When I was nine, my now-deceased dog ate my sugar cube mission model the night before it was due. Since then, my exposure to Mexican culture has mainly come in the form of late-night High Tech Burrito runs (think Taco Bell, but they’re a million billion times better and classier) and one disasterous quinceñera I attended where I knocked the punch bowl over and fled soon after. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to learn about our neighbors to the south–I just haven’t had the chance.

Well, all of that began to change last Friday afternoon, when I, along with seven friends, climbed aboard the Metrolink and went into Los Angeles to celebrate Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead for you monolinguists) on Olvera Street, in the heart of the city. While there were apparently Día festivities closer to home at the Smith Campus Center, I chose to brave public transportation, escape Claremont, and get a taste of the big, bad, real world. The promise of two churros for $1 didn’t hurt either.

A word to the wise: While attending such a fine school as Pomona may lull you into a false sense of security, do not assume that it is easy to operate the ticket machines at the Metrolink machine. I’m not kidding, it took me over five minutes to figure it out.

When I finally managed to buy my ticket (only $5.50 roundtrip if you’re 18 or younger and buy your ticket in off-peak hours) and find a seat on the train, I was pleasantly surprised. The trip from Claremont to L.A.’s Union Station took a little over a half an hour, and the train was cleaner than London’s subway system, which says a lot.

By 4:10 p.m., we were in lovely Union Station, which my roommate–who’s obsessed with bad, bad films–informed me is the setting for the last scene in "Can’t Hardly Wait."

Though Olvera Street is only a hundred feet away from Union Station, it feels like a different world. The neon lights and loud, dangerous cars are replaced by an outdoor vendor area and an overwhelming sense of calm. Olvera Street (also known as La Placita Olvera) is the oldest part of Los Angeles and is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. It’s considered a bastion of Mexican culture.

Despite going to great lengths to preserve its authenticity, it’s also unmistakably a tourist attraction that hosts over two million visitors each year. I went into one of the small stores nestled in adobe buildings, hoping to find a blanket to cover my sadly bare dorm room floor. I couldn’t find a single one for less than $49.95. I think that the bath mat decorating scheme is going to have to last a little longer.

After realizing that I was far too broke to be shopping in the "traditional Mexican-style plaza with handcrafted Mexican wares," I decided to finally buy some churros, take a picture of myself with a large stuffed donkey and check out the Día festivities.

It’s not that I hadn’t heard of Día De Los Muertos before. I knew that it was celebrated sometime shortly after Halloween and that it had something to do with remembering relatives now dead. What I didn’t realize is what a major holiday it is. There were activities and exhibits and dancing all day long.

At first it seemed weird to be celebrating on a day devoted to the dead. According to some field research I did, however, Día De Los Muertos is not a time for mourning, but a time for honoring the dead and rejoicing life. Families make altars or ofrendas with marigolds (the flower of the dead), bread, fruit, and candy. Usually sugar skulls are included. Pictures of the deceased family members are also part of the ofrendas, and candles that burn all night are lit.

The next day, the whole family goes out to the cemetary and cleans their families’ graves. Offerings are left on the headstones as well. At some point, there is a procession in which the townspeople dress up like corpses and parade through town with an open coffin.

Though I wasn’t lucky enough to see anything like that on Friday, I did get to see dancing performed by four year-olds whose faces were painted to look like skeletons. Around the open-air dance pavilion, there were ofrendas made by local high schools. These were not shoe-box sized tributes, but huge arrangements with dozens of painted clay masks, candles, fruit, fresh-cut flowers, and flags. In other words, far cooler than anything I ever made in high school.

My roommates and I wandered around for a bit more and then met up with the rest of the group, took a couple of pictures, bought more churros and decided to call it a day.

As I sat exhausted on the Metrolink on the way back, I reflected on celebrating a whole holiday that I previously hardly knew anything about. Though I was once mocked in a Spanish class for my inability to roll my "rrr"s, I think I might give it another try so I can explore the real Mexico someday, as long as there are churros.