¡Viva!

It's officially been 12 hours since all of Mexico united in re-declaring their independence. Let me start at the beginning.
At about 6:10 or so, Jaime and I started our adventure. We took a cab to the central plaza, in front of the governmental palace. You can look at pictures of this place in some of my old posts. When we got to the plaza, there were already all of the vendors set up and selling all kinds of food, drinks, gifts, baubles, bears, and other things. I was lying about one of the things that they were selling, can you figure out which one it is? Anyway, we walked around for a bit, found the stage and started listening to music. After awhile, we went and got some food and drinks from the vendors. For basically the next 3 hours or so we were just walking around, listening to the band, and checking out the sites. I bought a sombrero, which you will inevitably see in the pictures that will be following. The were literally thousands of people there by the time we got there, and it only got more packed. The real fun started at about 9:30. We got as close to the stage as possible and just kinda chilled. Jaime left to go see if he could find a bandera or something, and didn't get back for like 45 minutes. He didn't have any luck, unfortunately. We kept pushing our way closer to the stage until we were only like 40 feet from it. There were probably 10 bands that we saw play last night.
Well, come 11, and it's time for the Grito. The governor of Nuevo Leon, the state that Monterrey is in, comes out and gives his speech. It is a rendition of the speech that Miguel Hidalgo gave on the day before Mexico declared his independence. The end sounds something like this:
Gov-¡Viva Hidalgo!
Crowd-¡Viva!
¡Viva Allende!
¡Viva!
¡Viva Juan Ignacio Ramon!
¡Viva!
¡Viva La Independencia!
¡Viva!
¡Viva Nuevo Leon!
¡Viva!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva!
¡Viva México!
¡Viva!
¡Viva México!

And that is the infamous Grito that most Mexicans shouted at 11 pm last night. Although, it will obviously vary from state to state. I took video of the crowd shouting the Grito, it's pretty impressive, and you can kind of get an idea of how many people were there.
After the Grito, there was a fireworks show. It was pretty sweet. I took pictures and video. We decided that having thousands of people around us for the last 4 hours was not the most comfortable thing, so we decided to go to a bar and listen to some live music. Well, needless to say that all of the bars around were very crowded and we just decided to skip it and head home. About 5 minutes before we got to the road that would have taxis, we found a relatively empty bar with some music, and no cover charge. We stayed there for about an hour and a half or so. While we were in there, the singer was like "Who here yelled tonight? Let's hear a yell for Independence! Let's hear a yell for Mexico! Let's hear a yell for the United States!" I bet you can guess what happened: After all of her previous questions, there was a yell and clapping and when she asked for one for the states everyone laughed. It was great.
Well, I think that about sums up my night, so now I'm off to rename pictures so I can post them up for you all.
¡VIVA!