Carnaval en Cádiz

I survived Carnaval! Ha. Carnaval is a carnival (go figure) in Cádiz, a town on the beach that I have mentioned before. It is a mixture of Halloween and Mardis Gras in the United States, so you can only imagine what it was like.

We went with a company in Sevilla, WeLoveSpain, that caters to students in Sevilla (particularly Americans). They had a trip that we paid for which included a bus ride to and from Carnaval with a bocadillo and a beverage. It ended up being mainly Texas Tech students from our program on our bus, so that made it really fun!

Here's most of our Texas Tech group while waiting on the bus before leaving Sevilla.

The entrance to Carnaval was all lit up and it then takes you to a certain section of the town where the carnival takes place. There were various concerts in different plazas and lots of food stands set up all throughout the streets with everything from cotton candy and candy apples to grilled hot dogs. A lot of the streets were decorated with lit up Carnaval decorations. The streets were packed solid with people and it was just one big...party. There really wasn't anything more to it (that we saw, at least). We were kind of afraid to wander off too far because we knew where we were supposed to meet the bus to catch our ride home and we didn't have a map or anything to show us how to get back, so we just walked as far as our mental maps could take us.

Here's a view of the streets in Cádiz...it was pretty insane but so much fun!

The costumes were crazy and so much better than your typical American Halloween costumes - everyone went ALL OUT. I loved it. My group went for something a little more easy/cheap for us. We dressed up as Las Animales de Fiestas, or Party Animals, or animals with party hats on - ha. :) 

Here's a pic of the Party Animals. There were quite a few guys dressed up as animals too, but they didn't have the party hats on. They were, instead, just decked out in head-to-toe animal costumes.

All of the costumes served as most of the entertainment for the night. It was basically a night full of people watching at its finest. Overall, it was a fun night, great experience, but was incredibly exhausting and I don't think I need to do it again - at least not for a very long time, haha. All in all, we left Sevilla around 10 p.m. or so, and were supposed to leave Cádiz around 6 a.m., but we didn't end up leaving until around 6:30 a.m. We finally got back to Sevilla a little after 8 a.m., and after taking a cab ride home (because the walk was too long for our exhaustion to endure) we were home and in bed by about 8:45 a.m. Whew, long night is an understatement. I was practically up for 24 hours on Saturday! So...Cádiz was a good time and I think we are all still recovering from our lack of sleep. Last night, (Sunday) I was in such a deep sleep that I didn't wake up once until my alarm went off the next morning, and at that point I was half way off of my bed, but apparently it wasn't bothering me one bit! Ha.

Only 4 more days until my parents come to see me! Woooo! :) I am SO excited to see them and show them around Sevilla. I don't exactly know what we're going to do, but just being able to show them a day in the life of Paige in Sevilla will be fun in itself. :)

I hope everything is still going well in Texas. This semester is going to be over before I know it! I've also already decided that I am eating at Rosa's on the way home from DFW Airport...and I CANNOT wait. One crispy beef taco plate and a LARGE UNSWEETENED ICED TEA - here I come!

Prayers, Love and Hugs!

Paige

Half Way Through!

We got back from our weekend getaway to Lisbon, Portugal, Tuesday afternoon. The week prior to Lisbon was full of all kinds of quizzes, tests and projects to end our first mini-mester. It was a definite breath of fresh air to have a relaxing weekend removed from school for a few days. Lisbon is an amazing city! It is very hilly and colorful. A lot of the buildings are done in pastel colors and there were all kinds of murals and graffiti on many of the buildings, as well.

We left early Saturday morning and drove 6 hours to Lisbon. After making a stop at the hotel, we went to the monastery.

I know a lot of the buildings look alike, especially through pictures, but I figured I'd show a couple.

After the monastery, we went to the bay area to take pictures and hang out for a while.

There were sailboats everywhere! It was like something you would see in a movie. It made me want to sail around the bay of Lisbon all afternoon. :)

The bridge in this picture was built by the same company that built the Golden Gate Bridge - I'm sure you can't tell at all, ha. It was actually built 25 years after the GGB. This is the bridge that we entered into Lisbon on. When we left Lisbon we left on the second longest bridge in the world and the longest bridge in Europe. I didn't get a good picture of that one though. Behind the bridge in this picture, you can see the really tall statue - that is El Cristo Rey. On Sunday morning we went to the top of El Cristo Rey and had a fabulous view of the city!

Views from El Cristo Rey.

Here's some other Portugal landscape that we saw on our way out of town - I loved it!

Overall, Portugal was a pretty slow weekend. We did a lot of just hanging out together...not too much site-seeing. We were all so exhausted from the past week of stress and finals that I think it was just nice to relax and not do much. We had all of Sunday and Monday free to do what we wanted, and we did a lot of walking around and exploring the city. We went to a flea market and a cool look-out point. We also ate dinner (twice) at a Brazilian/Portuguese restaurant with all the different types of meat that are brought around on skewers. It was SO good and SO cheap compared to any restaurant similar to that in the States. Lisbon is home to the largest mall in Europe, but would anyone believe me when I said I didn't go? Ha. I didn't end up making it to the largest shopping mall in Europe. :( It was on the opposite side of town and was a little complicated to get to, but it is probably for the best that I DIDN'T make it there because now I actually have some money left to my name. :) The Portuguese language is not my favorite. It's very similar to Spanish when written out, but when it's spoken it sounds a lot more like German or Russian to me.

That's about it for Portugal. Life in Sevilla is still going strong! One of our final projects was to make a 7-10 minute (approx.) video corto (short video) in Spanish. Basically, we had to make a Spanish video over anything we wanted to, so my group did a Spanish rendition of the movie "Mean Girls." It was actually really fun making it and it turned out pretty cute! Last Friday, we had a showing of all of the videos from our entire class and, after watching all of them, the teachers voted on awards for best actor, best actress, best script and best movie. WE WON BEST MOVIE! Haha...it was pretty exciting for us, especially after all of the work we put into it, but it was also a big surprise to us! We each got a little Spanish "Oscar" - statues of the Giralda in Sevilla. I'm pretty sure each one of our statues has broken already, but it's the thought that counts. :) I will try to upload the video to the blog at some point. I'm still working on trying to get it on my Facebook for those of you that can see that. I'll keep y'all updated on it though!

Here's a shot of the river where we go hang out. I thought this picture gave a good idea as to what it's like. Last Friday, after class, we all went to the river and hung out all afternoon. It was SO warm! I was in a tank top, shorts and sandals in February!

Tomorrow night we are going to Carnival in Cádiz. It is basically one huge carnival that is similar to Halloween in the States because everyone dresses up. It should be quite an experience...I have heard you either love it or you hate it, so we'll have to see how it all plays out! I think it will be fun regardless. :)

We started our new classes on Wednesday after our trip to Portugal. Those are going well, but I can already tell I'm going to have a lot more homework because we have a lot of reading to do for these two classes (especially considering one of them is Spanish Literature). They should be good though...I'm just looking forward to learning more Spanish!

Yesterday, for our Life and Culture class, we went to the flea market in Sevilla. It is a small market that takes place every Thursday - El Mercadillo de Jueves. We were required to go with the class, find something we wanted and bargain the price down to 5 euros or less. It was definitely an experience - talk about some junk. There were all kinds of booths set up with everything from books and jewelry to hardware for cabinets and sticks tied together with some string. I found a watch I wanted for 3 euros...I tried to bargain it down to 2 euros, but the guy said it was "originally 5" so he couldn't give me any less than that (all in Spanish, of course), so I took the watch anyways - ha. I also got a red and black necklace (good for some Texas Tech game days!) for 1 euro...it was originally 2 - haha. Apparently I'm not the best bargain shopper, but the stuff was cheap to begin with! Then again, I can't say I had too much faith in that my watch would actually work, but I've been wearing it since I bought it and it's still ticking!

I guess that's about it. My parents will be in Sevilla in EXACTLY one week!!! I couldn't be more excited. My 21st birthday is in 11 days, my parents will be here soon, I'm living in Europe...life doesn't get much better than this! :)

Best wishes, thoughts and prayers to Texas!

Abrazos,

Paige