March 28
Mornings in Sevilla are beautiful. The air is fresh and especially this morning there was a feeling that something is in store for the day. It is Palm Sunday and the kick off to a very important week in Sevilla: Semana Santa. Here, it is not just Holy Week, but huge social/cultural event in which the city floods of people. I heard that some places that would usually take you five minutes to walk, will take two hours this week. Even though the roots of this week are religious, it is more of a social thing now. Today, everyone is supposed to dress up in something new. Vicki Jr. has been on quite the shopping spree lately, buying new clothes, getting her hair and nails done, new shoes. I saw many groups of men in suits walking this morning on the way to the bus stop, and I know Big Vicki will be dressed to a T. It’s funny about her, she either makes it a pajama-robe day for three days straight, or gets completely glammed up in her leopard print or other more extravagant clothes when she knows company is coming or she is going out and about.
Our school directors told us we don’t need to be here the entire week, but we should definitely be around for a day or two to experience all the festivities. For weeks there have been practices for the processions that will take place. In the United States, floats for a parade usually sit upon a truck or SUV, but here, many men are placed underneath the float to walk it through the streets. These men are called costaleros and are part of a specific brotherhood or hermandad. It is a huge honor and privilege to be a part of one of these. The processions are split up between the brotherhoods by day. There are waiting lists and preparation classes to be a part of one of these, and it is a big time-commitment. Alfonso is one this year and Vicki couldn’t be more proud. She has been preparing his headdress wrap which protects his head and shoulders. The pasos are at the center of each procession and often include three main images: a sculpted scene of the Passion, an image of Christ and an image of the suffering Virgin Mary (known as the dolorosa).
The head costalero, the capataz, directs each float and instructs the costaleros from the outside (there are usually between 24 and 54 underneath each, depending on the size) when to walk and jump, making it seem as if the pasos are moving on their own. The stress of carrying the float often leaves the back of the neck bleeding. The capataz, is a privileged spot as well, usually passed down in a hierarchical manner. Women used to not be allowed to participate at all. However, today in Sevilla, they can participate in all except for two of the hermandades.
There are also the Nazarenos, who wear a habit and a pointed hood-each brotherhood wears a distinctive color. The penitentes carry wooden crosses, making a public penance. They wear the hood and habit of the brotherhood too, but not the pointed ones. A procession could be made up of anywhere from a few hundred to near 3,000 nazarenos and could therefore last anywhere from 4-14 hours.
(All this info was gathered from my Spanish Civilization class and from Wikipedia. If you want a visual—Google something with “Seville Semana Santa,” there are hundreds of videos).
So, I’m excited to come back on Wednesday and see the second half of the week.
Currently, I’m on a bus to Madrid to meet my parents! They should have gotten in a few hours ago and are going to meet me at the bus station. I’m jumping out of my skin, I’m so excited. We are going to stay in Madrid for 2 days, Toledo for 1, and go through Cordoba on the way back to Sevilla. My grandmother’s grandfather is from Cordoba, so we wanted to get in a little family history on the way.
I’ve never taken a 6 hour bus ride by myself so this should be kind of interesting. Luckily, the seat next to me is empty so I’ve got plenty of room to stretch out and catch up my blog. I’ve been a-slacking, I’m not going to lie-so I’m going to go back and start with Madrid.
Madrid.
We were really lucky because we got to stay in a studio/flat apartment place in an awesome location because Laura’s cousin’s girlfriend is from Spain and her sister has an apartment in Madrid! They were so so so nice and hospitable. We visited the Museo Prado which has thousands upon thousands of art pieces. We focused on Goya and Velazquez and got to see some paintings in real life that we have studied in class which was pretty cool. We also went to the Royal Palace and toured the place room by room. Each room was decorated differently with a unique theme or color. We went to some fun bars there too. The first night we went to this discotheque that had basically stripper-like dancers on stage…so that was kind of odd/entertaining. Seems to be a custom of many discotheques here. Laura and I had the best time dancing and whenever creepy Spanish men tried to intervene, we just basically took turns saving each other. We also went to a bar called The Cave, one of the coolest bars I’ve seen…there was even this cave-milk stuff coming out of one of the formations above the bar that they used in these milkshake-like drinks that were really good.
I got to meet up with my cousin Diego who is doing his residency in a hospital in Madrid. He took us all to a Mexican restaurant there and we got to have our first Mexican food since January! Sadly, Haley realized she got pick-pocketed at lunch. This guy must have had matrix-like skills on the metro because we were around Haley at all times and we didn’t see it happen at all. Pick-pocketing is extremely common in the Madrid metro system.
I loved Madrid and am excited for round two beginning today. It made me want to live in a big city someday in a studio like the one we stayed in.
ok…on to Morocco
Morocco.
I really didn’t have a lot of expectations going into the trip. I knew I wanted to ride a camel. I also knew this was pretty much my chance to go to Africa…who knows maybe I will go back one day, but I feel lucky that I had the opportunity to go now and I took full advantage of it. It was a long way there and after being in a bus for many hours, we took a ferry across Gibraltar to enter Africa. The ferry ride was one of my favorite parts actually. It was at nighttime and I stood outside on the deck overlooking the back of the boat most of the time. It was pretty windy, but not too cold and we found that being outside prevented getting seasick. It was fun to see the coast as we arrived in and I just love being on the water in general so I was happy.
Security is at a minimum to get into Africa. They checked our passports but the security line (like in an airport) was unattended. From there, we waited a long time and finally got on another bus to go to the hotel. It was a nice hotel and they had dinner waiting for us when we got there, which at this point was about one in the morning. We were all exhausted but hungry enough to fill our bellies before going to bed. The next day, we arose early to begin our explorations. We went to three major cities, Tetuán, Tánger and ChefChaouen
ChefChaouen (4 vowels in a row, woah!) was probably the coolest. The city completely blue. The walls, the stairs, all decorations, everything. It was beautiful. It kind of looked like someone had just water-colored the city with different shades of blues, adding a touch of green here and there. We went to a textile, carpet shop where they showed us different rugs and decorations, hoping we would buy one. They were all beautiful, with very rich colors. We also went upstairs to see how they wove the fabric.
Later, we walked through the poorest of the poor area. I felt like I was in the Aladdin Super Nintendo game. The one where Aladdin jumps from little cloth rooftop to rooftop collecting baguettes. There were markets down many of the tunnel-alleys selling everything from freshly slaughtered chicken, to every kind of fruit and vegetable, to fish, hair supplies, clothes, bags, everything. My nose went from smell to smell very quickly and it was a lot to take in.
We ate lunch in this richly decorated Arabic restaurant. We could choose between a few different entrees, so I chose this chicken dish that came with some rice and dates…which I discovered I’m not a big fan of really. It was a fun lunch and we made some new interesting friends. You know the kind of people who are just big sharers from the second you meet them? We met a boy, who although goes by Matt in the U.S., enjoyed being called Mateo at all times and we learned pretty much his whole life story during lunch. Nick had the honor of being his roommate by chance, and learned The Life of Mateo: Extended Version as he was falling asleep. He made the trip pretty entertaining to say the least and I’ve been hoping ever since that we run into him in Sevilla, but we haven’t yet.
Later that day we went to the coast and took turns riding the camels! They were short rides, only about 3ish minutes but it was a cool experience, nonetheless. Laura thought she might cry if she got on, but we decided the tears would be worth it. I was debating backing out just because I felt sorry for these poor camels. Each time they let a person on they had to get down to their knees in a really awkward way that made me wish they had kneepads or some sort of comfort for them. Then if they didn’t listen they would get a little whip from a stick. It was really kind of sad actually. But once we were on top, the camel elevated us up pretty quicky, it gave me that feeling in my stomach almost like a mini-ride at an amusement park. The look on Laura’s face was priceless. I like camels J
We also went down to the beach right by the camels and so I can now say I’ve touched the ocean in Africa! This was my favorite part of the day. Katrina, Haley and I took some pictures and wrote in the sand and just kind of frolicked around for a little bit. I can’t wait to be back on a beach soon.
Next, we drove to the place where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet and had a nice few from above. There were little vendors along the wall and I added to my elephant collection (I have a thing for elephants) with this perfect little grey and white marble one that has since received the name Ezekiel. I tried to bargain with the man, but learned the hard way that if you don’t have exact change, your bargain kind of goes down the drain. But it was cheap, nonetheless. Earlier in the day we had gone exploring down some other markets with jewelry and random things and I bought some postcards. Haley had wanted this turquoise necklace but couldn’t get the guy to come down in price much. I went in to see if there was anything I liked that we could try to make a deal with in buying two things. I guess my bargaining skills aren’t so bad after all because we ended up with a pretty good deal and both walked away content.
Back at the hotel that night we were entertained by some Moroccan music acts while we ate dinner. They played some long, horn-like instruments incorporated with different chants…one guy was quite nimble with a candle-flame and moved it every which way around his body and it never fell. It someone in the audience’s birthday, and they presented him with a cake and did this whole dance thing in the middle that lots of people joined in on while my table, except for Mateo, kind of just watched.
Overall, Morocco was really eye opening to how another part of the world lives. Poverty was everywhere, but they cities had quite the charm. The city proudly waves their flag on practically every surface. It is a simple red flag with a white star in the middle. Also, there are cats EVERYWHERE. Literally, everywhere you go you will see a cat each way you turn your head. My mom would not have liked this part whatsoever.
The way back was not so great. The weather was so terrible that we had to take a different ferry, which our buses couldn’t go on. So we had to wait in the port for about 6 hours, where we entertained ourselves by ordering pizza, playing war and various other games for hours on end and finally just sleeping on the floor. We were supposed to arrive at Sevilla at 11 P.M., and instead arrived at about 6 A.M. Needless to say we slept pretty much the whole next day.
Ronda.
Ronda has been one of my favorite cities by far. It was just a little day trip, but made such a huge impression. It is a city full of cliffs and the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen.
There is this huge view overlooking a bridge that separates the two sides of the city. It is very green and full of life, with a waterfall flowing down below. We had a little cup of coffee on the terrace of a hotel restaurant that was basically on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the entire view. It was honestly one of those things you could just stare at for hours, finding new little nooks and crannies with something interesting about it.
Here we went to a bullfighting arena and got to stand in the middle. We saw the bull “hospitals” where the injured bulls recover. There were horses and jockeys practicing inside, as well. We learned that if a bull is particularly strong then it is kept alive to reproduce and breed a strong line of bulls. The bullfighting season in Sevilla starts up in a few weeks, and everyone says it’s something you have to see while you’re here. I’m a little nervous because of the gore of it, but it’s such a rich tradition here, I think I’d be missing out if I didn’t go!
The city is also famous for its bandits, which sounds a little weird, but we went to a tiny little museum where we learned an ancient tale about an adulterous wife and the fatal steps the angry husband took when he found out about her behavior. Haley bought a cool knife for her brother.
Here, there are these little tapas called “montaditos” which are little baby sandwiches. We stopped at a little place and had some with salmon before getting back on the bus. I would definitely recommend Ronda to anyone looking for a nice day trip. They had good shopping there as well, I bought a cool ring here (that later turned my finger green so mayyyybe not the highest quality hah).
Portugal.
Last weekend (March 19-21), we went with our school to Lisbon. We left Seville at 7:30 in the morning and arrived there at about 2:00 there ( we lost an hour due to time change). We took about an hour nap before hitting the city. We walked through the city, saw the palace from a distance. A man was selling these really pretty black and white paintings of the town, with the yellow train in it. He has mastered his art and sold the same view in multiple sizes and angles. We were told not to speak Spanish in Portugal because of the hostility many of the Portuguese still hold against Spaniards. They said English was our best option. I ended up speaking kind of a combo-because at this point, when I’m in public, Spanish pops in my brain first a lot. A lot of people knew at least a little broken English though. Katrina and I ended up exploring this mall near the bullfighting rink before heading back to the hotel and found an awesome store that we wanted practically everything in. Katrina ended up buying a tiger umbrella with the hopes of catching ESPN’s attention on Mizzou football game days and getting on TV. Typicallll….but I told her I call the seat next to her.
The next day was my favorite part of the trip. We went to the most western point in Europe. It’s in my top five most breath-taking things I’ve seen, as corny as that sounds. We climbed down all these rocks, down the cliff and sat on some rocks overlooking the ocean below. It was quite the accomplishment to get down there in my heeled boots but well worth the trek. Some of the boys went even further down and saw a waterfall down below. It seriously was one of those moments that I just felt so lucky and blessed to be where I was at that moment. I had my best friends around me on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean with the most incredible view. We didn’t hold back in taking a series of “senior pic-style” solo shots. We stayed there for probably 30 minutes before climbing back to the top singing any song that had the words “climb” or “mountain” in them, including but not limited to Miley Cyrus’ “It’s the Climb” and Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
We also went to a coast with a colorful harbor and a view of a bridge built by the same company that built the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It looks EXACTLY like it. I’ve never been to California, but as I was looking at, I was totally thinking Full House theme song opening shots. We also went up to the top of the “Tower of Discoveries” which overlooked the water.
Sintra, a small city just outside Lisbon, was another one of our stops. It was a precious little town that has a nice little legend having to do with roosters. I’ll try to retell it. Basically, there as a large banquet going on and a man was accused of stealing. He kept denying it, but was sentenced to death. However, he stood by his innocence and finally told the King that if a particular rooster crowed at that instance, then he must be proclaimed innocent and set free. The King agreed and sure enough, the rooster came through for the man, saving his life, therefore earning his place in Sintra history. Roosters are sold in every store, in every form, and are a symbol of the city. Sintra is also known for it’s cheesecake, although I didn’t try any.
Ok, well that is an update on the past few trips, which is why it is soooo very long. I’m going to try to boost my blogging skills for the remainder of my semester!
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