Statues, Shops, Smiles, and Snails

Because we had exams last week, most of this past weekend is somewhat fuzzy. It was cool and cloudy, we were tired, I was kinda sick, and we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Well, actually, I knew what I should be doing… writing papers and working on things for my internship so I could actually finish and graduate like most my friends have (congrats to you all). But since that's not very fun, I found a few other random things to do as well.

I started by standing on my balcony and watching a procession go down the street. The was a festival this weekend in the Rocío, one of the places I visited when I spent the weekend at the beach last month. In this largest Christian (Catholic) pilgrimage in the world, people depart Sevilla and other nearby cities in wagons pulled by oxen or horses. They leave from the churches, taking the statues of the virgens and the Christs, and they sing, dance, eat, and drink all the way to the cathedral in the Rocío, a journey taking about 3 days in a wagon. Actually from what I here, it is a very joyful celebration and people do a fair amount of drinking, so it's not the typical pilgrimage that comes to your mind. The procession itself is an interesting mix of culture- the statues make it look like Semana Santa, the ladies in flamenco dresses make it look like Feria, and the oxen and wagons look like the American old west.
On Friday night I and two of my Cedarville friends, Cherith and Cassie, braved the rain to go to Nervión, the mall north of town, to go shopping. We tried to find out how to say "window shopping" in Spanish, but evidently people either don't do that or don't talk about it. Saturday we decided to go back to the Alcázar here in Sevilla to take pictures since we can get in for free. The Alcázar is the old Arab palace, but since the Christian kings lived in for many years after they defeated the Arabs, half of it looks Moorish and half of it looks Gothic.

We had all been before by ourselves or with professors of various classes at the university (lots of important history happened there) so we just enjoyed ourselves in the building and in the beautiful gardens surrounding it. At first we didn't know what this white thing was, but when we discovered it was a statue missing a head and arms, we decided to help it out.

After the service on Sunday, I hung out with some of my international friends from the church. A family from the church also wanted to come hang out with us for a while, so we all went to a restaurant near the church. Pictured here from left to right: Daniel (the kid), Alvaro, Sefora (Italian), Carolyn (American), Lorena (Mexican), Jennifer (British), and me. Marina, the mom of the family, took the picture. It was great to hang out with all of them for the afternoon.In other news, evidently it is snail season here in Spain: every restaurant has a sign that says "there are snails" and at the one we went to they offered them to us at least three times. We were successful in avoiding them until I went home for dinner and saw them in a pot on the stove. Rosario had to teach me how to eat them, and they aren't bad, but I had a stomach ache before I went to bed so I might try to avoid them in the future. For the beginning of this week, I'm trying to make progress on a website at work and finish at least some of those papers, hehehe.