La primera noche de feria (The First Night of Feria)

I think the best way to write about Feria is to do it journal-entry style because I am going a few different times and I imagine that each time I will have new, distinct thoughts as my relationship with Feria progresses. So, here’s the recap of the first night!

Feria officially starts at midnight on Monday when they light up the portada (big entrance way) and all the strings of lights weaving through the streets. I went, and didn’t get home until 5:14am. This is a big deal for me. Unlike pretty much all of my peers, American and Spanish, I have never done that before here. That said, last night was great and I didn’t feel insanely tired like I usually do. The casetas (tents, I’ll describe that in a second) were loud, bright, and festive, and there were old people out, young people out, and babies in strollers, being pushed through the mobbed streets at 2, 3, 4 in the morning. It was very much a social event for all ages, and because everyone else seemed to be ignoring the time (I’m not used to seeing people in their 80s breaking it down on the dance floor at 3am), I did, too.

Liliana and her apartment-mate, Anne, in front of the portada (main entrance) just after it lit up, celebrating the official start of feria.

So, first I should explain the way feria is set up. Basically, there are fair grounds out on the side of one of Sevilla’s neighborhoods, Los Remedios, and during the feria, which is one week at the end of April, it springs to life. It’s a HUGE ground, with cobblestone streets and plenty of room to erect the tents (casetas). The casetas are one after another after another, down street after street—there are so many that, in addition to the name, each caseta also has a number below it to make it easier for people to find different casetas. Casetas vary in size, but without fail there is always a seating area, a bar, and a place to dance inside each one. There are some public casetas, but most are private. To be get into a caseta, you either have to belong to it (ie pay a ton of money) or know someone who has a caseta (in most casetas, you can invite other friends who aren’t part of your caseta in for some manzanilla (the feria drink) and sevillanas (flamenco dancing, Sevilla style).

I went with Cristina, her two fantastic friends Ellie and Alejandra, and Liliana and Anne, Liliana’s French apartment-mate. Everyone got along really well and we had a lot of fun. Cristina’s friends were easily the nicest, most jovial and thoughtful Spanish girls I have met (other than Cristina, of course), so that was really nice. At points I felt like I was seeing 2 of the 3 stooges when I watched them interact, but in a very endearing way. They are clearly very smart, but unlike most other Spaniards our age around here who are very formal with keeping up appearances, Ellie and Alejandra had no problem having fun (illustrative picture to follow). Although, I will say, they were both spectacularly dressed. Cristina told me I shouldn’t wear jeans, but it was kind of cold so I did anyway, and I felt really out of place. Each of them had on a nice dress and was very made up. As the night wore on, though, it was less important—we were all too busy dancing and having fun. Plus, the fact that I’m a foreigner cuts me some slack, I think.

The feria is very, very, very classist. At first I was overwhelmed. So, if you’re rich you have a caseta or if you’re moderately rich you know someone with a caseta. Okay. If you’re middle to lower class, you either just walk through the streets or go to the public casetas, which are fine but not nearly as nice as the private ones (obviously). Then, next to the part of feria with the city of casetas, there’s a carnival. Ferris Wheel, little roller coasters, rides that flip you upside-down, etc. There are also cheap carnival-esque places to get food and churros and things like that. I walked through there with Anne and Liliana before meeting up with the others, and everyone there was clearly poorer and had no business being in the other part of feria. I was blown away by such an obvious division in classes and in society within the feria… but I guess in the end all societies have something like that, in one way or another. To me, the divisions in feria just felt blatantly obvious.

So, the first night of feria goes until the early hours (when I left, there were HUGE lines for the buses out—easily hundreds of people waiting in line for the same bus), and it stays in full swing. But, something interesting: Sevillanos don’t dress up in the full, traditional flamenco gear that first night. People were dressed more for a prom or a really fancy wedding. Cristina told me to look out for people who were dressed in their full flamenco dresses, complete with accessories, because they were foreigners—or at least Spaniards not from Sevilla. And it was true. They looked very out of place and very uncomfortable. Cristina and her friends found it amusing. It’s an interesting way of making dress such an elemental part of whether or not you truly belong at the feria.

We started the night at Cristina’s family’s caseta (they wanted to belong to one but didn’t want to pay too much, so they joined the Club Asturias tent even though they aren’t from Asturias) and got some manzanilla, the feria drink. It was funny because the girls couldn’t exactly tell us what it was or how strong it is. It’s Sprite mixed with sherry, I think, after some investigative work. We drank and talked, then tried dancing, but it was mostly older people and they weren’t playing Sevillana music, so we couldn’t dance flamenco. We left and went to a public caseta, where we danced for awhile. It was interesting because the classes that I took were much, much more technically correct than what everyone else did. We had learned a more complicated way, so we had to de-learn it and just do what everyone else was doing (and had learned after years of going to the feria). It was a lot of fun, although I was pretty horrible, and plan to work on my dancing skills more when I go back to the feria.

At the start of the night (aka around 12:30am) in Cristina's caseta (most casetas are big enough where you can belong and still not know anyone else inside--definitely little groups rather than a bunch of people who all know each other). From left to right: Anne, Cristina, Me (sweater and longsleeved shirt = NOT dress code), Ellie, and Alejandra.

Outside of the caseta asturiana after our first stop.

One of the streets of feria before midnight, when all those red and white lanterns light up, too. This will look better during the day when I go back, but it just gives you an idea of what the casetas look like from the outside. You go in, and it's like part of a building inside (depending on how nice the caseta is).

In the carnival side of the feria, they had the normal rides and things, but with a very Andalucian twist. For example, rather than winning stuffed animals, you could win a ham leg, bread, and olive oil. This particular stand cracked me up -- it was a place to buy drinks, but inside were two plastic figures in typical dress mashing the grapes to make wine for decoration. Sufficiently tacky and hilarious.

Cristina dancing sevillanas in the second caseta we went to--a public one, technically intended for two specific neighborhoods in Sevilla, but it didn't matter.

Me and Cristina in the third caseta we went to, which Ellie's parents invited us in to for awhile (and supplied us with food and drink)!

This is the picture of Alejandra being ridiculous and very funny. The guitarist was taking a break in the caseta (Ellie's parents had the nicest caseta out of all the ones we went to--you can tell if you compare this background to the one with Cristina dancing) and Alejandra decided to act like she was a flamenco singer.

Cristina and Alejandra after a moving round of sevillanas (outside of the red and white flap is the street).

A video of everyone dancing sevillanas in the public caseta. I had to stop recording at the end because Lili made me go dance... she's talking in Spanish, but saying "come on, Emma, you know how to dance this!!"


A video of everyone dancing sevillanas in that last caseta we went to. The difference is interesting--you can also note the difference in age range, in dress, and in class, generally. If you look in this video, you can also see to the room behind the dance floor, which was where the full bar area and bathrooms (each caseta has a bathroom) were.

I have a few invites from other people to go to their casetas (Luisa from the center, Nacho who I teach English to), so I might go today, but I am absolutely going tomorrow before my flight because Cristina invited me to go have lunch with her there. She’s going to be dressed in all her flamenco stuff and I’m going to go, too, in the modest flamenco-esque outfit I put together. We should have some good photos! In the end, though, all of this just goes to show that here, people take their parties and festivities VERY seriously. In some ways, it reminded me of prom, except with horses and carriages instead of limos, and for the entire community for an entire week. Quite an interesting experience.

I’m not sure if I’ll get to posting the rest of feria stuff before I leave for Paris (considering the best photos are going to be taken the same day I leave, with everyone dressed in their flamenco outfits and the wealthy country men on horseback and in carriage), which is a bummer, but if you don’t hear from me before Wednesday night, I’ll be back to writing again sometime early next week (I’m in Paris until Monday night, and then school is going to hit (unfortunately) at full force). Thanks for reading this particularly verbose entry!

Un fin de semana en la isla de Mallorca (A Weekend on Majorca Island)

airberlin flight direct and round-trip from Sevilla to Palma: 100euro, including tax.
hostel a few steps away from the beach (private room, bathroom, balcony, and free breakfast): 18euro a night.
food expenses: 20euro/day.
spending a weekend with Caroline in paradise: priceless.

Ok, admit it. I could so write Mastercard commercials. I think I've found my calling.

No, in all seriousness, this weekend was incredible (and, considering how incredible, very reasonably priced). Mallorca turned out to be the perfect combination of beach, relaxation, and European culture and seeing Caroline was fantastic, as it always is. Caroline and I had time to sit on the beach and relax, taking in the beautiful scenery, but there were also things to do and sites to see. It was really a quite lovely weekend, as my dear UK-influenced friend would say.

The rough schedule went like this: my flight got in at 7:40am on Friday (yep, don't ask when it left Sevilla), and Caroline wasn't getting in until later that day, around 4pm. We had decided on Mallorca because it was cheap for both of us to get to. Hilariously, it was actually cheaper for Caroline even though the flight is twice as long--that just goes to show you the UK popularity the island has (and Germans. There were a TON of Germans--some signs for tourist shops and restaurants are only in German)! Anyway, so I spent Friday walking around by myself. It was spectacular weather and very relaxing. I didn't have anywhere do go, didn't have anything to do. I just wandered around, taking in the scenery, writing in my journal, taking pictures, reading on the beach (turns out Obama's The Audacity of Hope is not as good a beach read as Caroline's romance novel). I didn't want to start really seeing things until Caroline got there, but the relaxed pace of Friday was something that I don't normally do on vacations, and it was nice. I had no obligations to anyone, nor did I know anyone, nor did I have anything I had to do for about 8 hours. I felt outside of society, outside of the norm, but it felt good.

Caroline arrived Friday afternoon and, true to form, we got to the hostel, changed into our bathing suits, and immediately sat down on the beach to plan the rest of our weekends, complete with guidebooks, internet print-offs (thank you, tripadvisor), pen, and paper. I would say we did a pretty good job.

We finished off Friday just catching up and went into Palma for dinner (our hostel wasn't technically in Palma -- it was on the beach next to it, about a 20min city bus ride into Palma). Since I had gotten up at 4am, we went to bed on the early side. Saturday we took a day trip to Soller, which was absolutely phenomenal. Soller is a little town on the north coast. To get to it, there is a train up through the mountains to the other side of the island. But it's not just any train. It is a train from the early 1900s that used to be used to transport the lemons and oranges on the island (we passed through many, many groves on the way to and in Soller)! It was so picturesque and fun. The train there and back was an hour each way, and Soller itself was stunning. Tiny streets, stone houses with lots of flowers and lemons and oranges, mountains, river, bay. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the explaining. Saturday night we went back to the hostel, and had some fantastic pizza (and then later sangria) on the beach. Conversation, as usual, was just grand (as Caroline would say)!

I left on Sunday, but my flight wasn't till 9:30pm, which left plenty of time. We got up and went into Palma's city center, where we did the touristy stuff and walked around the beautiful Cathedral and old winding streets. Then we went back to our hostel and spent the rest of the day on the beach -- Saturday had been rainy and kind of gross, so we were all for taking advantage of Sunday's beautiful weather!! Later I took a cab to the airport, and within 2 hours I was back in my room in Sevilla.

A fantastic weekend. Mallorca was stunning, and I imagine would be even better with a rental car, as we were somewhat restricted to the more touristy areas.

Zee photos:

A beautiful picture of Caroline with Palma's beautiful Cathedral behind her.

Me on the promenade of Palma's old city center... that's the Cathedral on the far left and the ocean is opposite this background.

These flowers smelled FANTASTIC. Whenever Caroline and I walked by one, the smell was overwhelmingly glorious.

On the train to Soller before it left Palma... a nice old German dude offered to take our picture.

The views we saw from the train as we went up, up, up into the mountains were breathtaking. This is Soller from a distance. The photo doesn't do it justice.

Soller and its port are actually separated by a few kilometers -- you have to take a cute little tram thing to go between them that takes about 20min. This is a shot of Port Soller, on the bay and also with beautiful, old architecture.

Fun with the automatic timer. We climbed up one of Port Soller's hills and found this view out into the ocean (rather than into the bay). The cliffs were beautiful, too.

Caroline, flowers, boats, old buildings, mountains. In that order. Still Port Soller.

In Soller, we took a walk that started as "a loop," but we definitely overshot said loop and ended up wandering around the outskirts for awhile. It was stunning, don't get me wrong, I'm really glad we did it, but we were both quite glad to reach a main road that had a clearly marked sign as to where the city center was.

You know, the usual. Stone house, budding flowers, a straw bag with freshly picked lemons.

This is while we were still lost (the pictures are not in perfect order)... but look at how glorious being lost was!!

View of Soller from the train station.

And, lastly... a shot of the beach outside of our hostel. This picture doesn't do it justice, either, but all of the beach photos of us are on Caroline's camera, so this one will have to do. Let's just say it was an excellent destination for a weekend of fun, relaxation, and good conversation.

I think I've given Mallorca enough words of praise for one entry. I could go on, but I think this is enough. It was a great deal (so cheap!) and a great time. If you want more pictures, I uploaded all of what's on my camera to Picasa. Here's the album:

Palma de Mallorca con Caroline Abril 2009

Caroline has a lot of the better ones, especially of the two of us and, like I said, on the beach that last day. But these are better than nothing!

All of that said, today I was bike riding through the center of Sevilla, taking it all in, and I have to say, Sevilla is pretty darn stunning, too.

(THIS IS MY 100TH BLOG ENTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Confuso, profuso, difuso (Bullshitting)

Or at least I think that's how it translates. I was trying to explain to Pepe how I had a bad topic for a paper that I need to write and I just need to say the same thing over and over in different ways. I called it "shit" in Spanish, which is "mierda," but then he told me that here they say "confuso, profuso, difuso." The translating stuff is always a fun time because Pepe doesn't speak English and I'm not fluent in Spanish, but that's pretty much the gist I got.

So yes. I have to write one of my papers in the confuso, profuso, difuso style. It's unfortunate, but it's the nature of class (anthro of communication) and it's what inevitably ends up happening when I don't have the command of vocabulary and verbs to make strong, precise claims. Sigh.

The best way to communicate my schedule to you this past week is to give a recap of my last 24 hours:
14:30h yesterday: Bibloteca General (see later) to write a paper due today.
16-17h: class
17:15-18:15h: nanny the little boys in English (it was oh such fun, they tried to pull off my pants, and Nacho kept saying "son pantalones GIGANTISIMOS" ("those are GIANT pants"). Ok, so lesson learned. From now on, I only wear jeans. Never Spanish sweatpants.
19h: home, continue working on essay.
20:30h: dinner, showering.
21:30h: essay.
0:30h: bed (incredibly early, but wait for it.)
6:18h: get up, get ready, accompany a friend to the airport (it's a long story, she used my credit card to pay because hers wasn't working, so i had to go because sometimes with foreigners they fuss about seeing the credit card).
9:15h: return to house.
10-11:30h: Sevillanas class (dancing)
11:30-13h: finish essay/turn in essay/print out everything I need for this break (center is closing). Generally organize my life.
And now I am writing to you. Ah, yes, yes indeed.
Ok, now that I've written it out, it doesn't seem like as much as it feels like. And this wouldn't be bad for Cornell--more normal--but here it's throwing me for a loop.
Well, now you know why I haven't been updating as much.
But, that said, I have updates.

Yesterday, to work on my essay, I decided to go to a library that I had never been to before. It was incredible. I went in el rectorado, the tobacco factory building where I always have class, but I cut right in the first patio, rather than walking through the second and into the far door. I went up three flights of stairs and found myself in a totally different world. Jack and the Beanstalk, if you will, without the whole beanstalk and monster business. Oh, and I'm not a Jack. But anyway... there was a new building built on top of the old fabrica that is not visible from walking through the building. The library was INCREDIBLE, new, beautiful, quiet, and just... nice. The librarians were NICE. They SMILED at me!!! The tables were BIG!!! It felt kind of like how I remember one of the libraries at UMich feeling... anyway, it was such a pleasant surprise. Go up three flights of random stairs, and there it is, something big, enormous, and fantastic that I didn't know about before.
See? April 23, I'm leaving in 2 months, and I still haven't discovered everything that I should have. So that felt good, yesterday. I felt like I accomplished something new recently. Plus, it's just a fantastic place to study (and it's open on Saturdays!!!!).
There was also an old woman at a table over from me, who was reading and smiling and taking notes like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And that made me realize... being in school is awesome. Intellectual stimulation. Learning is fun. It really is. I forget that too easily.
As I studied, the sounds on the street of the manifestacion against Bolonia wafted through the open windows...
Ah, to be a student in Sevilla on an 86-degree, blue-skied, sunny day. In a newly discovered library, listening to people fight for their educational rights. It was pretty spectacular.

Tomorrow morning (my flight LEAVES at 6:30am), off to Palma de Mallorca for a weekend with CAROLINE!! Back Sunday night.
...And so the Feria begins!

Pan con pan: comida para tontos (Bread with Bread: Food for Idiots)

The title of this entry has been a joke in the apartment for awhile now, but I don't think I've ever written about it here. So, as you know, I love bread. A lot. I eat it all the time, with everything. If Mayte doesn't put bread on the table, I ask for it. If she says there isn't any, I flip out (jokingly, although behind it all I am a little bit serious). In Spain, there is this saying (see title), and Mayte and Fernando are obsessed with it. Anyway, it stuck with me at some point last semester with Katie, so there are many jokes in our household about Emma, the pan con pan idiot. To illustrate, the other day I had pasta, potatoes, and insisted on having bread. OH, and one day Mayte made bread soup (delicious, she uses old bread and makes it soft and squishy), and I dipped my bread in it. Mayte came into the kitchen and saw me dipping my bread into my bread soup and slapped me on the back of the head. But she can't stop me! O bread, how I adore thee...

I don't have many updates (ha, as you can tell from above), but I wanted to write an entry anyway.

This weekend was a lot of working and catching up. I have several essays to be writing due before and after Feria (another week-long break which is not this coming week, but the week after that), things to be reading, tests to be studying for. This is the usual academic crunch of Cornell, but it feels somewhat out of place to be finding that here.

The upcoming travel plans are as follows: I'm going to Palma de Mallorca this weekend and am meeting up with my friend Caroline who studies in St Andrews, Scotland, am in Sevilla for a few days to see the start of Feria, and then Wednesday night I go off to Paris to visit Lauren, my best friend from high school, and meet up with our other German friend from high school (she was an exchange student), Anne. The scary part is this itinerary sounds almost normal to me at this point. Sure, nothing big, I'm off to an island in the Mediterranean for a weekend and then I'm going to an internationally renowned city to hang out with some of my friends. But that's what my life here has become. It's cheap to fly places, it's easy to get to places where I know people, so the combinations are almost endless. It's a very weird, somewhat uncomfortable bubble to be in for a semester. But I'm going to soak it up as much as possible. It's funny--it was cheaper for Caroline to get from Scotland down to Palma than for me to get over there (although it was cheap for both of us; that's why we're meeting there)! Oh, the UK'ers and their southern vacations...

As for Feria, I am really looking forward to it. I wrote a blog entry a few weeks ago about Sevillanas, the flamenco dance class that I'm taking at the center. That class is to prepare for the Feria, which is basically a week-long flamenco festival (that's the simplified definition, anyway) where people hang out in their casetas (tents), drink a lot, eat a lot, talk a lot, laugh a lot, and dance (flamenco only!) a lot. The Feria can be a tricky situation for a foreigner because you cannot go in a caseta without an invitation and it costs a lot of money to belong to a caseta (normally groups of people rent one out and share the cost), BUT my Spanish friend Cristina has invited me to partake in the festivities with her and her friends! I am going to go with them next Monday night just before midnight to be there for when they turn on all the lights and the Feria officially starts. Cristina gave me all the insider information--for example, you do not wear flamenco clothes (yes, people dress up traditionally!) that first night because the only people who go in flamenco clothes are the tourists, so all the Sevillanos laugh at them--and has just been very welcoming and friendly, generally. Yesterday we went shopping together to find me some Feria-appropriate clothing... I borrowed a lot from her, but I have a pretty classy outfit that I've put together! I am excited to go to the Feria and excited to experience it with Cristina.

So, basically, as you can tell from my enthusiastic skipping ahead, this coming week will be a crammed rut of school work, thesis research, class, teaching English, and being frantic until Friday, when early morning (flight leaves at 6:30am) I will be off to Palma! And from there comes vacation, Feria, vacation, boom. Just like that. And then it's May.

I should say one more thing. Going shopping with Cristina was fun and not awkward or forced. We are very similar and get along very, very well. Neither one of us is materialistic, and we went shopping forcefully and with a purpose (she needed a new dress for the first night of Feria where you don't "dress" (wear the traditional outfit), so we both had things we were looking for). It felt good, normal, easy. I needed the shawl and jewelry that people wear at Feria, so Cristina invited me over to her house at the end where I met her mother and they took out all kinds of things saved from years past. Cristina had outgrown a lot of old dresses, and each time you get a new dress, you have to get new colors that match the dress (this is kind of like Prom, it seems like, but with way more culture and dancing and all ages participate), so I had a lot of stuff to choose from. The colors I ended up with are black, red, and white. Classic, chic. You know how I do.

What I'm trying to say is that nothing drastic has happened since the last time I wrote, just the normal day ins and day outs. But it's these little things like going shopping with Cristina, meeting her mom, preparing for a local festival that make me happy to be here and make my experience feel... well, good.

And the homework? Well, to be honest, not so much. :P

Mis mentalidades (My Mentalities)

Writing this blog entry in word, because for some reason my computer isn’t letting me connect to the university’s wireless, even though it shows up on my computer as being connected. boo. Foreign girl’s wireless next to me is working. boo, hiss. And I had such high hopes for what I could get done in this hour between class and teaching English at 9pm, too. Well, at least this teaches me to never save a paper that I’m working on just in GoogleDocs.

So I really just have two things to say that aren’t very long, but I wanted to say them before, well, they aren’t relevant anymore.

First, Cornell pre-enroll is tomorrow at 7am, 1pm our time, and I have been LOVING picking out my classes for the fall. The first time I opened the course roster and saw all the options of classes I could take next semester… in some ways it was like I had died and gone to heaven. SO many classes in SO many different subjects designed for SO many different kinds of people. It’s not like here, where people select a track to study after high school and take classes in order only in their department with the same however many kids taking classes with really boring names, taught badly and with bad content because they won’t even use it in the real world anyway so really what’s the point. (Yes, run-on sentence on purpose.) On the Cornell roster, there was VARIETY, there were ELECTIVES, and it was a beautiful thing. Is a beautiful thing, actually. You know the “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” thing? Yeah. Amen to that. It’s like I just got told I get to go on a free trip to Disneyworld, only it’s… well, Cornell.

Tomorrow will be tight because I have a class that ends at 1pm and then I need to book it to a place with internet and get set up ASAP because some of the classes I want to take (ahem, Intro to Wines), will fill up very, very quickly.

Here’s what my rough schedule is looking like:
HADM 4430 Intro to Wines (2)
COLLS 4990 Honors Research (4)
PE 1412 Intro to Swedish Massage
SPAN 3300 Literature and The Arts (4)
FGSS 3600 Gender and Globalization (3)
EDUC 2170 Social and Political Context of American Education (4)
All of that is subject to change, but it’s my rough start. I will probably drop one of these classes, too. Just felt like sharing.

Doing pre-enroll feels good. I haven’t used pre-enroll since November of 2007. It has been awhile. Since then, Cornell has totally updated its software and the way classes are numbered, so I’m not really sure what I’m doing, but still. I’m ready for this. For change, again. For academic newness (or old newness. Or whatever).

Ok, the other thing I wanted to write about ties in very neatly to pre-enroll. I feel like I’ve outgrown the program here. I need new things, new challenges. Comparing where I am to where the semester kids are… yeah, it’s just not comparable. What used to be stimulating and interesting in many ways has become normal and slightly boring. I’m not really complaining about this—I’m very happy that I can say that I got to this point and am ready for something different, which is something I absolutely would not have said at the end of last semester—it’s more just that the Cornell program I am on can only go so far. They have been wonderful and fantastic and helped me enormously, but now I am ready for real immersion, or at least steps of real immersion. I am ready for a real Spanish network of friends, for functioning here without someone holding my hand. I don’t need the center like I needed it last semester. I don’t need that safety net. And that’s great, it’s the sign of a very well-spent year, but it’s also a bit frustrating at points. It’s April. I still have two months in Spain. It would be absolutely perfect if this moment came towards the beginning of June, making my time here good to the last drop, but it isn’t.

All of that said, I am still learning and growing, of course, in ways that I am not entirely consciously aware of. I also have a few Spanish friends. That stuff is here, it is forming, and I know it takes a long time to form. I’m still very happy to be here, but it’s different than before.

In the end, though, as hard as it is going to be to leave here (and it will be terribly, terribly hard) I’m ready for a change, and going back to Cornell as a Senior with an Honors Thesis to write and the Real World to apply to might be just what the doctor ordered. Or not. Time will tell.

Una noche de Semana Santa (A Night of Semana Santa)

After waking up at 4:12am yesterday in Dublin to get back to Sevilla, I went out in the evening/night with Cristina, my Spanish friends, and her friends to see the last night of Semana Santa. I won't go into too much description, but Semana Santa (Holy Week), is one of two major festivals in Sevilla. It's the reason I had this past week off. Basically, each day of the week preceding Easter, there are 'pasos' (or processions) through Sevilla. Each hermandad, or church group, creates different float thingies to represent different stories from the bible. The hermandades parade through Sevilla. Each day there are different ones going in different directions. It's really interesting. Each paso consists of not just the big float thingie, but also members of the hermandad dressed in traditional Semana Santa clothing (to us it looks like the Ku Klux Klan), candles, and often times a band.

It was really nice to experience Semana Santa with locals. I was with Cristina and her childhood friend who belongs to the same hermandad (they both opted to not be in it this year), some of her friends' cousins, and then other people kind of randomly came and left. Most of them were affiliated with the same hermandad, so it was fun watching that paso go by. We saw it twice -- the first time was less of a big deal than the second time, so there were less people (normally the streets are PACKED), and it was fun watching them try to figure out which fully-covered kid was their cousin, friend, sibling, etc. Basically, because it had meaning for them and they knew what they were doing, it made the experience for me much more interesting.

Now, I should pause here and reinforce that, although the material of this is 100% religious, it really is not a religious thing. People were out in the plazas, drinking beers (I had a tinto de verano, my favorite), watching, talking, and laughing as the Ku Klux Klan wannabe members dragged crosses through the streets. Cristina and her friends told me that although they are in the hermandades and have participated in the past, they aren't religious and describe themselves more as agnostic. The tradition of Semana Santa is based more in tradition, in community, in a festival in the streets. And that definitely showed. It was not a crazy Catholic event. Not at all. It was a community in the streets. It was conversation and art. Sure, based in religion, but not the partakers were not necessarily religious.

The big float-ish looking things are carried by people underneath. It is crazy. There are typically between 30-40 people who balance the paso on their head while walking very slowly and evenly to the beat of the music (some of the more formal processions don't have any music; it just depends). It looks painful to me, but it's all about tradition (traditionnnnnnnnn! tradition! Fiddler, anyone?).

A paso going through the city center at dusk. I didn't have my good camera, so the pictures aren't as nice, but you still get the idea.

Another one, a few minutes later farther down the street. The procession paths go everywhere, but we stayed pretty centrally located and saw a lot.

A close-up of the basic costume of only some of the people in the procession. These were kids, talking to each other. People in the procession often would stop to hug a friend, pick up a child and play with them, or just have a sip of beer. This was not entirely a formal occasion, even though our United Statesian (translation from Spanish, I'm going to start using it) mindset would assume otherwise.

And, lastly, I have a badly-filmed video of Cristina's hermandad returning after a night of paso-ing. There was an enormous crowd in the plaza outside the entrance of her church. All the lights were turned off and it was totally silent except for a man singing, as you'll see. You can also see the cone hats of the people walking in front of the paso.

There was a kind of mesmerizing beauty to it.. but that said, it was also almost 1am, and I was quite tired. After that paso was done, Cristina and her friends were going on to the last one of the night, but I just couldn't do it, so I left them and caught a cab home. I was just too tired, and my Spanish abilities were shutting down. It was great being with her friends and they were all very nice, but I felt a bit like an outsider the whole time. It's also interesting because I've found that sevillanos generally don't know how to act around foreigners, even though there are so many of us in Sevilla. There's definitely not too much mixing between the two groups. They were all kind of curious about me, I could tell, but didn't ask me anything and weren't very forward because they weren't sure what to expect. I think it goes along with not having any racial or ethnic or cultural variety in Sevilla, so then drop a tall Jewish girl from some state no one has heard of into the mix and it can freak people out a bit. But, all that said, once I made the first steps they were warm and, like I said, I had a very memorable experience.

So, the festival went all week, but I feel like I saw everything that I needed to see last night, walking around (and drinking and eating) with Cristina and her friends. I owe Cristina a big thank you for a night of experiencing Semana Santa the Spanish way (ha, even though I was very unspanish and bailed early)! Last night my anthro-trained head was going crazy... in an enjoyable, overtired kind of way. Going away for a week also gave me a renewed appreciation for Sevilla and for how beautiful it is, which made me happy.

Una semana en Irlanda (A Week in Ireland)

I have so much I want to tell about Ireland, I'm not sure where to start and I know I won't say everything I meant to. That's probably for the best, though, because with stuff like this pictures often do the best talking anyway.
But that's the first disclaimer I wanted to put out there: in Ireland, for the first time in my life, I gave up taking pictures. It was too beautiful; I couldn't capture it. I have pictures, but none of them do justice what I saw. Often times the most beautiful things I saw were on bus rides or tours or in the rain, so it was even more difficult to take good pictures. Ireland was absolutely breath-taking. In the end, it's just rolling green hills and fields, stone hand-made walls, cute little houses, and animals (lots of animals), but somehow the sum of that equals more than the parts. I can't describe it fully. I can just say that Ireland was easily one of my favorite places I've ever been and I absolutely plan to go back.
When I do go back, I will rent a car and drive around. Ireland is smaller than the state of West Virginia, so it's plausible, and the majority of beautiful things to see happens just driving through the countryside. We experienced a bit of that with day tours (they worked really well), but it still can't compare to having a car and doing everything at your own pace.

Here's the rough schedule of what we did, so you can have a basic outline of the trip:
Saturday: got to Dublin, met up with Rory, a good friend of mine from way back in the day, did some walking around, went to hear some live music in a pub, and then crashed at her place. She is studying at Trinity University for the semester.
Sunday: walked around Dublin some more, saw Trinity, went to lunch with Rory, trained over to Galway. Explored Galway, a cute, picturesque town on the western side of the country.
Monday: Day tour of the Cliffs of Moher, which involved a long guided tour down the coast with plenty of stops at other little attractions, going down to Doolin and ending at the Cliffs. Fantastic. Met up with Caitlin, another old friend, and her mom for dinner. It was great to see them.
Tuesday: Took a boat out to the Aran Islands. Spent the day biking around the Island. Absolutely incredible--the views were unreal--but the weather got very, very bad. Biking in hail/snow is really not fun. Kind of a bummer that we didn't have better weather and couldn't fully explore the island, but that's how it goes. We had a nice cozy evening in as the wind whistled outside. It felt like camp.
Wednesday: Left the island in the early morning (the weather was beautiful. figures) and spent the day in Galway. We explored by ourselves, then met up with Caitlin for the rest of the day. Very enjoyable.
Thursday: trained back to Dublin. Rory was gone, but we did a bus tour and continued our explorations.
Friday: Dublin exploration...
Saturday: left Dublin at 4:30am to catch our flight back to Sevilla.

So that is the general outline.
In other, random detail, I'm going to try a new, more efficient way of organizing this entry because I have too many little, random things to say.
potatoes. I think it's stupid to spend too much time on this, but I will just say that all stereotypes on this matter were firmly upheld. I think the finest example is the sweet potato pizza that Austin and I shared in Galway. (It was delicious.)
the train. I love trains. Love, love, love. Beautiful countryside, good companionship, DIGESTIVES (not saying more; I could write an entire entry on the wonder that are Digestive cookies). What more could a person ask for?
redheads. Ireland is full of Ron Weasleys. Quite endearing.
Spanish, generally. I spoke in Spanish to several people by accident in the first few days of being there. Switching gears in my head was really difficult. There were also Spaniards all over the place. It makes sense, because it was a vacation week, but still. They are *so* loud and obnoxious, especially out of context. Almost as bad as Americans! Plus we just wanted to get away... We were actually mistaken for Spaniards several times, and even pretended to be Spanish in a bar we went to in Galway. It worked! (The guy said "I knew ye were Spanish right away; I saw it in yer complexion; I can just tell wit tese sorts of tings.")
food in Dublin. We went ethnic. It was SPECTACULAR. Japanese, Mexican (Spain has awful Mexican food, ironically enough), and Indian. It was a beautiful thing.
Dublin on Good Friday. This was funny. We happened to be in Dublin on one of two days all year where all 963 pubs are closed (the other day is Easter). We did the guided bus tour, and all the tour guides were complaining about it and about how awful it is to not be able to stop into a pub for a pint. The Guinness factory was closed, too, but we still saw it from the outside and it was ENORMOUS. It takes up a huge chunk of the city--it is the largest brewery in Europe--and produces over 3 million pints a day. Over 3.5 billion pints of Guinness are consumed in a year. It was interesting. I actually didn't like the beer much at all, but I am a big Bulmers fan. This trip confirmed that.
Phoenix Park. We hopped off our tour bus at Phoenix Park, the largest urban park in Europe. It was beautiful -- huge open fields, deer, monuments. Also the zoo, where we passed several hours quite happily.
divorce. Sounds like a strange thing to put, but it's worth mentioning: divorce was not legalized in Ireland until 1997. Yep, I know.

Now on to pictures, and I'll continue a bit of the story telling that way. And like I said, I feel like my pictures are really inadequate for representing what I saw and how I felt.

O'Connell Street, the main street in Dublin. A lot of the Revolution was fought around here.

Day trip to the Cliffs of Moher. One view of the cliffs! This was incredible weather for Ireland.

Me and the cliffs, back lighting like whoa.

A perfect example of beauty barely captured. I took this from the bus. Around every turn was another place to stop, another incredible picture to be had. But no such luck!

Galway.

Austin and me out on the pier in Galway.

Walking along the water, still in Galway. There's a lighthouse way out there in the background.

On to the Aran Islands. This is Inis Mor, the island we went to. This shot is better blown up, but it still doesn't do it justice, partially thanks to the weather. We still enjoyed ourselves, though... and we experienced authentic Irish weather!

Inis Mor again.

Austin on her bike, eating a banana, posing with our favorite house ever. Hard to see, but it's a thatch roofed house complete with cows chilling in the front yard. Yes.

Me at the top of Inis Mor, after we climbed up to an abandoned light house. Hard to see in this size, but if you blow up the picture you can see all the insanely picturesque fenced-off areas down closer to the water. I'm drooling with delight just thinking about how beautiful it was.

When the weather was still a bit clearer on the Island...

Leaving the island the next morning. The weather was *so* perfect -- it's a shame we had to leave! It was very different to the freezing rain we experienced the day before.

Back in Galway, walking around the main pedestrian streets. A very typical front awning.

Pedestrian streets and moi.

My favorite, cliche shot of Galway.

Dinner with Caitlin in her apartment! (WE HAVE THE SAME GLASSES!!!) Our dinner consisted of: mac and cheese, made with Irish Chedder, a fresh salad, and a fruit salad. Delicious. Oh, and milk and beer. Ireland has REAL milk, so we had to have that, plus trying Bulmer's pear was in order. So yes, milk and beer. Us Ann Arbor kids rock out in style. You know how we do. (Also, as a total side note, Ireland's meat is all free range, grass-fed, etc. The eggs are all free range. It's so much better than our system because they have less of a population and the resources to do that. Caitlin was raving about it; it sounded great.)

SUSHI SUSHI SUSHI. ANGIE THIS IS FOR YOU. MY FIRST SUSHI SINCE LAST JUNE. FROTHING JUST THINKING ABOUT IT. I. LOVE. SUSHI. (I overpaid for this salmon and avocado roll, but it was sheer bliss and I loved every minute of it.)

Dublin from O'Connell bridge at sunset.

I think that's more or less it. I'm sure there were more little, funny things I wanted to add, but this brief overview covers my week away, in a nutshell. Hope it was enjoyable to read and not painfully long! (Ha, plus, another entry coming soon -- we've got back to back ones! Oh joy!)