Las Fiestas de España

Last weekend we went hiking in the mountains in La Alpujarra and to the beach of Salobreña.  My next post will be all about our excursions, and I'll post a bunch of my pictures!  But for now, I'm going to talk about some of Spain's culture.

Lately in class, we have been learning about the different fiestas that happen in Spain.  Some of them are really awesome, so I decided I'd share them with you!  We had to do presentations over the fiestas as our oral exam.  I hope you enjoy all of this as much as Spain does!!  I have added videos of each fiesta.  I tried to keep each video pretty short.  Some of them are really crazy to watch!

The first fiesta is La Fiesta del Charco.  It takes place in Gran Canaries on September 10, and lasts for an entire week.  During one of the days, there is a pool full of water and fish.  When a firework is lit off, it signifies the begin of the fiesta and all the people run into the pool.  In the past, this fiesta was celebrated completely nude.

La Tomatina is in Buñol, and takes place on the last Wednesday in August.  This fiesta is not religious at all.  Basically, it's a festival where people throw tomatoes.  There are millions of tomatoes that are grown for this event each year.  You can't eat the tomatoes because they're only for the fiesta.  After the fiesta, the streets are sprayed with water to get rid of all the tomatoes, it's crazy because they act as a disinfectant on the streets, so the streets are very clean afterward.

Las Fiestas de San Fermín aka El Hombre Contra El Toro (The man against the bull) is a very dangerous festival.  Twelve bulls are released on the streets and people run with them.  They hold rolled up newspapers in their hands to guide/hit the bulls.  Even though this is so dangerous, young people thing it's a challenge for their bodies, but there are many injuries and even some deaths.  The run goes toward La Plaza de Toros.

The next fiesta is La Fiesta de Moros y Cristianos de Alcoi.  This fiesta takes place in Valencia on April 21-24.  It represents the fight between the Christians and Muslims.  April 18-20 are their religious days for this festival, and the dinner for it consists of many fish dishes.  They now have a parade for this fiesta.  I couldn't find any amazing videos, but this one gives you a little taste of what it would be like.

La Fiesta de la Vendimia (aka Fuente del Vino) happens in September in Cataluña.  There is a collection of grapes throughout the year and wine being made.  During this fiesta, there is wine put in the fountains instead of water.

My favorite fiesta that we've studied is Torres Humanas (Human Tower).  Like the previous one, this happens in northern Spain.  It takes place during the summer.  The first fiesta was in 1770.  During this fiesta, people construct a tower out of people, it's absolutely incredible.  The person on the top is always a child, no worries, he/she wears a helmet, but it's still very dangerous.  I would recommend watching this whole video (it's only about 2 minutes long), just because it's so awesome!

La Noche de San Juan happens on the longest day of the year, summer solstice, in Soria.  The fiesta is very long.  A few days before the fiesta begins, they make a huge fire with wood, paper, and anything else they can find.  I believe for those that participate, this is a "path" into their manhood.  I would recommend watching part of this video then skipping to about 3/4 way through it to see what actually happens during the fiesta.

Las Falles occur in Valencia, this actually happened just a few weeks ago in Spain.  Throughout the year, people make huuuugeeee paper mache sculptures and during Las Falles, they set them on fire and watch them go up into flames.  A guy in my class went and said it was really, really cool!  The fiesta starts during the day with small fireworks, but at night is when everything really gets going!

I thought you would find all these different fiestas interesting, and give you a little taste of Spain!

Are topless beaches NORMAL here?!?!?

There are about 1,001 adjectives to describe how amazing this weekend was, but I'll spare you the reading and just show you the pictures to prove it.  My friends and I went to a little beach town called Nerja.  We met up at the bus station at 8:00am on Saturday morning to catch the 9:00am bus to Nerja.  It's about a 2 hour drive, but we soon realized WHY it was a 2 hour bus ride when the bus driver drove slower than a turtle all the way there!  We planned on taking the bus back to Granada at 7:15pm, but those plans quickly changed...  Once we got to Nerja, we were dropped off at what we thought was a random stop in the middle of no where, but later found out that's the bus stop.  It was very weird.  We walked down toward the beach to find a place to eat.

The place we found to eat was a little restaurant that over looked the beach.. Very cool!  The waiter was hitting on Rachel the whole time and asking the boys if we were their girlfriends, even though there were 2 guys and 3 girls.. whatever.  And then the waiter thought James was gay.  It was a very strange and interesting meal, to say the least, but we were just excited to finally be in Nerja and ready to soak up the sun!

Once we started walking down the boardwalk toward we got really, really excited.  Encarna had talked sooooo much about Nerja that we had very high expectations for this city.  Luckily she was completely right about everything and it became the best trip we've had so far!

Once we saw how beautiful the view from above was, we had to find a way to get down there!!! We took a little path that we thought would take us to the big beach, but we found out it took us to the little beach on the left side of the balcony.  This was still an incredible view!

We climbed up and over all the rocks to get to the other side of the beach.. where we wanted to be, but didn't know the correct route.

These are the rocks that we climbed over to get to the other side.  The sand in Nerja is different than sand that we're used to in the US, it's little tiny rocks, so eventually they start hurting your feet if you walk too much!  We managed to get through all the big rocks and finally found the beach!

Haha.. Hannah and I decided to have a photo shoot with the rocks!  The boys wanted to climb the extremely big rocks and jump off them (boys will be boys), so we needed our own activities to do!

The longer we laid in the sun, the more we wanted to stay the night.  We just had to figure out a way to do this, so we went to Cielto Lindo to get guacamole and margaritas to discuss our options.  This was what was put on the menu... It's a complete lie! They're just trying to weasel money out of the tourists.  Luckily we know better and definitely didn't leave a tip!

We decided the first step to staying the night was to make sure we could change our bus tickets to the next day.  It cost us a whopping 75 centimos, so we definitely went for it.  As we were walking away from the bus station, we discovered that we didn't have our map AGAIN! Rachel kept losing the map everywhere we went.  James, once again, saved the day by finding our city map!

We went to the balcony to overlook the whole city to figure out where we would stay.

We decided on a Hostal called Hostal Regina.  It seemed very legit, we each paid 18 euros (25 dollars) and we got 2 private rooms, breakfast, and wifi, that we didn't use.  We went to a little store across the street to find toothbrushes, face wash, and used the sampler perfumes and makeup to make ourselves look presentable to the world.  We hung out by the beach at night, and then got back to our hostal rooms at around midnight or so, talked for 30 minutes and went to bed.  We woke up and went downstairs for breakfast.  Once we got downstairs, there was no one at the desk (which was the bar), no one around anywhere, no breakfast, no nothing.  We sat and waited for about 10 minutes and finally some men came to set up the restaurant that was connected to the hostal and we asked them to call the man in charge of this place.  He came downstairs and we gave the keys back and got our passport information back from him.  During this time, Hannah decided she was going to tell him what she thought about his service.  He wasn't pleased with this, but he was the most unprofessional man alive.  So we went on our way, found some allergy medicine for me,  (I didn't have mine since we weren't planning on staying the night) and went on our way back to the beach!  We stopped and got breakfast at this AMAZING little shop on our way to the beach.  I had the most amazing toast and sunny side up eggs with tomatos.  It was so delicious.  Our day started out a little hazy and chilly, but as we laid on the beach longer, the day got much better!

The girls, again, decided that we wanted to go exploring a little bit.  And since we have a photo contest coming up with ISA, I decided I needed to take some really neat pictures!

We had a running joke about how short I was compared to everyone else.. this pictures just goes to prove it...

By the time we got back on the bus at around 4pm on Sunday, we were beat!  We all crashed on the bus!  Overall, this was BY FAR the best weekend I've had!  Our group was awesome!  Everyone was so laid back and easy going, it definitely made for an amazing trip!  I can't say enough good things about Nerja.  Encarna was right about how beautiful it was.  James commented that FINALLY a host mom was right about how fun and beautiful a city was!

Encarna had surgery today.  Julie told me that she's doing well, but I think I'm going to go visit her tomorrow in the hospital.  She had a very minor surgery on her neck to have a small tumor removed.  She wasn't nervous about it, she was just glad to finally have it done, since she thought she was going to have the procedure done in January!  So I've been hanging out with Julie and Carmen today.. definitely not the funnest day I've ever had in my life.

I thought I had an intramural volleyball game tonight because we won our game last week.  When I got to the volleyball courts, there was no one from my team there.  I think the referee got our group confused with the other ISA group.  That's ok.  I'm going to get Chinese for dinner tonight, I'm excited about it.. a 3 course meal plus a drink and dessert for less than 6 euros.  Can't beat that!!!! 

This weekend we're hiking in La Alpujarra.. it's a part of the Sierra Nevada.  I'll keep you updated on how everything's going.  I can't believe I only have 5 and a half weeks left!  And James leaves next weekend.. our group is going to miss him for sure!

Hope you have a great week!








...and to answer this question.. YESSSS topless beaches are 100% normal!! ..we did not participate!

Tips for Traveling to Granada, Spain

My dad told me a while ago that there are people reading my blog and I've inspired them to travel to Spain!  So with this being said, I decided I would make a list of things for you to do OR avoid when you're traveling in Spain!  Here we go:


-have good walking shoes, you'll be walking everywhere you go


-don't smile at strangers or stare at their kids or dogs, for some reason people don't like when you do this.. I think since we're Americans, they think we're going to steal their kids from them or something.. who knows


-watch out for dog poop on the sidewalks.. since there's no grass, there's no place for the dogs to relieve themselves


-visit the Alhambra and Albaicín

La Alhambra

Albaicín

-stay away from anyone trying to hand Rosemary twigs or flowers or anything, they're gypsies and they'll make you pay for those things if you touch them.. Usually the gypsies have lots of jewelry and make up on

-if you take pictures of the street art (people dressed up like statues or different characters) you have to tip them

-remember that the Chinese shops have the cheapest merchandise

-it's rude to take food to go

-you don't have to tip!!! The servers and taxi drivers make a good hourly wage - just round your bill up to the nearest euro (4.38 round up to 5)

-great people with a kiss on each cheek

-use a purse that slings over your body.. this way it's harder for people to steal it from you!

-don't wear hoodies, shirts with logos, sweats, jeans that flare out, or athletic tennis shoes.. you'll stick out like a sore thumb!

-bring allergy medicine with you.. even though there's no grass, the trees are killer!

-eat a Kabap.. they're AMAZING!

- keep in mind that even though the temperature might be warm, the buildings are so close together that it feels much cooler

-bring an umbrella.. and if you forget yours, there are moros that sell them on the street for 3-5 euros

-some people speak English - but even if they don't speak the language, they are familiar with the USA and basically all the states!

-go to an ice cream shop.. they're fantastic!!!

-be careful with Andalucian Spanish.. they don't say "s" and forget to say the endings to most words

-"vale" = okay

-if you go to Barcelona WATCH YOUR BELONGINGS.. they want it all!

-wear skinny jeans/leggings and boots

-explore as much as you can!!!

-get sangria and tapas

I don't have much else to say today.  Today is the fiesta de primavera, I didn't want to celebrate because it was as mass of drunk Spaniards celebrating, and if it is anything like Cádiz.. I'm OUT!  I'm enjoying the warm weather that we've had lately (finally), after a lot of rain!!!  I'll update you later with the rest of my weekend fun!

Sevilla is the Sister City of Kansas City!!!

Like I've mentioned in an earlier post, I attend class in the Kenia building.  It's about 45 minutes away from my casa, but I've learned to take the bus everyday.  This is the sign outside the building.

I have to walk up a few steps to get to the building..

And once I'm up the steps, I see this very pretty building.  It doesn't look like a school at all.

The front doors with a fountain in front.

Los jardines.  The garden.  You can't eat the oranges from the trees in front of the building, they are too bitter to eat.

A while back, I learned that my friend, Crystal, has family that lives in Granada.  Her aunt and uncle, Debbie and Shawn, do outreaches for University students and are part of a group called Raices, which is similar to a youth group setting, only for college students.  It's the step between the streets and church.  Last week, there was a group from the University of Virginia doing a missions trip in Granada with Raices.  Shawn and Debbie invited me to join some of the activities they were putting on.  One night they had an open mic night.  I decided to go and watch, it was so fun! I met some really fun people!  This isn't the best singing I've ever heard in my life, but it was really fun!  The first video is "A Whole New World" from Aladdin (sung in Spanish)  and the second video is a flamenco show.

The next night, they had an international food night.  There was food from all over the world, it was DELICIOUS!!!!  There were a lot of people from different parts of Spain, the United States, and other parts of the world.

This past weekend, I went on an excursion with ISA to Sevilla and Córdoba.  I'm pretty sure I told everyone in the world that Sevilla is the sister city of Kansas City!  The architecture of the buildings is the same in Sevilla as it is around the Plaza.  Basically, they look the exact same.  There is even an Avenida de Kansas City, but it was too far away to walk to, and no one else had as much interest in it as me; therefore, I wasn't able to see Kansas City Avenue, I was very disappointed!! This was by FAR my favorite excursion that I've been on with ISA.  Sevilla was small enough to be comfortable, but big enough to be fun and be able to explore.  We got to Sevilla at around 7pm on Friday evening; unfortunately, but the time we were ready to walk around it was too dark to really see anything.  I took some pictures from the bus window, so they have a funny tint to them.  

We passed a little tiny gas station on our way to the hotel! So cute!

The river in Sevilla was absolutely gorgeous with the lights shining on it!!

Hannah, Jason, Rachel, Me

As I was taking pictures of the buildings, Brittney jumped in front of my camera.. this is what the end result was!!! Very cool!  As you can see, some of the architecture is very similar to that on the Plaza!

We walked along the river looking for a place to eat.  Brittney has to have meals that are gluten free (which is difficult to find, considering Spain's love for bread!), so we asked just about every restaurant we passed.  We finally found an Italian restaurant that had a few gluten free dishes.  The restaurant was called Mamma Mia.  The owner was very happy that he could prepare a gluten free dish for Brittney.  He ended up giving us a voucher for a free bottle of wine to use at the Mamma Mia in Granada and gave us free shots at the end of the meal!  He was awesome, but our waiter was far from awesome, he hated us!  I had pasta stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese with a tomato/alfredo sauce on top. It was sooooooo good!!!!

The group!

Of course we had to take a Missouri State picture!!! Go Bears!

On the bridge in Sevilla, there were tons of padlocks with names written on them.  They were signifying being together forever.

The tram is really interesting.  I believe it's part above ground and part underground.  It can be very dangerous because there is nothing guarding the tracks.  It's very possible that  people could get in the way when it's coming through the city!

La Catedral

The view of La Giralda from La Plaza de Banderas.. sin banderas!! (The Flag Plaza, without flags!)

The beginning of the tour of Alcazares.  Very pretty place!

This painting is of the voyage of Christopher Columbus!  You can't see it, but off to the left was a recreation of the Santa Maria (I think).

Does this remind you of La Alhambra?!?!

Outside the Alcazares, there were tons of ducks (patos) and peacocks (pavo reales) running around.  One of the peacocks decided to show off for us!

Right as soon as we walked out of our tour, we saw a bride and groom doing a traditional dance outside the Catedral!  They had gotten married in the Cathedral.. I'm so jealous!!! It's the most beautiful place ever!  Watching them dance was VERY fun!

After lunch, we saw a bachelorette party outside the Cathedral.  The bride-to-be was dressed up like a matador and all the bridesmaids were dressed up as flamenco dancers!  They were pushing around a shopping cart with instruments and alcohol.  They were absolutely hilarious.  We paid them one euro to dance for us!

The beginning of our tour of La Catedral de Sevilla.  These pictures don't do this amazing building justice.  I wish I had taken a video of it to make everything more life-like, but I forgot!

The ceilings were sooo high and soo detailed!  Every part of the cathedral was covered with embellishments.

One of the four tombs of Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colón).  There are four tombs around the world to signify his 4 voyages around the world and his passion for traveling.

The most beautiful room in the world!! It's sooooo sparkly!!!

After our tour, we climbed to the top of the Giralda, the tower of the Cathedral!  This is the view of Sevilla from the tower.  It was breath taking.  I took a picture from each side of the tower, but I only posted two of my favorites so it wouldn't take up toooooo much space on my blog!

On Sunday morning, we took a 2 hour bus ride to Córdoba.  We only visited the Mezquita.  It took around 3 hours and ended up raining on us right before we got back on the bus, so that made for a wet bus ride home.. for some people.  Like my dad has drilled in my head: Never get cold, never get wet.  SO, I thought ahead and brought my umbrella with me!  Smart me!

The tower of the Mezquita.  This is a mosque and a cathedral in one.  It is the last mosque left in Córdoba because the Christians destroyed all the others, but since this was part Cathedral also, the Christians didn't want to destroy this precious place.

The Mezquita has 1,013 columns.  The red part is made of bricks, and the white is made of limestone.  This has held up so well because the bricks are somewhat "flexible", so it doesn't crack.

This is the cathedral part..

A video of the Mezquita!  Very cool!

After this weekend, I've been VERY tired, but I'm able to take my daily siesta!  My classes are starting to get very hard, and have homework everyday.  I've been watching TV with Encarna and Carmen every night so I can practice understanding and listening to it.. I think it's helping a lot!

Yesterday, we were watching a game show and Carmen says to Julie (the housekeeper/caretaker) "Is that a boy?!" Julie says, "No, Carmen, that's a fat lady with short hair!" Carmen says, "Are you sure? I think it's a boy!!" hahahaha.. Carmen's hilarious.  I also convinced her that Encarna went to a discoteca last night.  She kept asking where her hija was, so I told her she was at a discoteca and she said "Are you sure?? I can't believe it!!!" lol.. Ohhh Carmen!  

This post doesn't have much writing in it, but during the tours I didn't really pay much attention to the history part, I just wanted the pictures, so I would wander off.  The pictures are more interesting to me than the history!  I would listen to some, but then zone out or wander off and do my own thing! haha.

We will see what adventures this weekend will bring!