Feria

Sorry it has taken so long for me to update about Feria. I have still be recuperating from the week's festivities.
Feria is a week long "fair" for lack of a better word. All the kids have off from school for the entire week. (yes, a second spring break for me!) At the end of my street there is a giant fairgrounds that holds thousands and thousands of casetas, or these little mini huts. Hut isn't exactly the right word for them because they are more than huts, but I don't really know how to describe them. Hopefully you have already seen the pictures. Well the casetas are owned by families and you have to be invited inside. Inside there is a bar and a kitchen where food and drinks are served and there is lots and lots of dancing. Of course my roommates and I have the hook ups and our Spanish friends have casetas, and have friends that have casetas so we rocked Feria all week long. During the day there are tons and tons of horses that parade around and people show off their money and status. Oh man- it was definitely my worst nightmare. Where there are horses there is horse poop, and where there is horse poop there is definitely a RANK oder. If anyone knows me they know that the one smell I can not stand in this world is the smell of horses. UGH!!! It was so hard not to walk around holding my nose, but I didn't want to be rude. AHHH I hope I never have to smell that again in my life! Jose kept telling me- its ok, once you have a few drinks you won't smell it anymore. haha I love the spanish way of life!
The typical drink of Feria is called a rebujito. Its manzanilla which is this white distilled apple wine that is really really strong and potent, but you mix it with sprite and it is DELICIOUS! probably a little too delicious since my roommates and I spent the entire week drunk. You buy it in jarros (jars) and everyone just takes turns buying one and then you drink it out of these little shot glasses. It is good stuff!
Along with all the casetas at Feria there is also the calle infierno (the street of hell). It is here where you find all the food vender's and the "midway." There are also the "attractions" as Spaniards call them, more commonly known to us Americans as the rides! Let me just say that the rides in Spain would NEVER pass in America. Half the rides you're not even strapped in and they all go WAY faster than they do in the states. Even the ferris wheel goes SOOOO FAST!!! What kind of a ferris wheel goes fast? That is suppose to be the slow romantic, or geezer ride (right dad? remember all our good times on the ferris wheel?) Man oh man I was shocked! But the best ride were the bumper cars, except in Spain they call them the coches locos (crazy cars) which is definitely fitting seeing as how you don't wear a seat belt and they go about 25 miles an hour! They really are crazy cars, but so crazy fun!!! My roommates and I hadn't laughed that hard in such a long time after being on the bumper cars!
Normally we would be out until about 5 or 6 in the morning and then sleep until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, have lunch and then start to get ready for another night at the Feria. Now, you need to know that none of my roommates or I had taken Sevillanos dance lessons before the Feria, but of course that didn't matter because our Spanish friends would NOT take no for an answer when it came to dancing. So how did we cope? Well we bought a few more jarros, drank up, and away we went. All the boys taught us how to dance, and it was so much fun. It's really hard to coordinate your feet with your arms and your hands while not looking at your feet and adding "pasion" or passion as Pablo continually told us. It was a good time. We basically just spent half the time flailing our arms around and moving our feet like idiots! Except for when they pulled us all on the stage to dance in front of everyone that was in the caseta...oh boy....not a good idea! Needless to say we made fools of ourselves, but did it with a smile :) The spaniard women weren't too happy with us since we were "stealing" the spaniard men away from them, but hey- we can't help it if we know how to dance better than them!! We got so many dirty looks from all the girls, but the boys wanted to dance with us, so it's not our fault!
It was a long week, but so worth it! We didn't end up wearing Mama's feria dresses because we were too scared that something would spill on them or something would happen to them, but this weekend we are all going to dress up in them and take pictures so I will be SURE to post them haha!

Side note: 1 month from today I will be stepping off the plane in Boston!!! I can't believe it has gone so fast! It really is bittersweet. I want to come home because I really want to see Mom and Dad, and the rest of the family and my friends, but I really am not ready to leave Spain. It has gone too fast. I can't wait till I graduate so I can move back here! I hope everyone is well, and happy that taxes are over. I know Sean is stoked!!
I miss and love you all so much!!! I can't wait to see you and show you pictures in person and tell all my stories!

Gareth comes on Saturday. We will be spending the weekend in Toledo, a city south of Madrid, and then next week we will be in Portugal for a few days. I'm pretty excited about that!! OH! and... Mama's birthday is on Sunday so we will definitely be celebrating!

BESOS!!!