Día de San Valentín; Día de los enamorados

Buenas Noches! I hope you are all having a lovely Valentine's day. I know I did, spending it with my friends Alli, Kristen, and Will over a bottle or two of red wine and some chocolate. You don't have to be in a relationship to celebrate! But here is a link to one of my favorite websites postsecret's Valentine's clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzq3srbYEUY (you may have to copy and paste the link). It's just a refreshing way to look at a very commercialized day.


Anyways, to the Spanish news! I am still loving Sevilla, even though it has been cold and rainy, to the point where the native Sevillanos are talking about it every day. I was able to do a little exploring this week. I saw the Plaza de Espana (featured in Star Wars Episode II--who knew?). It's absolutely beautiful, even though there is a ton of construction at the moment. I went running (again--who knew?) in the Parque de los Principes and Parque de Maria Luisa. They are both amazing, though Maria Luisa is much bigger and has a ton of really awesome spots in it. It might be one of my favorite places that I've found so far. And it's only a 20 minute walk from my apartment. Saturday I went to the archeological museum with some friends and saw a ton of great pieces taken from Italica, the city I visited last weekend and wrote about in my last blog. There were a ton of broken-nose statues and half-columns, but they were still really cool to look at. Outside of the museum was the Plaza de America, which was just absolutely 1000% full of birds. You can stand in the center and they will just land on you (and probably poop on you), so I avoided getting too close, but it was such a strange sight to see. Those darn pigeons are still forgetting about the deal! Tuesday night I saw my first flamenco show, which is a native Spanish dance involving elaborate costumes and hand clap things. It was really entertaining and the dancers are definitely talented. I have never seen men or women move their feet so fast, even having seen Riverdance once or twice on video. The dancers are very much into the character they are portraying, which made it more enjoyable to watch. The picture I put up does not give the show justice, because for a 2 hour show, the 7 dancers changed clothes about 5-10 times each depending on how many scenes they were in. I also made it on Wednesday night to the raggae club, apparently a local hotspot for the Hippies (Dad, I can take you when you visit). I have never been in a smokier room and my clothes reek of cigarettes, but it's all part of the experience!

Last night (Saturday) I took a 9 pm bus to a southern city Cadiz for los Carnavales. This is basically a huge outdoor costume party. And it's not like a regular costume party with your token witch and cowboy. Every single one of the more than 20,000 people there are completely dressed up...as bugs, clowns, mimes, everything. Many men dress as women. My friends and I were the Spice Girls plus our Manager, the Lady Bug. I was, as you definitely guessed, Scary Spice. I think we all know that made the most sense. After an hour and a half bus ride down to Cadiz singing along to the radio, which played everything from Shakira to Spanish pop music to Alanis Morsette, I was ready to party. And it was the craziest scene I've witnessed probably ever. We walked the streets (and hung out sketchily past our welcome at 2 tapas bars and Burger King) and danced until 2:30 am when we had to catch our bus home, which can only be likened to trying to get on a lifeboat off the sinking Titanic (sorry to any Titanic survivors or relatives), but it was cut-throat. I lost 3 of my bandmates and our manager, but we all made it home safely at 5:30 am (much to the unhappiness of my senora and her husband, who were not too happy to hear my roommates and I laughing about our experiences at that hour). After apologizing the next day, Carmen and Jose were thankfully no longer mad, and dinner was delicious.

School-wise, I have my first exam/text/quiz tomorrow (these words never really translate exactly into Spanish), so the degree of difficulty will be unknown until I get to class tomorrow.

Have a wonderful week, I'll post again soon! OH, and in other AWESOME news, I have trips booked to Morocco and Ireland (for St. Patrick's day). So be jealous ;)
Love,
Aubrey,