After a week of NO CLASSES during Semana Santa, coming back on Monday took quite a bit of motivation... Luckily, I only have one class in the morning. After class I ran straight the the Stationary store to buy some very belated birthday cards. First off, it needs to be said that Spanish people must not really care about people's birthdays because birthday cards are nearly impossible to find. Once I found the store it was quite the ordeal to find it when it was actually open. Finally I did it and was able to buy, write, and mail all the birthday cards. Afterward, I joined Kendra and Brittany for a much needed hair cut. Only 5€ and done by a student... all things considered, it's not bad. Believe it or not the errors have nothing to do with my Spanish skills. (Thank you wordreference.com for helping me find the correct term for "bangs" in Spanish-Spanish) After our haircuts we walked a couple streets over back to a cafe next to our house for a tostada and cafe con leche that we had NEVER been too (delicious, but AWFUL service). Then to wrap up the day... I cleaned my room! Don't be so surprised, I mean it's SPRING. That means: Spring Cleaning Time!
Nikki's mom and aunt were in Sevilla to visit so I joined them for dinner. It was wonderful - and the food wasn't that bad either. Having visitors in Sevilla makes me love the city even more. When I first arrived here and should have been in awe of the city's beauty I was a bit preoccupied with the whole, "Holy Hannah. I'm in Spain and am going to be living here for the next 5 months!" But really the best part was just getting to know them and laugh at Nikki with them and just have a nice meal, with good conversation - in English!
Now I have to admit something that could be a bit embarrassing: I fell down the stairs. That was my Tuesday (a week and a day ago). Thanks to my graceful nature I now have a bruise that covers a good quarter of my butt. It's gross. I've made Kendra help me monitor the color-changing-spectrum/progression. It's been an array of shades from red, blue, purple, and finally, now, a week later, almost black. So after coming home and whining to Kendra about my tragic injury I had a meeting at the CIEE Study Center where I learned all about how I should prepare for our trip to Morocco. I made it home around 10:30 and there was no sign of dinner or our Senora or either of her daughters, so we headed outside. We were going to go to a place with Brittany and Inez (Brittany is from Kendra's program and Inez is from Monaco and lives with Brittany) and we followed Inez for a good 30 minute walk only to end up at a semi-sketchy bar with NO FOOD. So we made the trek back from Alameda at about 11:15 and into Plaza Alfalfa where we had the BEST Italian food I've had in Sevilla. We were also about to see: ¡A PASO! I was SO excited! They were covered with tarps and I'm assuming were being carried to wherever it is that they are stored but it was after midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and the costaleros were hard at work bringing their pasos to where they needed to be. It was like Semana Santa was still going strong!
Wednesday was far from exciting. I had my class, studying for a couple hours, attempted to go to my professor's office hours even though he wasn't there, ran home, studied some more and packed for Morocco. Then I met my friend Chris who is in a different program but whom I met on the flight to Sevilla for some ice cream. We hadn't talked since our third or fourth week in Sevilla so we were able to swap stories. This was also my first time having ice cream since the pathetic cone in Triana during Semana Santa - and let me tell you, this was MUCH better. It was FULL of ice cream. Then I went home, studying a bit more, made sure I had everything ready for Morocco (triple checking that I had my passport packed) and went to sleep since I had to be ready for the bus at 7:30 am (a rather un-Godly hour in Sevilliano terms).
13 April 2010
11 April 2010
¡Por Fin! My Semana Santa Post!
This has been unbelievably difficult to write. I hope that with the picture I posted earlier (and if I'm lucky, a few videos that I'm hoping to put up later) you'll get a slight picture of the great festivities of Semana Santa in Sevilla.
The Wednesday before the start of Semana Santa I went on a tour/information session called, "Conocer la Semana Santa" with a small group of students from by program. This was more or less my crash course in all things Semana Santa. Here's what we learned:
Semana Santa in Sevilla is a really big deal. Not only is it a week of celebration but it is the largest system of processions in the world. Every day of the week there are numerous of processions that run more or less all hours of the day. A procession is more or less a parade. Churches from all over Sevilla create a "hermandad" or brotherhood.
The standard structure of a procession is:
La Cruz de Guía: the guiding cross, which leads the procession through La Carrera Oficial (Official path for each procession through La Campaña and Plaza de San Francisco, down Avenida de la Constitución into and through La Catedral out into Plaza del Triunfo and back to their church).
Nazarenos: although at first these guys can be a bit intimidating, since their outfits resemble those of the KKK, their actually really nice - some hand out caramels during the day and at night they will let the wax from their candles drip down to for a ball that other nazarenos add too so that kids literally have a ball of wax bigger than their heads before they move out of their parents' houses (which happens in their earlier 30's here in Spain.) The pointed hood is called a capirote. Each hood and cloak is a different color based on the hermandad and the nazarenos walk in sets of two, carrying candles that are a good 5 feet long. There are anywhere from hundreds to a few thousand nazarenos in each procession and are broken up into tramos - I'm not 100% sure of why but I do know that each tramo is marked by a flag and the fifth tramo is the last tramo and is marked by a flag that looks like a fish and is called, bacalao (That means cod and was my high school Spanish teacher Sr. Smalling's favorite word).
Then, between the last tramo there is usually a group of church clergy, altar boys, tons of incense, huge candelabras, all sorts of craziness leading the way for the...
PASO: floats made of wood, covered/plated in silver or gold, with a large sculpture of either Christ depicting the events proceeding His Death and Resurrection, or the Virgin Mary praying, crying, or simply looking extremely pained/depressed for the loss of her Son.
Underneath the Paso are the Costaleros. These guys are the ones that make everything happen - well sort of. They're the ones carrying the paso through the narrow streets of Sevilla. They're allowed to rest when they set the paso down and for the processions that take a really like time, costaleros will switch out with one another (there always seems to be a relief nearby in the crowd).
Penitentes: a group of more people from the hermandad that wear the same cloak as the nazarenos but without the hood and carry wooden crosses to mark their penance. Many of the penitentes walk barefoot (oh, a lot of nazarenos also walk barefoot).
Musica: after the penitentes or sometimes before the penitentes immediately after the Paso there will be a band or a choir as a part of the procession. I'm definitely thinking about downloading some Semana Santa music from iTunes - it's really makes the procession a rather moving experience.
Then, the structure repeats itself - each hermandad usually has 2 pasos - one of Christ and one of Mary. but the entire procession structure happens for each paso - so Christ has his own set of of nazarenos and penitentes and Mary has her own set of nazarenos and penitentes.
Other things we learned while on the tour:
Finally Semana Santa began!
Domingo de Las Ramas (Palm Sunday)
Nikki and I dressed up a bit, went to mass at La Catedral and then sat in Puerta Jerez (right outside of La Catedral) for a good hour and a half and people-watched. There were a ton of cute little kids in wonderful frilly dresses, and little suits and ties, and sisters that were matching. There were cute old couples walking around holding hands. And, well, there were MORE than enough teenagers wearing dresses that reminded me more of compression shorts than anything else. After a quick lunch and a trip to the park to read some of my Bible (it was my goal to read through all of the Gospels during Semana Santa) we began the Paso watching.
We somehow managed to sneak through the crowds to the corner of Calle Placentines and Calle Aleman which is the corner next to where the pasos exited the Cathedral. It was a great way to start off the Semana Santa-ing experience. We had more or less front row (there was one group of people in front of us but we could still see just about everything) and we were RIGHT BY THE CATHEDRAL. We were able to see: La Paz, La Hiniesta, La Cena, and San Roque.
Getting away from our corner was a bit of a trial - but my Type-A personality came through and according to Nikki, I "controlled the heck out of that crowd." After we escaped the massive swarm of people and had a bit of room to stretch out we bought some Semana Santa snacks from a guy with a cart and headed in for the night.
Santo Lunes (Holy Monday)
Monday afternoon, after a lazy morning in the park, I seemed to just walk into one Paso after another. I think I ended up seeing ------ Everywhere I went there seemed to be a Paso.
That night Juanma joined me for the Paso-watching fun so that I could have a "true Semana Santa experience." Well... Sadly, Juanma is one of those Sevillianos that leave Sevilla for Semana Santa to avoid the crowds. After pouting about having to walk (rather than drive) into el centro, and walking in every direction imaginable to try to avoid La Avenida de La Constitucion since it's completely blocked off with pasos coming from every imaginable direction. I had faith that Juanma knew what he was doing... yeah right. At one point someone stopped us to ask for directions. He was no help- At all. At that point I knew it was going to be a long night. It didn't help that we couldn't seem to get very far without running into one of his friends, or a friend of his families.
One woman that he knew ended up rescuing me from whatever attempt Juanma was making to "show me Semana Santa" and took us through Plaza Nueva and down Calle Sierpes to catch a paso: Las Penas. While Juanma's friend and I (whose name I sadly cannot remember) were getting to know each other and excitedly talking about Semana Santa, Juanma decided it was appropriate to make an array of jokes and started whining about: how difficult it was to stay standing, how much he had to walk around - his solution was that I should be carrying him, or at the very least pushing him in a stroller. There was a pretty big crowd so all we could really see at first were the tips of the capirotes but once the paso got closer we could smell the incense and hear the drums. At this point Juanma compared the sound of the drums to the footsteps of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and I was slightly afraid that his friend was going to kick us butt, but like all things of God, the paso through just in time to distract her.
After the paso went through I decided Juanma have behaved well enough to finally receive his "Día del Padre" McFlurry. While eating our ice cream we had a lovely "father-daughter" chat about what sort of clothes are and are not appropriate to be worn out of the house. Don't worry - I have yet to fail the test. Instead we both sat there shaking our heads in disbelief: "How did their fathers let them out of the house!?!"
Santo Tuesday (Holy Tuesday)
On Tuesday morning Little Maria and I decided we were going to try to watch the salida (when a paso leaves their home church to begin the procession) of El Cerro in the morning. Well, turns out the church was a bit further away than we had anticipated. Instead we ended up catching in right in front of the business school where I take classes 4 days a week! It was really amusing to watch the groups of nazarenos and costaleros walk into my school's cafeteria for a quick cafe as the rest of their group stopped trying to deal with the lovely mess of construction just a couple blocks away from the school. This was probably one of the largest (in terms of numbers) processions I had seen. There were just SO many nazarenos. As we waited Maria and I taught each other the Lord's Prayer in Spanish and English respectively, and took some silly pictures.
After our adventure I met up with Nikki for our Semana Santa adventure with Javier care of, CIEE. Javier (for some odd reason... I'm guessing our program pays him) decided that he wanted to take a group of Americans around to watch pasos for the evening. So off we went. Running all around el centro. We started in Plaza Alfalfa by Jesus de Las Tres Caidas where we saw San Esteban. After that we went to a place in an area of Sevilla I had never been to before in a tiny little street where everyone was smashed together. We were entertained and slightly annoyed by two little boys that were getting frustrated by all of the people that were trying to cross the street, through the nazarenos, and get from one side to another. (This is one of those things that is much easier said than done.) Finally, Los Javieres (I'm assuming this is why Javier dragged us all the way through Sevilla to see it) brought their paso through. From there we headed back into the heart of the city, and saw Los Estudiantes. Los Estudiantes is a hermandad created from students from the Universidad de Sevilla. It is proud to have the largest number of penitentes in all of Semana Santa, and has representatives from every college/department in the university system. From there we all went our separate ways into the massive crowd and went home for dinner.
Nikki and I had plans to meet at midnight to watch her hermanita as a nazareno en La Candelaria. Well somewhere along the way I got confused at thought we were meeting at 11... so I sneaked into her homestay and we made fun of the Aladdin poster that is more or less her headboard and read a coffee-table book about Minnesota from one of their former study abroad students. Very entertaining. At midnight (our originally scheduled time) we headed back out onto the streets. As soon as we turned off of the street Nikki lives on we ran into her host family - turns out her hermanita was done for the day :( But we had plans to see the paso so we continued on. We were planning on watching the paso go through los Jardines de Murillo, but we could see a paso just about to turn around the corner so we ran ahead to see it - for once a procession was on time rather than a good half hour behind. We ended up catching up with la Virgen and got to stand right next to the paso and walk along side of it for quite a bit down the street. Then we realized that if we were standing next to Mary, Jesus had already been through so off we went running after Jesus. Our first goal was to cross to the other side of the procession so that we could run through the park rather than get pushed up against the walls of the streets. The nazarenos were standing still so we thought it would be a good time to sneak through. Well, the moment we had both stepped into the middle of the lines of nazarenos, they lifted their candles and began to walk so we ran for a few yards in the middle of the nazarenos under the archway of the huge candles until we were finally able to dip out between two nazarenos that were spaced apart a good distance and got into the park. From there it was madness. It was pretty much pitch black in the park and we were running in between and around families, trying not to step on dogs that were playing catch, jumping up and over benches, and finally - we see Jesus!
Santo Miercoles (Holy Wednesday)
Wednesday morning both Nikki and I were exhausted - and quite frankly a bit paso-ed out. We decided we wanted to have a slow, Spanish day. After quick taking care of a few errands, we spent some time in a park and then headed into el centro to find a cafe that had chocolate croissants, tea for Nikki and coffee for me. Well, we should have know better. We didn't make it more than two or three blocks before we ran into La Sed. After watching the Virgen come across the bridge of los bomberos (firefighters - their station is underneath the bridge) we continued on our adventure only to run into the Virgen of San Bernando a few blocks further. From there we decided to get adventurous and head over to the area that Javier took us to in search of our croissants. Naturally, we ran into another paso. Actually, it wasn't a paso - it was a group of people waiting for a paso to start. We were waiting for a salida! After a good hour and a half, standing with some not-so-nice Spaniards, we finally saw El Buen Fin exit their church and head out to walk in the streets of Sevilla.
Santo Jueves (Holy Thursday) y La Madruga
The plan for Santo Jueves was pretty much to take the day nice and slowly since I had plans to watch La Madruga which is pretty much the best night in all of Semana Santa. The processions go all night long and consist of the most famous pasos: La Macarena, El Silenco, Los Gitanos, El Gran Poder... Well, that morning Nikki and I got together at McDonald's to use their WiFi and get to work on a group project we had coming up. Then I spent some time in a park reading my Bible, and headed home for some lunch and a nap. Well, I guess all of the paso watching from earlier in the week caught up to me and I ended up sleeping through my alarm until Friday morning! :( So, I failed and ended up missing La Madruga.
Santo Viernes
On Friday I was able to meet up with fellow Iowa Hawkeye, Kate Singer. We spent the day on the river watching pasos go over el Puente de Triana. We watched El Cachorro and La O and in between the two, (in an attempt to get out of the huge crowd and the hot sun) we walked through the neighborhood of Triana in search of some ice cream. We did indeed find some ice cream - however the woman that served us our ice cream could have used a Coldstone Creamery employee training session. Not only did the concept of, "Service with a Smile" seem entirely foreign to her (like us), but she gave us the most pathetically sad scoop of ice cream that has ever been seen on the face of the Earth and called it an ICE CREAM CONE. I was shocked and dismayed. Luckily we were able to see La O right afterwards, and we watched a Spongebob Squarepants balloon float up into the sky. After the pasos we spent the early evening walking through El Parque Santa Maria Luisa.
Santo Sabado
Kendra returned from her trip to Italy late Friday night so she and I spent Saturday catching up. We started with a study session at Starbucks, did some window shopping in el centro (while surprisingly managing to avoid pasos) and then headed down to the river. We sat out at a little cafe for a couple of hours and enjoyed the warm sun, and then went to El Corte Ingles to buy some snacks for our movie night. Then the pasos came full force. When we were walking out of El Corte Ingles en the plaza el Duque we were literally surrounded. There was no escape. There was one paso that covered one side of the store, and another blocking the other two exits. After a lot of weaving in and out and walking way out of our way just to be able to walk we were on our way home. As we walked back along the river to el Torre del Oro and up to Puerta Jerez we ended up running into yet another paso: El Sol. We watched it for a good half hour and then made our way through it and back home. Just when we were about to sit down to eat we heard what sounded an awful lot like a Semana Santa band. And guess what, it was! And we got to watch all of it from our patio. It was really cool to watch it from up above.
Pascua (Easter)
The plans for my Easter involved waking up at 4 am to watch the salida of the final paso, El Resucitado. That didn't quite work out as planned. Instead I ended up rolling out of bed around 10 am, and sat around with my Bible and some homemade cafe (not delicious) and went on a walk with Kate and explored the parks of Sevilla. It was a very nice, slow, and wonderful day in Sevilla.
.... and that was my Semana Santa. I've realized now that I'm done writing this that it's probably going to seem super boring to you as you're reading it, but I insist- it really wasn't. It was awesome and I am so glad I stayed in Sevilla instead of traveling for the week.
¡Yay for Jesus and Parades!
The Wednesday before the start of Semana Santa I went on a tour/information session called, "Conocer la Semana Santa" with a small group of students from by program. This was more or less my crash course in all things Semana Santa. Here's what we learned:
Semana Santa in Sevilla is a really big deal. Not only is it a week of celebration but it is the largest system of processions in the world. Every day of the week there are numerous of processions that run more or less all hours of the day. A procession is more or less a parade. Churches from all over Sevilla create a "hermandad" or brotherhood.
The standard structure of a procession is:
La Cruz de Guía: the guiding cross, which leads the procession through La Carrera Oficial (Official path for each procession through La Campaña and Plaza de San Francisco, down Avenida de la Constitución into and through La Catedral out into Plaza del Triunfo and back to their church).
Nazarenos: although at first these guys can be a bit intimidating, since their outfits resemble those of the KKK, their actually really nice - some hand out caramels during the day and at night they will let the wax from their candles drip down to for a ball that other nazarenos add too so that kids literally have a ball of wax bigger than their heads before they move out of their parents' houses (which happens in their earlier 30's here in Spain.) The pointed hood is called a capirote. Each hood and cloak is a different color based on the hermandad and the nazarenos walk in sets of two, carrying candles that are a good 5 feet long. There are anywhere from hundreds to a few thousand nazarenos in each procession and are broken up into tramos - I'm not 100% sure of why but I do know that each tramo is marked by a flag and the fifth tramo is the last tramo and is marked by a flag that looks like a fish and is called, bacalao (That means cod and was my high school Spanish teacher Sr. Smalling's favorite word).
Then, between the last tramo there is usually a group of church clergy, altar boys, tons of incense, huge candelabras, all sorts of craziness leading the way for the...
PASO: floats made of wood, covered/plated in silver or gold, with a large sculpture of either Christ depicting the events proceeding His Death and Resurrection, or the Virgin Mary praying, crying, or simply looking extremely pained/depressed for the loss of her Son.
Underneath the Paso are the Costaleros. These guys are the ones that make everything happen - well sort of. They're the ones carrying the paso through the narrow streets of Sevilla. They're allowed to rest when they set the paso down and for the processions that take a really like time, costaleros will switch out with one another (there always seems to be a relief nearby in the crowd).
Penitentes: a group of more people from the hermandad that wear the same cloak as the nazarenos but without the hood and carry wooden crosses to mark their penance. Many of the penitentes walk barefoot (oh, a lot of nazarenos also walk barefoot).
Musica: after the penitentes or sometimes before the penitentes immediately after the Paso there will be a band or a choir as a part of the procession. I'm definitely thinking about downloading some Semana Santa music from iTunes - it's really makes the procession a rather moving experience.
Then, the structure repeats itself - each hermandad usually has 2 pasos - one of Christ and one of Mary. but the entire procession structure happens for each paso - so Christ has his own set of of nazarenos and penitentes and Mary has her own set of nazarenos and penitentes.
Other things we learned while on the tour:
- no two pasos are alike
- Mary's insides are hollow but her face, neck, arms and hands are real (well, in terms of a sculpture they're "real")
- Her cloak is made of velvet and stitched and embroidered with strands of gold and EXTREMELY heavy
- The canopy or palio that covers Mary is decorated differently for each paso and is always very very very elaborate - usually with more plated gold and silver, lots of mirrored surfaces, more embroidered heavy fabrics, and often times tassels that hang down.
- All of the flowers on the pasos are real - other cities in Spain with inferior Semana Santa festivities use silk flowers (hence their inferiority)
- The traditional Semana Santa snacks are pestiños (Sort of a pita like chip soaked in honey and then folded) and torrija (Think french toast, only not. It's a piece of bread soaked in honey/milk/sugar/wine/???).
- Processions last forever - at least 4 to 6 hours, some go on for more than 12. Very crazy.
- umm and lots of other random facts about Semana Santa that I sadly, cannot quite remember.
Finally Semana Santa began!
Domingo de Las Ramas (Palm Sunday)
Nikki and I dressed up a bit, went to mass at La Catedral and then sat in Puerta Jerez (right outside of La Catedral) for a good hour and a half and people-watched. There were a ton of cute little kids in wonderful frilly dresses, and little suits and ties, and sisters that were matching. There were cute old couples walking around holding hands. And, well, there were MORE than enough teenagers wearing dresses that reminded me more of compression shorts than anything else. After a quick lunch and a trip to the park to read some of my Bible (it was my goal to read through all of the Gospels during Semana Santa) we began the Paso watching.
We somehow managed to sneak through the crowds to the corner of Calle Placentines and Calle Aleman which is the corner next to where the pasos exited the Cathedral. It was a great way to start off the Semana Santa-ing experience. We had more or less front row (there was one group of people in front of us but we could still see just about everything) and we were RIGHT BY THE CATHEDRAL. We were able to see: La Paz, La Hiniesta, La Cena, and San Roque.
Getting away from our corner was a bit of a trial - but my Type-A personality came through and according to Nikki, I "controlled the heck out of that crowd." After we escaped the massive swarm of people and had a bit of room to stretch out we bought some Semana Santa snacks from a guy with a cart and headed in for the night.
Santo Lunes (Holy Monday)
Monday afternoon, after a lazy morning in the park, I seemed to just walk into one Paso after another. I think I ended up seeing ------ Everywhere I went there seemed to be a Paso.
That night Juanma joined me for the Paso-watching fun so that I could have a "true Semana Santa experience." Well... Sadly, Juanma is one of those Sevillianos that leave Sevilla for Semana Santa to avoid the crowds. After pouting about having to walk (rather than drive) into el centro, and walking in every direction imaginable to try to avoid La Avenida de La Constitucion since it's completely blocked off with pasos coming from every imaginable direction. I had faith that Juanma knew what he was doing... yeah right. At one point someone stopped us to ask for directions. He was no help- At all. At that point I knew it was going to be a long night. It didn't help that we couldn't seem to get very far without running into one of his friends, or a friend of his families.
One woman that he knew ended up rescuing me from whatever attempt Juanma was making to "show me Semana Santa" and took us through Plaza Nueva and down Calle Sierpes to catch a paso: Las Penas. While Juanma's friend and I (whose name I sadly cannot remember) were getting to know each other and excitedly talking about Semana Santa, Juanma decided it was appropriate to make an array of jokes and started whining about: how difficult it was to stay standing, how much he had to walk around - his solution was that I should be carrying him, or at the very least pushing him in a stroller. There was a pretty big crowd so all we could really see at first were the tips of the capirotes but once the paso got closer we could smell the incense and hear the drums. At this point Juanma compared the sound of the drums to the footsteps of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and I was slightly afraid that his friend was going to kick us butt, but like all things of God, the paso through just in time to distract her.
After the paso went through I decided Juanma have behaved well enough to finally receive his "Día del Padre" McFlurry. While eating our ice cream we had a lovely "father-daughter" chat about what sort of clothes are and are not appropriate to be worn out of the house. Don't worry - I have yet to fail the test. Instead we both sat there shaking our heads in disbelief: "How did their fathers let them out of the house!?!"
Santo Tuesday (Holy Tuesday)
On Tuesday morning Little Maria and I decided we were going to try to watch the salida (when a paso leaves their home church to begin the procession) of El Cerro in the morning. Well, turns out the church was a bit further away than we had anticipated. Instead we ended up catching in right in front of the business school where I take classes 4 days a week! It was really amusing to watch the groups of nazarenos and costaleros walk into my school's cafeteria for a quick cafe as the rest of their group stopped trying to deal with the lovely mess of construction just a couple blocks away from the school. This was probably one of the largest (in terms of numbers) processions I had seen. There were just SO many nazarenos. As we waited Maria and I taught each other the Lord's Prayer in Spanish and English respectively, and took some silly pictures.
After our adventure I met up with Nikki for our Semana Santa adventure with Javier care of, CIEE. Javier (for some odd reason... I'm guessing our program pays him) decided that he wanted to take a group of Americans around to watch pasos for the evening. So off we went. Running all around el centro. We started in Plaza Alfalfa by Jesus de Las Tres Caidas where we saw San Esteban. After that we went to a place in an area of Sevilla I had never been to before in a tiny little street where everyone was smashed together. We were entertained and slightly annoyed by two little boys that were getting frustrated by all of the people that were trying to cross the street, through the nazarenos, and get from one side to another. (This is one of those things that is much easier said than done.) Finally, Los Javieres (I'm assuming this is why Javier dragged us all the way through Sevilla to see it) brought their paso through. From there we headed back into the heart of the city, and saw Los Estudiantes. Los Estudiantes is a hermandad created from students from the Universidad de Sevilla. It is proud to have the largest number of penitentes in all of Semana Santa, and has representatives from every college/department in the university system. From there we all went our separate ways into the massive crowd and went home for dinner.
Nikki and I had plans to meet at midnight to watch her hermanita as a nazareno en La Candelaria. Well somewhere along the way I got confused at thought we were meeting at 11... so I sneaked into her homestay and we made fun of the Aladdin poster that is more or less her headboard and read a coffee-table book about Minnesota from one of their former study abroad students. Very entertaining. At midnight (our originally scheduled time) we headed back out onto the streets. As soon as we turned off of the street Nikki lives on we ran into her host family - turns out her hermanita was done for the day :( But we had plans to see the paso so we continued on. We were planning on watching the paso go through los Jardines de Murillo, but we could see a paso just about to turn around the corner so we ran ahead to see it - for once a procession was on time rather than a good half hour behind. We ended up catching up with la Virgen and got to stand right next to the paso and walk along side of it for quite a bit down the street. Then we realized that if we were standing next to Mary, Jesus had already been through so off we went running after Jesus. Our first goal was to cross to the other side of the procession so that we could run through the park rather than get pushed up against the walls of the streets. The nazarenos were standing still so we thought it would be a good time to sneak through. Well, the moment we had both stepped into the middle of the lines of nazarenos, they lifted their candles and began to walk so we ran for a few yards in the middle of the nazarenos under the archway of the huge candles until we were finally able to dip out between two nazarenos that were spaced apart a good distance and got into the park. From there it was madness. It was pretty much pitch black in the park and we were running in between and around families, trying not to step on dogs that were playing catch, jumping up and over benches, and finally - we see Jesus!
Santo Miercoles (Holy Wednesday)
Wednesday morning both Nikki and I were exhausted - and quite frankly a bit paso-ed out. We decided we wanted to have a slow, Spanish day. After quick taking care of a few errands, we spent some time in a park and then headed into el centro to find a cafe that had chocolate croissants, tea for Nikki and coffee for me. Well, we should have know better. We didn't make it more than two or three blocks before we ran into La Sed. After watching the Virgen come across the bridge of los bomberos (firefighters - their station is underneath the bridge) we continued on our adventure only to run into the Virgen of San Bernando a few blocks further. From there we decided to get adventurous and head over to the area that Javier took us to in search of our croissants. Naturally, we ran into another paso. Actually, it wasn't a paso - it was a group of people waiting for a paso to start. We were waiting for a salida! After a good hour and a half, standing with some not-so-nice Spaniards, we finally saw El Buen Fin exit their church and head out to walk in the streets of Sevilla.
Santo Jueves (Holy Thursday) y La Madruga
The plan for Santo Jueves was pretty much to take the day nice and slowly since I had plans to watch La Madruga which is pretty much the best night in all of Semana Santa. The processions go all night long and consist of the most famous pasos: La Macarena, El Silenco, Los Gitanos, El Gran Poder... Well, that morning Nikki and I got together at McDonald's to use their WiFi and get to work on a group project we had coming up. Then I spent some time in a park reading my Bible, and headed home for some lunch and a nap. Well, I guess all of the paso watching from earlier in the week caught up to me and I ended up sleeping through my alarm until Friday morning! :( So, I failed and ended up missing La Madruga.
Santo Viernes
On Friday I was able to meet up with fellow Iowa Hawkeye, Kate Singer. We spent the day on the river watching pasos go over el Puente de Triana. We watched El Cachorro and La O and in between the two, (in an attempt to get out of the huge crowd and the hot sun) we walked through the neighborhood of Triana in search of some ice cream. We did indeed find some ice cream - however the woman that served us our ice cream could have used a Coldstone Creamery employee training session. Not only did the concept of, "Service with a Smile" seem entirely foreign to her (like us), but she gave us the most pathetically sad scoop of ice cream that has ever been seen on the face of the Earth and called it an ICE CREAM CONE. I was shocked and dismayed. Luckily we were able to see La O right afterwards, and we watched a Spongebob Squarepants balloon float up into the sky. After the pasos we spent the early evening walking through El Parque Santa Maria Luisa.
Santo Sabado
Kendra returned from her trip to Italy late Friday night so she and I spent Saturday catching up. We started with a study session at Starbucks, did some window shopping in el centro (while surprisingly managing to avoid pasos) and then headed down to the river. We sat out at a little cafe for a couple of hours and enjoyed the warm sun, and then went to El Corte Ingles to buy some snacks for our movie night. Then the pasos came full force. When we were walking out of El Corte Ingles en the plaza el Duque we were literally surrounded. There was no escape. There was one paso that covered one side of the store, and another blocking the other two exits. After a lot of weaving in and out and walking way out of our way just to be able to walk we were on our way home. As we walked back along the river to el Torre del Oro and up to Puerta Jerez we ended up running into yet another paso: El Sol. We watched it for a good half hour and then made our way through it and back home. Just when we were about to sit down to eat we heard what sounded an awful lot like a Semana Santa band. And guess what, it was! And we got to watch all of it from our patio. It was really cool to watch it from up above.
Pascua (Easter)
The plans for my Easter involved waking up at 4 am to watch the salida of the final paso, El Resucitado. That didn't quite work out as planned. Instead I ended up rolling out of bed around 10 am, and sat around with my Bible and some homemade cafe (not delicious) and went on a walk with Kate and explored the parks of Sevilla. It was a very nice, slow, and wonderful day in Sevilla.
.... and that was my Semana Santa. I've realized now that I'm done writing this that it's probably going to seem super boring to you as you're reading it, but I insist- it really wasn't. It was awesome and I am so glad I stayed in Sevilla instead of traveling for the week.
¡Yay for Jesus and Parades!
06 April 2010
April's Fools!
Okay all - so all though my post about Semana Santa (the one that said something like, "Look at the pictures because I'm not going to tell you anything") wasn't on April Fool's Day it was meant as an April Fool's Joke. Sadly the Spanish sense of humor doesn't quite embrace the holiday like we do so that was my lame attempt at having a bit of April Fun!
... I'm still working on writing all about Semana Santa in Sevilla. It's taking awhile, as I bet you can all imagine since concise-ness isn't my strong suit. But it's on it's way!
... I'm still working on writing all about Semana Santa in Sevilla. It's taking awhile, as I bet you can all imagine since concise-ness isn't my strong suit. But it's on it's way!
05 April 2010
04 April 2010
Semana Santa en Sevila
Awesome.
That's all I have to say.
Sorry for those of you expecting one of my novel-length blog posts.
Words cannot describe Semana Santa in Sevilla. Therefore I'm giving you one word - Awesome.
... and a Shutterfly album is above. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and there are 149 pictures, that's 149,000 words worth of Semana Santa.
¡Feliz Pascua! ¡Ha resucitado! ¡Ha resucitado de verdad!
That's all I have to say.
Sorry for those of you expecting one of my novel-length blog posts.
Words cannot describe Semana Santa in Sevilla. Therefore I'm giving you one word - Awesome.
... and a Shutterfly album is above. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and there are 149 pictures, that's 149,000 words worth of Semana Santa.
¡Feliz Pascua! ¡Ha resucitado! ¡Ha resucitado de verdad!
27 March 2010
End of Exams & the Start of Vacation
Well, exam scores came in this week. I got a 9.69 (aka 1 wrong) on my International Negotiation & Conflict Resolution exam, and a 9.25 (aka 2 wrong) on my Marketing exam, and a 6.5 on my Finance exam - what happened there was that I had the right answers, just not quite the way the professor wanted them... so a lot of half-credit on individual questions meant my score went down quite a bit. Oh well, next time I'll just memorize the slides instead of trying to learn the content like other students did. I spent the rest of the day in Puerta Jerez enjoying the sunshine and reading for mi clase horible. And that night a group of girls from my program and I made a spontaneous trip to La Carboneria for a Flamenco show.
Tuesday was a day full of classes. Lots of learning as usual. And it was Julie's BIRTHDAY!!! Sadly, I wasn't with her to celebrate BUT I did sing "Cumpleaños Feliz" in her honor to her Facebook page :) On Tuesday night I went for a run by the river with Sarah and then Kjavascript:void(0)endra FINALLY came back from visiting her boyfriend in Oxford so we caught up and talked all about our weekends.
On Wednesday I had my Marketing class and then went on a tour with a called "Conocer la Semana Santa" - Know/become familiar with Semana Santa. It was fantastic and got me all excited and ready for Semana Santa. (I would have a ton to write about this but I'm hoping to apply all of my freshly gained knowledge during the actual Semana Santa and therefore am going to save it all until I write about Semana Santa itself)! After "Conocer la Semana Santa" I had to race from CIEE in el centro all the way back to FCEYE (a good 25 minute walk) in order to go to my International Marketing Seminario - aka a presentation with a worksheet that we had to complete with some poor Sevilliano students that we forced to be there for part of their grade. Afterwards we had a social at the cafeteria across the street. Sadly my Spanish partners didn't want to deal with me anymore so I made Antonio (one of our wonderful CIEE program directors) and one our the year-long students speak Spanish with me, and in Antonio's case promise to teach me how to Salsa. (I'll be sure to keep you all posted on if/when this happens and how it all plays out!)
Now normally, I dread Thursdays. Not quite as much as Tuesdays since after Thursday I'm usually guaranteed a weekend to recover, but I dread them nonetheless. However, this Thursday brought quite a pleasant surprise. I woke up with an extremely strong craving for Perkins. Now, this is a bit odd considering I'm really not a breakfast person... I think it was more of a craving for coffee. American coffee. A true, bottomless-cup-of-coffee. When class started I still hadn't had any coffee so I casually mentioned it to my professor. About halfway through class she decided we may as well wrap things up (since half of the class was gone for a visit with our program to Morocco - don't worry, I'm going in April!) and we walked across the street to the Coffee Corner. It was awesome. We have two students from Morocco in our class who came with, along with the professor, and about 8 of us CIEE students all crammed into a booth with a small table and four chairs at the end of it. Sadly, I had to run after a quick cup of cafe con leche to go to mi clase horible (where the professor just happens to be the husband of the professor I had coffee with - I'm going to refer to them as Gloria & Antonio). So, clase horible begins - and as I hit the first hour mark I silently pray that God will help me plow through the next hour of class and help me to understand everything that is being said around me (since the day before at the seminario I found out (from the year-long student who just so happens to be taking the same class as my clase horible only at a different time and with the same prof) that all of the Sevilliano students spend most of the class making fun of me) and all of a sudden, people start packing things up and the professor says we can leave. What?! TWO half classes? So, since class was over I decided that I should take the opportunity to go talk to my professor, ask a few questions to clarify some vocab that I didn't understand, and set a date for my final exam since the scheduled date isn't until the end of July. Well, next thing I know I've been in his office for over a hour, I was given a delicious caramel from the town where his wife grew up (My plan is to get even more of these the next time I visit one of their office's) and a pretty little daisy.
After that, my 10-day weekend officially began! My Friday and Saturday were pretty much the same. I played Monopoly with mi hermanita española, took a nap, walked around Sevilla, attempted to shop for new Semana Santa clothes with all the Sevillianos but got annoyed with the crowds and gave up. (Sidenote: last night, well walking through the crowds to watch los Pasos with Juanma, he spent a good half hour mocking me because when someone would bump into me I would say some sort of phrase equivalent to "Excuse Me" or "Pardon Me"... He then had his little tirade that I shouldn't be apologizing for something that wasn't my fault since I wasn't the one that was bumping into people (except for when I bumped into him after trying to avoid bumping into other people, but as well as no, that's one of the hazards of being at intercambio.) That turned into a discussion about how I'm "too nice" and Thank God we ran into someone he knew so we were able to change topics.) Anyways, the weekend was great - very relaxing and a wonderful time of preparation for the great festivities of Semana Santa!
Now it's already Martes Santo, and I have TONS of stories to share about Semana Santa BUT they're all going into a different post! Get your eyes ready, and for those of you who need them, your reading glasses on! It's going to be a long one :) AND, If I can continue to have success (like the awesome photos I've been attempting to upload to previous blog posts) with technological components and the internet you just MAY be able to see a VIDEO of part of a Paso! (If not, I'll give you a Youtube link!)
Tuesday was a day full of classes. Lots of learning as usual. And it was Julie's BIRTHDAY!!! Sadly, I wasn't with her to celebrate BUT I did sing "Cumpleaños Feliz" in her honor to her Facebook page :) On Tuesday night I went for a run by the river with Sarah and then Kjavascript:void(0)endra FINALLY came back from visiting her boyfriend in Oxford so we caught up and talked all about our weekends.
On Wednesday I had my Marketing class and then went on a tour with a called "Conocer la Semana Santa" - Know/become familiar with Semana Santa. It was fantastic and got me all excited and ready for Semana Santa. (I would have a ton to write about this but I'm hoping to apply all of my freshly gained knowledge during the actual Semana Santa and therefore am going to save it all until I write about Semana Santa itself)! After "Conocer la Semana Santa" I had to race from CIEE in el centro all the way back to FCEYE (a good 25 minute walk) in order to go to my International Marketing Seminario - aka a presentation with a worksheet that we had to complete with some poor Sevilliano students that we forced to be there for part of their grade. Afterwards we had a social at the cafeteria across the street. Sadly my Spanish partners didn't want to deal with me anymore so I made Antonio (one of our wonderful CIEE program directors) and one our the year-long students speak Spanish with me, and in Antonio's case promise to teach me how to Salsa. (I'll be sure to keep you all posted on if/when this happens and how it all plays out!)
Now normally, I dread Thursdays. Not quite as much as Tuesdays since after Thursday I'm usually guaranteed a weekend to recover, but I dread them nonetheless. However, this Thursday brought quite a pleasant surprise. I woke up with an extremely strong craving for Perkins. Now, this is a bit odd considering I'm really not a breakfast person... I think it was more of a craving for coffee. American coffee. A true, bottomless-cup-of-coffee. When class started I still hadn't had any coffee so I casually mentioned it to my professor. About halfway through class she decided we may as well wrap things up (since half of the class was gone for a visit with our program to Morocco - don't worry, I'm going in April!) and we walked across the street to the Coffee Corner. It was awesome. We have two students from Morocco in our class who came with, along with the professor, and about 8 of us CIEE students all crammed into a booth with a small table and four chairs at the end of it. Sadly, I had to run after a quick cup of cafe con leche to go to mi clase horible (where the professor just happens to be the husband of the professor I had coffee with - I'm going to refer to them as Gloria & Antonio). So, clase horible begins - and as I hit the first hour mark I silently pray that God will help me plow through the next hour of class and help me to understand everything that is being said around me (since the day before at the seminario I found out (from the year-long student who just so happens to be taking the same class as my clase horible only at a different time and with the same prof) that all of the Sevilliano students spend most of the class making fun of me) and all of a sudden, people start packing things up and the professor says we can leave. What?! TWO half classes? So, since class was over I decided that I should take the opportunity to go talk to my professor, ask a few questions to clarify some vocab that I didn't understand, and set a date for my final exam since the scheduled date isn't until the end of July. Well, next thing I know I've been in his office for over a hour, I was given a delicious caramel from the town where his wife grew up (My plan is to get even more of these the next time I visit one of their office's) and a pretty little daisy.
After that, my 10-day weekend officially began! My Friday and Saturday were pretty much the same. I played Monopoly with mi hermanita española, took a nap, walked around Sevilla, attempted to shop for new Semana Santa clothes with all the Sevillianos but got annoyed with the crowds and gave up. (Sidenote: last night, well walking through the crowds to watch los Pasos with Juanma, he spent a good half hour mocking me because when someone would bump into me I would say some sort of phrase equivalent to "Excuse Me" or "Pardon Me"... He then had his little tirade that I shouldn't be apologizing for something that wasn't my fault since I wasn't the one that was bumping into people (except for when I bumped into him after trying to avoid bumping into other people, but as well as no, that's one of the hazards of being at intercambio.) That turned into a discussion about how I'm "too nice" and Thank God we ran into someone he knew so we were able to change topics.) Anyways, the weekend was great - very relaxing and a wonderful time of preparation for the great festivities of Semana Santa!
Now it's already Martes Santo, and I have TONS of stories to share about Semana Santa BUT they're all going into a different post! Get your eyes ready, and for those of you who need them, your reading glasses on! It's going to be a long one :) AND, If I can continue to have success (like the awesome photos I've been attempting to upload to previous blog posts) with technological components and the internet you just MAY be able to see a VIDEO of part of a Paso! (If not, I'll give you a Youtube link!)
24 March 2010
A Wonderful Weekend Wandering in Sevilla
Last Friday I went on a company visit to the La Gitana winery in Sanlucar. The drive there reminded me of the drive from Minneapolis to Iowa City (only in less than half the time). I got to see a ton of wind turbines! One of our CIEE program directors grew up in San Lucar and came along and provided excellent commentary throughout the day. The winery visit was more a storage facilities of the all the casks and barrels instead of us being able to run around and pick grapes. My allergies didn't enjoy the experience very much since most of the place was damp and musty, but we learned the story of the family that started it and talked about their financial statements and then played a few rounds of tag and hide-and-go-seek while walking through the aisles of barrels.
That night when I got back to Sevilla I had a "date night" with my Señora (Maria) and my hermanita (Maria pequeña). We went into el centro to a book store and I helped Maria pequeña pick out a book to buy. Then Maria pequeña decided she wanted to go to McDonald's for dinner. I'm still confused about the Spaniards obsession with McDonalds. People love it. I mean sure, back in the US there are some die-hard fans. But you have to FIGHT for a table in these places. And they're huge. I have yet to go into a McDonald's here that doesn't have a second or even third floor, and people don't take the food to go. They sit there, and eat it. It's MCDONALDS?! And it's always busy. You're guaranteed to have a line. And they always have 4 or 5 registers open. It's just insane. I don't understand it. I mean sure, I've been there a few times but it's been for a McFlurry... not for an actual meal (except for my first night in Sevilla since there was nothing else open, and once with Juanma (but I had ice cream, not food) and then again with las Marias...) but people are there all the ti me. Spaniards are there all the time. I just don't get it. We made it back home around 11:30 and I pretty much turned around and walked out the door to meet up with Juanma to join him, Juan, and Rafa for their trip to the casino. I spent the first hour or so being a good luck charm - and then eventually tried my luck at roulette. I left 5€ richer! Sadly, Juanma left more than 5€ poorer. But it's his own foolishness. He had made quite a profit and at the end of the night he decided to put it all on red. It ended up being 35, which is black. I won, since naturally I had to go against him and express that I had NO faith in him.
On Saturday morning I slept in until nearly 1. (We didn't get back from the casino until after 4 am.) Then I talked to Julie on Skype for a couple of hours and helped her prepare for their trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to see Dennis and Donna. After a brief Spanish refresher we discussed plans for her manicure so I'm confident they're having a great time. After our chat I went to the CIEE Study Center for an event we had planned with some students who were visiting Sevilla from Morocco. It was great. They played music, brought a ton of clothes we used to play dress-up in, made us some traditional desserts and teas, and held a mock-wedding. It was a ton of fun. We danced and clapped and ate sugary treats. Afterwards I was able to steal my care package from home (complete with running shoes, jelly beans, Swedish Fish and PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!! Gracias a mi Familia!) from the reception office at CIEE (turns out we're not supposed to have our packages sent to the CIEE office... oops!) and then I had a surprise card from my dear friend Lauren. It was a great day for mail for me! Speaking of mail, I apologize to all of you who are anxiously awaiting a postcard. Many of you have probably given up all hope... rightfully so. I've been very disappointed with the postcard selection here in Sevilla, they are all the same and they really do nothing to capture how wonderful Sevilla really is. What's worse, the post office seems to be hidden and it's the best place to buy stamps. Rumor has it it's across from the Catedral. I think they're wrong... I'm buy the Catedral nearly every day and have yet to find it. However, there are plans for tomorrow to continue the great search for a post office!
On Sunday, Maria pequeña and I spent the morning listening to Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers and making up a dance to "Party in the USA." Later I went to church with Nikki and heard all about her great adventure in Malaga that was supposed to be a weekend trip to Birmingham, England. The church we went to was essentially on the other side of Sevilla so we had a nice walk through el centro, over to la Alameda (one of my favorite plazas in Sevilla) and down a small side street to a church called, "Encounter." It was a pretty good time. I have yet to be moved by the message but I can understand everything that is being said, and singing worship songs is a ton of fun and really entertaining. Most of the songs we've been singing are the same that we would sing at campus ministries back home so that makes it a bit easier to sing it in Spanish since I can somewhat anticipate what's going to come next. After church Nikki and I stopped for a McFlurry and ate it like the Spanish people would by sitting down at a table and talking for a hour while our ice cream sort of melted.
... And that was my wonderful weekend wandering Sevilla.
That night when I got back to Sevilla I had a "date night" with my Señora (Maria) and my hermanita (Maria pequeña). We went into el centro to a book store and I helped Maria pequeña pick out a book to buy. Then Maria pequeña decided she wanted to go to McDonald's for dinner. I'm still confused about the Spaniards obsession with McDonalds. People love it. I mean sure, back in the US there are some die-hard fans. But you have to FIGHT for a table in these places. And they're huge. I have yet to go into a McDonald's here that doesn't have a second or even third floor, and people don't take the food to go. They sit there, and eat it. It's MCDONALDS?! And it's always busy. You're guaranteed to have a line. And they always have 4 or 5 registers open. It's just insane. I don't understand it. I mean sure, I've been there a few times but it's been for a McFlurry... not for an actual meal (except for my first night in Sevilla since there was nothing else open, and once with Juanma (but I had ice cream, not food) and then again with las Marias...) but people are there all the ti me. Spaniards are there all the time. I just don't get it. We made it back home around 11:30 and I pretty much turned around and walked out the door to meet up with Juanma to join him, Juan, and Rafa for their trip to the casino. I spent the first hour or so being a good luck charm - and then eventually tried my luck at roulette. I left 5€ richer! Sadly, Juanma left more than 5€ poorer. But it's his own foolishness. He had made quite a profit and at the end of the night he decided to put it all on red. It ended up being 35, which is black. I won, since naturally I had to go against him and express that I had NO faith in him.
On Saturday morning I slept in until nearly 1. (We didn't get back from the casino until after 4 am.) Then I talked to Julie on Skype for a couple of hours and helped her prepare for their trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to see Dennis and Donna. After a brief Spanish refresher we discussed plans for her manicure so I'm confident they're having a great time. After our chat I went to the CIEE Study Center for an event we had planned with some students who were visiting Sevilla from Morocco. It was great. They played music, brought a ton of clothes we used to play dress-up in, made us some traditional desserts and teas, and held a mock-wedding. It was a ton of fun. We danced and clapped and ate sugary treats. Afterwards I was able to steal my care package from home (complete with running shoes, jelly beans, Swedish Fish and PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!! Gracias a mi Familia!) from the reception office at CIEE (turns out we're not supposed to have our packages sent to the CIEE office... oops!) and then I had a surprise card from my dear friend Lauren. It was a great day for mail for me! Speaking of mail, I apologize to all of you who are anxiously awaiting a postcard. Many of you have probably given up all hope... rightfully so. I've been very disappointed with the postcard selection here in Sevilla, they are all the same and they really do nothing to capture how wonderful Sevilla really is. What's worse, the post office seems to be hidden and it's the best place to buy stamps. Rumor has it it's across from the Catedral. I think they're wrong... I'm buy the Catedral nearly every day and have yet to find it. However, there are plans for tomorrow to continue the great search for a post office!
On Sunday, Maria pequeña and I spent the morning listening to Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers and making up a dance to "Party in the USA." Later I went to church with Nikki and heard all about her great adventure in Malaga that was supposed to be a weekend trip to Birmingham, England. The church we went to was essentially on the other side of Sevilla so we had a nice walk through el centro, over to la Alameda (one of my favorite plazas in Sevilla) and down a small side street to a church called, "Encounter." It was a pretty good time. I have yet to be moved by the message but I can understand everything that is being said, and singing worship songs is a ton of fun and really entertaining. Most of the songs we've been singing are the same that we would sing at campus ministries back home so that makes it a bit easier to sing it in Spanish since I can somewhat anticipate what's going to come next. After church Nikki and I stopped for a McFlurry and ate it like the Spanish people would by sitting down at a table and talking for a hour while our ice cream sort of melted.
... And that was my wonderful weekend wandering Sevilla.
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