Semana Santa en Espana

All semester, our program director, Luis, kept telling us how incedible semana santa is and how we have to see it. He even suggested starting spring break later just so we could be here for it. Now, on day 4, I know why he was so adamant about us being a part of it. It really is incredible! I can't believe how much people get into it here. There is atleast one parade every night with hundreds of people of all ages involved. People are dressed up for the parades and there are tons of amazing marching bands and intricate 'floats' carried several miles by groups of men. The floats are extremely heavy (you can tell by how sweaty and exhausted the men carrying them are) and so beautiful. They are decorated with flowers and usually have candles and huge statues. The processions started on Palm Sunday after mass. The second parade was Sunday night and went right down my street! It was so cool to be able to watch it from the balcony.

One of the most interesting (or most wierd) things about semana santa in Spain are the outfits.  They are almost identical to the KKK outfits. Here is a little background i found:
"One of the most striking, and perhaps most eerie, spectacles of the festival are the Nazarenos (based on the people of Nazareth, as the name suggests) in their tall, pointy hats and matching robes with their faces completely covered, apart from their eyes. The sight of hundreds of slow-moving unidentifiable figures in these ghostly, alarming costumes can be a little unsettling, and they are frequently compared to the Ku Klux Klan.

One can be forgiven for believing the Ku Klux Klan and the Semana Santa parades were borne of the same idea, since the costumes of both are practically identical. Despite this, there appears to be no connection whatsoever between the two, although the Nazarenos came first. The Ku Klux Klan used their costumes for disguise, for the Christian connotations and perhaps the fact they were usually white had a racial significance. Although there is the possibility that there were members of the Klan who had witnessed Semana Santa parades and took their inspiration from these, there is no defined link at all.
As for why the costumes are used in Semana Santa celebrations, the origins remain a mystery but the purpose is simple – their faces are covered in mourning, and also as a sign of shame for the sins they have committed throughout the year. "

It is definitely creepy seeing a huge crowd of the Nazarenos marching through the streets - it got a little easier the more parades I watched. The Nazarenos are friendly and even hand out candy to people lining the streets ... pretty funny to see someone that looks like a member of the KKK walk up to a little girl and hand her a pack of gummy bears, but i wasn't complaining when they gave me some too!

Processions are every night and usually start around 7:30 in some random part of the city. They always end on La Rambla ( a main street leading down to the beach) anywhere from 11:00pm - 2:00am! That means the people marching (some as young as 4 and 5) and carrying the floats are doing it for 4-7 hours... every. single. night. Thats dedication for ya.

Here are some pictures from Palm Sunday, the first day of processions

morning parade down La Rambla

evening parade down my street

Tuesday night Processions:

In Alicante, the biggest and most important night of processions in Wednesday, where the processions take place in the village of Santa Cruz (I have posted a lot of pictures from here, its the tiny, pretty neighborhood with all the steps and cute white houses leading up to the castle). These processions start at Plaza de la Ermita, at the top of the santa cruz village, and go all the way down to la Rambla. These are especially challenging because people are carrying these huge, intricate floats down hundreds of steps. The processions start at 7pm and people start lining up for spots as early as 3pm. Bianca and I got there around 430 and claimed our spot against a wall along the stairs. The stairways in santacruz can get very narrow, so there is only enough room for one row of people standing on the stairs in order for the floats to be able to pass through. Spots filled up really fast so im glad we got there when we did. it was the coolest atmosphere in the neighborhood. It is usually quiet whenever I walk through there but now the balconies and rooftops of all the houses were packed with people out to watch the processions. It was really cool to see.

It was incredible watching the people carry floats down the stairs.. way more intense than i thought it would be. The people carrying were so sweaty and some were screaming and looking like they were about to collapse (and we were only about halfway down the stairs!) There were men in charge of each structure that would tell them when to start walking, when to step down, etc. There was also a man in front who I guess was responsible for spotting the float incase they lost control and it started to fall.

As they marched through people reach out to touch the floats (supposed to be good luck) and throw rose petals out from their balcony. Here are 2 videos of the biggest float that came through Santa Cruz (tehre were 4 total) This one barely made it through some parts!



Here are pictures from Santa Cruz!

this one barely made it down.. the cross almost got stuck!



this one was carried by all women. also, the candles
on this one almost caught one of the flags from someone's
balcony on fire.. close call!



Waiting 3 hours on the steps of santa crus was totally worth it for this!

Tomorrow morning at 4 am (yikes) I leave for 16 days of spring break! I start out spending Easter weekend with 4 days in the Cinqueterre of Italy with my room mates Bianca and Jen. After that, I meet up with Michael in Edinburgh, Scotland. We have 2 days there, 4 days in Galway, Ireland, 2 days in Frankfurt, Germany then 2 days in Prague. I'm so excited (but also a little stressed and hoping everything goes as planned!). Cant wait to see all these new places. I won't be able to update here until I get back, but I'll try to post daily pictures on facebook so keep an eye out for those.

Happy Easter to all my family and friends back home! Will be missing my family on easter (and deviled eggs) but will definitely be having a good time drinking wine on my porch looking out over the water in Monterosso.

Cheers!

Open Water Swim!

Today was the day of our 1 mile open water swim in the mediterranean! I signed up a few weeks ago with my roommate Taylor R. The swim was hosted by Grupo-Brotons and was in the town of El Campello (the same place I visited in class on Friday) We left around 9:30 to make sure we had plenty of time to get there and find the place before the swim started at 11. 2 of my other amazing roommates Bianca and Taylor M came to watch and Bianca helped translate the directions for us (did NOT want to risk my spanish on misunderstanding instructions for an open-water haha)

We got there an immediately became extremely nervous for 2 reasons.
1. Everyone around us was wearing wet-suits.
2. It was one of the windiest days all semester .. 20mph. Seriously.

I was beginning to think that wetsuits were required and that we werent going to be able to swim. When we went ot sign in we had Bianca ask and thankfully he said "no pasa nada!" and handed us out chip, cap, and gift bag. The bag included a really cool tshirt, some wierd back-pack thing, an energy drink (until mine exploded in my bag) and a hat. After we were signed up we went over to get ready and watch the first event, the half mile. Taylor had never done open-water before so it was good to be able to watch the other people go first. We were seriously so nervous because the waves were out of control especially for the mediterranean. There are usualy NO waves whatsoever and they were huge! Just our luck. I was hoping for a nice flat swim but that obviously wasnt going to be the case.

Finally it was time to swim! The only other open-water swim i've done was for a charity and this one was for prizes, so it was a little more competitive than what i was used to. people literally sprinted into the water at the start .. it was like a stampede. Me and tay picked a safe starting spot in the back. The swim went pretty well minus the roughness of the water. I was getting thrown around a lot and of course swallowed a ton of water. It only got worse as it went on too, I thought the second lap was a lot harder than the first because the waves got a lot bigger. The only problem during the swim was that during the second lap my chip kept coming loose from my ankle. I had to stop and fix it 6 times and one time, it completely came off (you get fined 30 euro if you lose it!). That slowed me down a lot because I had to keep stopping and scale down my kicking because i was worried about losing it. Taylor and I finished just about 2 minutes apart and both felt pretty accomplished! Afterwards we got a celebratory Kebab (obviously) and I spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach. Cant wait to do my next open-water ... eventually want to try to bay bridge swim!

stampede into the water.. no thanks

piles of people!

me and tay at the finish line!

me crossing the finish line

Today was the start of Semana Santa (holy week) so this week is going to be great. There are different parades and celebrations every night of the week (the biggest and most famous one is wednesday evening starting in the village of santa cruz.. cant wait! I leave Friday for Spring break but I will get to see most of the celebrations and I'll get pics on here asap. Its so cool here!

USAC Day Trip Around the Costa Blanca

Yesterday we went on a USAC day trip to 3 towns in the Costa Blanca: Javea, Denia and Altea. We left at 9 am and took a bus to Javea for a little over an hour. In Javea we hiked to the top of a cliff to get beautiful views of Cabo San Antonio (cape of san antonio) below. It was a really nice hike! Javea is a lot more green than Alicante so we actually got to walk through trees and shade which was a nice change of pace. The hike took about 45 minutes and the views were totally worth it.

USACers hiking to the top



Beautiful Cabo San Antonio in Javea



roomies plus steph and corey at the top!



beach in Javea

After we finished the hike we took a 20 minute bus ride to Denia. In Denia we walked around the town - it was really cute and had lots of great shops. Then we had lunch (provided by usac!) At a Paella restaurant. I didn't have high hopes for this meal since we were a huge group (80 of us) but i definitely underestimated it! We had a full course meal - bread, esalada valenciana, tortilla, croquetas de jamon y queso, grilled veggies, HUGE servings of Paella and chocolate and vanilla icecream for dessert. They just kept bringing more and more food out it was awesome!

Side note: Denia had a store called Ale Hop (they are ALL over spain, including in Alicante) That carries the most random ridiculous items. its kind of like a 5-below (without the good prices) combined with a spencers) My favorite items they are currently selling are scented babies. They have an enormous display of scented babies, both black and white! The white ones all smell like "baby scent" while the black ones smell like ... chocolate. I wish I could say I was making this up. I also wish I could buy them for everyone as souveniers but they are a littleeeee bit bulky for my suitcase. Hopefully a picture will do.

I also love how most of the black babies have
crooked/backwards/upsidedown visors.. seriously?

After Denia we went to our last stop, Altea, which had a town similar to Santa Cruz but bigger. We climbed to the top of the town and got some good views of the sea, the white houses and the cliff we climbed in Javea. Afterwards we headed home - it was a long day and everyone was so exhausted.

window in Altea

Flamenco y El Campello

Hola! This past week was fun.. lots of activities and great weather!

Tuesday night we went to a flamenco show with USAC. It was nice that they planned something like this for us .. the shows can get pretty expensive so it was great to not have to pay. Everyone got all dressed up and met at the theater (Teatro Principal) down the street from my apartment.



Teatro Principal




Inside the theater

(i didnt bring my camera so i got these from google images)

The show was awesome! It was was different then I expected. The dancers werent wearing typical flamenco dresses like i've always seen. It followed a story line (kind of like a ballet) so they wore costumes that went a long with the story. The dancers were sooo good and I couldn't get over how old some of them were. Some of the men were in their 60s and i couldn't believe how fast they moved their feel. It was really cool to watch. At the end of the show we clapped for about 15 minutes. Not an exaggeration. It must be some flamenco show tradition because the curtains went up and down 3 separate times and we literally clapped for 15 minutes before it was over. Wierd.

Thursday I had my final exam for my european union class. It was an oral exam so we had to pick a 15 minute timeslot to go in and talk with the professor. We were allowed to work in pairs so me and Corey were together. Everyone else that went before us told us they were allowed to pick their topics - they basically walked in the room and he asked them what htey wanted to talk about, then he sent them outside so they could have 15 minutes to prepare. Since we heard that we didnt stress out about studying too much but I stayed on campus til I was done class at 1 until my exam slot at 5:45. However, the professor threw us a curveball when he instead GAVE us a topic to talk about. It was pretty stressful and frantic trying to prepare for it but overall i think we did ok (this is the only class i actually need at UMD, so as long as I get at least a C then I'm fine!)

Friday during spanish class our teacher took us to El Campello, a town outside Alicante about 20 minutes away on the tram. We saw the archeological sites there which were pretty cool. We were supposed to swim in this ancient roman fish farms but it was freakishly windy and cool so we opted out. Can't wait to go back on a nicer day! We also got to meet my teachers Mom and Sister. Her mom lives in Campello and her sister is in town visiting so that was fun too.

Switzerland!

This weekend I went to Switzerland with my parents and Corey. We left friday morning and arrived in Geneva around 2pm. We had the best views i've ever had from a flight! We flew right over the alps and lots of rolling green hills. Once we got to the airport we rented a car and drove to Montreux, where we would be spending the first day and night (note: driving in switzerland is leaps and bounds easier than driving in spain). The drive was amazing. We had bright blue skies and constant views of the alps. We drove through bright green fields and a bunch of fields with tiny bright yellow flowers.. It looked like a painting! After and easy, hour-long drive we arrived in our cute little hotel.

Montreux is absolutely the most beautiful place i've ever been! The hotel had views of Lac Leman (lake geneva) with the alps in the background. Spring was the perfect time to come because everything was in bloom. There were tons of Different types of flowers lining the lake and all the streets. The buildings were all old and beautiful. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and quickly got started on our day.
Our first stop was A castle called Chateau de Chillon. It was SO cool and SO different from any of the castles we had been to around spain. We took a 5 minute bus ride to get there and it was right on the lake. We were lucky that it was almost completely empty when we arrived. There were tons of rooms to go in and each one had HUGE fireplaces (almost the size of my room in spain) that are still used! We wandered through the old bedrooms, dining room, and latrines (a concrete whole that dropped about 4 stories to the ground... Gross) and made our way up to the top of the tower. The views of the alps and the lake below were so amazing!

Castle courtyard

castle courtyard

dining room

one of the bedrooms

latrine!

view from the top!

one of the passage ways around the courtyard

After we were done at the castle we decided to walk back to the hotel (the sign said about an hour walk). There was a nice walking path along the lake. We made a stop at a tiny little beach area where some people were grilling and having a cookout (I MISS COOKOUT FOOD MORE THAN ANYTHING... And chipotle!!!!) I put my feet in the lake.. A little chilly. We continued on our walk along the path stopping every few seconds to take pictures of the flowers.. There were countless differe t kinds, all brightly colored and lots i had never seen before. Everytime we turned around to look back at the mountains it seemed like the view was just better and better.

We made it to downtown Montreux just in time to see the sun set over the lake.. Pretty incredible!
After sunset it was time to grab some dinner. Just as the alps at breathtakingly beautiful, everything in switzerland is breathtakingly EXPENSIVE. Breakfast for ONE person ran from 25-30 francs (francs are about equal to the US dollar) and dinner started around 40 francs. It was unreal! Luckily we were prepared for this so we didnt have high expectations for meals. There were some places to get basic pasta (19fr) and a slice of pizza (8fr) but we settled on a delicious meal at mcdonalds. (no really.. It was delicious i haven't had it in so long!) i got a quarter pounder (called a royal burger in switzerland) a medium fry and drink for 12.50fr.... Bargain? Corey tried the ever-famous CBO (chicken bacon onion) which is the big thing in mcdonalds everywhere in europe. It didn't let her down! After dinner we went back to the hotel to drink so wine on the patio at the hotel.

no dollar menu here...

Saturday morning we headed up to the alps! We went to a peak called Rocher de Naye. A train took us up to the top of the mountain and was packed woth skiers ranging from age 3 to age 80. It was crowded but definitely an experience. I would ride it just for the views on the way up! It was a tiny, old, 2-car train that some how made it up the steepest slopes of the mountain. People got on at stops where there weren't even any houses in sight. Everyone was decked out in ski gear and 2 plain-clothed train employees worked their way through the train offering free croissants and coffee. There was barely any room to moved but they had a basket and a coffee thermos and they made it work!

one of the many awesome views from the train ride!

The views from the top were absolutely unreal. I can't get over how lucky we were with weather. The skies were completely clear and bright blue and temps were in the 70s. We had amazing views of the mountains and down below. At the top there were cool little eskimo huts that you can rent to stay in. They had 4 small beds and a small set of tables and chairs and a space heater. I think i would pay any amount of money to be able to stay there and walk out of my room on top of the alps.

one of the huts you can stay in

inside of the huts ... so cute!

While waiting for the train to go back down, we watched all the people skiing. The swiss definitely make the season last as long as possible. There wasnt much snow left, just enough for a short slalom run down. It was so good to watch the slalom.. I've only ever seen in on the wii and on tv for the olympics. It was esspecially amazing to see the little 3 year olds doing it! They made it through all the gates and even did a few jumps. It was so funny tp sese these tiny little things dcked out in intense ski gear and doing something that i would fail miserably at.

After taking the train down we packed up and hopped in the car to head to Geneva. Because we were leaving so early sunday, we stayed in an airpport hotel. Once we arrived we jumped on the tram and went to downtown geneva. Geneva was also beautiful and much more crowded. It was so hot too! It got up to 76 degrees which we were not dressed for. Peole were laying in bathing suits on the grass all around the lake and there were even a lot of people swimming. Lake geneva has a huge water spout that shoots really high into the air. The lake, the water spout and the mountains in the background made for a pretty view! We walked along the lake for about an hour before dedciding on kebabs for dinner. We spent the rest of the night relaxing with somew wine at the hotel and gooing to bed early. Our flight left at 630am sunday so we had to get sleep.

(fun fact about switzerland: the Y and the Z on their keyboards are switched. Why? No idea. Annoying? YES!)

This was an amazing weekend. Montreux was easily the most beautful place ive ever been (though it is hard to compare beach-beautiful to mountain-beautiful!) but i still have 6 more countries/cities to visit so i guess ill let you know :)

My parents leave today and it was so fun having them here! I cant believe Maura and my Parent's visits have already passed. Here is a rundown of what I have left:

I have this week of school (including a final for my EU class on Thursday... Cant wait for that to be over!) and a USAC day trip to Javea on saturday. Also I signed up for an open-water swim for sunday! I'm so excited! Its one mile in the meditteranean from Alicante to a town calked El Campello and back. After doing my first open water swim 2 miles in the brown-murky bay last summer, it will be so nice to swim in nice, clear water. My roommate taylor signed up to do it with me so it should be fun!

The week after, I have 3 days of school, Semana Santa celebrations (spanish holy week.. Supposed to be really cool) on wednesday, then 3 weeks of spring break to Cinqueterre, scotland, galway, germany and prague. Spring break is followed by one  last week of school, a possible weekend in Ibiza, one week of relaxing in alicante then 10 days in rome and santorini, greece with my best friend colleen and phil and mark! Then home...AHH!

Still having the time of my life, still don't ever want to leave, and still can't wait to see everyone at home!
Xoxo