Portugal, Semana Santa, Bull Fights, and Beyond!

Since my last entry I have been experiencing some pretty crazy cultural activities in Seville along with enjoying a very chill vacation in Portugal. Easter in Spain brings rise to a week long holiday/celebration called 'Semana Santa' (Holy Week). For many Sevillians it means a busy week of balancing work with celebrations in the streets, for us students it means VACATION!

For 5 days I went to a beach town in Portugal called Albufeira with 4 other students (Craig, Mike, Haley, and Carine). Basically, we laid on the beach a lot, played volleyball, cooked awesome food (pancakes, french toast...), played a lot of cards, and explored the town a little. I guess I'll just hit 2 of the hightlights. First, we played a lot of cards in the apartment. One night we started playing a great game called President around 10:30. The next time I checked a clock it said 3:30. At that point we were still feeling alright and decided to keep playing, soon 5 am rolled around. By then we were feeling a little drained, but someone threw out the idea of staying up to go watch the surise over the ocean, sweet idea! at about 7:30 we headed out to the beach; upon arriving we realized that there was one big problem: the sun sets above the ocean in Albufeira, it rises bhind the town and some big rocks! Needless to say, we laughed a lot about that and headed back to the apartment to crash. The second highlight, and actually the highlight of the whole trip, occured the last night. The 5 of us hiked out to the beach, found some wood, and built a grand fire on the beach. We sat in a half-sphere cut out of a big rock on the beach. As we sat around and told stories and laughed we looked out from our rock shelter upon the fire, followed be 100ft of beach, waves crashing on the shore, glistening reflections of the moon off of the ocean, and a bright full moon straight in front of us in the sky; it was a gorgeous night and a beautiful experience.

When we returned to Seville we were able to expereince some of the Semana Santa events. (The two biggest festivals in Spain are Semana Santa, in Seville, and Feria, also in Seville in one week.) During Semana Santa brotherhoods (hermandads) carry big, gold covered floats (pasos) that depict the passion week events through the streets, along with candles, a band of trumpets and drums, and a section of them carrying crosses. I wasn't sure what to think of this deeply rooted Catholic tradition when I first heard of it (partly because the men in the brotherhoods where hoods like the KKK), but after seeing the Pasos I found the events to be very respectful and moving. It was a good experience and hopefully a great tool of witness.

Besides Portugal and the Semana Santa celebration I have experienced 2 other great cultural experiences in Spain. First, I went to McDonalds with some friends and ordered a Big Mac, fries, and a Mahou beer! Yep, the worker went over by the fountain pop dispensor and filled my plastic cup up with Mahou keg beer, what an odd and humorous thing for us Americans to see. The second great cultural experience was going to a bull fight! I actually debated whether I should go or not because it seems a little cruel, but I decided seeing it would help me understand it better and make an educated judgement. As I was walking to the Plaza de Torros I was excited to see that the event I was about to attend was being loudly protested by about 200 animal rights activists. Anyway, the bull fight basically consists of the following: funny dressed men waving pink capes and then dodging bulls (which doesn't look hard), followed by a man on a protected and blind folded horse stabbing a charging bull, then men running straight at a charging bull with the goal of jumping up and to the side to jab 2 decorated sticks into the bulls back, and then the main bull fighter does some fancy dodging with a red cape and makes the crowd a little excited, and finally he takes a sword and stands in front of the charging bull and attempts to shove the sword down the back of the bull all the way to the hanlde, resulting in the death of the bull. This occurs with six bulls during the night and we saw one guy get tossed and almost stepped on by a bull, another got caught in the leg by a horn one time and tossed about 6 feet in the air another time, and a bull digging his horns into the ground during a charge resulting in his flipping straight over, hind legs over head, back on the ground. After watching a bull fight I am still not sure whether I should be in support of such an event, but it was really cool and the time in which I felt the most like I was actually in Spain.

I guess that's the update for now. I have a week of class and then a big break for Feria (hiking and camping on the Island of Mallorca for 6 days followed by a couple in Madrid with the Krull family). The crazy times in Spain keep on rolling!