maybe the skulls are in
remembrance of the people you like and love who have died. That's what
I would think of them as. She (instructor, Grace Barajas) told us about
a tradition where they write their boyfriend or girlfriend's name on the
skull's forehead and give it to them or trade it with them. |
SH: What was your experience of the Day
of the Dead event?
BG: I thought it was really really cool. I thought
it was so neat. They had different altars to represent different people.
To represent children they had really cool decorations set up on an altar,
with candy and little toys, and pictures of children that had died, and
behind that the children's favorite objects, like their favorite book.
I really liked the altars. I also thought it was really cool that we could
actually be a part of it. We got to make ribbons that had the names of
our loved ones and maybe a message to them and we got to put them on this
wall (The Healing Wall). I just learned a whole bunch from it. I thought
it was a really really neat thing. It was kind of cool to watch the dancing;
it was totally different from what I'm used to. It kind of reminded me
of when I went to Hawaii. The costumes were really interesting and intricate.
It looked like it took them a long time to make them. They also had face
painting; you could get your face painted like a skull.
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SH: What kinds of things
did you learn from participating in the workshop and in the Day of the
Dead event?
BG: I learned that there's more about death than
what you usually think. When you think about death you think about the
movies and stuff like that. But after going to that, I think it's kind
of like you think of it in a different way. You don't think of it as the
same thing anymore. It seemed really interesting to think about how they
perceived death to be. And maybe there isn't an end but like a beginning
or something like that. The other cool thing about the Day of the Dead
was all the candles. It really made an impact; it made it really cool.
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SH: What do you like about
being part of the YMCA and RUAP?
BG: I've been with the Y for a long time. Since I've
been with the teen program, I think this is my first year I've been doing
projects with CSUMB. With the YMCA they always did really cool games and
stuff like that. But also coming up we're going to be having an arts festival
and it's really cool because we've gotten a lot of ideas from the things
that we've done with RUAP. And also we're going to do our service learning
event with the school, and we're doing the masks that we did with you
guys. We're going to go teach the school how to make masks as a community-intertwining
event. We've actually been taking RUAP stuff and using it in our every
day lives and it's been pretty cool. |
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