Procession in Teotitlán del Valle

Teotitlán del Valle is famous four it's weaving tradition but the reason we went there yesterday afternoon was a different one.
Sarah, the American girl living in the same host family with me and another of her classmates were invited to participate in the procession of the village.
In the old days it was the tradition that all young, single girls (well, they also used to be virgins in those times...) would walk in a procession around the village, wearing the traditional costumes and carrying some pictures of the virgin Maria, Jesus or some other holy figure on their head. All the man of the village would watch the parade and select their future wives among the girls in the procession....
Every family has to send a number of girls to participate in the parade and since the family of Sarah's teacher only has one unmarried daughter, they needed some more volunteers! So she and two other "gringas" walked alongside about 100 local girls and women and it was really very impressing to see the parade around the village.
Afterwards we were all invited to have something to eat in another family's house and it was such a nice experience to see, how friendly and open these people are, even though they are really poor and have to work hard to make their living.
The evening ended with a rather adventurous trip back to Oaxaca, as there were no taxis and because all local people were at the party and did not want to work, we got a ride with the local police car down to the highway. There we waited in the pitch dark for a bus and were lucky that one passed by after a wait of about 20 minutes and actually saw us and did stop as well...
I think I wouldn't dare doing this on my own, but since we had two guys with us and were a group of nine people, it was quite fun.