!La Feria de Sevilla!

The next week was Feria! This is another week-long celebration the second week after Easter. Many cities/towns in Spain have ferias (fairs) but Seville’s is the most famous. The feria is a fair where everyone dresses up in traditional flamenco dresses, rides in horse-drawn carriages, and spends most of the time in casetas. In the fairground (which is right near where I lived!) there are more than 200 of these colorful little booth/tent things set up called casetas. They have tables and chairs and room to dance and usually a bar in the back. Some are small, belonging to the families or a group of friends; some are big, belonging to companies or other groups. Most all of these were private so we couldn’t go in. There were other public ones though, like those belonging to the town hall or political parties that anyone could go into. Basically everyone just goes in these things and eats, drinks (Spaniards always eat and drink at the same time, so they don’t normally get drunk!), and dances all night! These people sure know how to enjoy themselves. Even the rain didn’t stop a lot of them from getting out.

So on Sunday night we saw the “Alumbrao,” where they turn on all the lights of the portada (the entranceway) and the whole place at midnight. It was really cool! Unfortunately, we still had classes though through Wednesday so we didn’t go back Monday or Tuesday but it was raining anyway. (It was funny because it rained some that week and Semana Santa but the week in between the two was beautiful weather!) On Wednesday afternoon I was planning to go back to school and turn in some homework and use the internet but I ended up dropping everything because my host brother, Jose Manuel, and his girlfriend, Isabel, came home and invited me to go with them to Feria! (In case you are worried, my teacher had said it was okay if I had to turn in my homework late! hehe) I was really excited because he had already told me he had gotten a ticket for me to go to his company’s caseta at some point and I felt really lucky because most students don’t have the opportunity to go into private casetas (which are supposedly better than the other ones). I was kinda nervous though because I was going by myself with them and didn’t know what to expect. It ended up being a lot of fun! During the afternoon we just sat and had tapas and drank rebujitos (little cups of manzanilla, the wine they drink at feria, and 7-up or Sprite). We were with one of Jose Manuel’s professors and coworkers, then some other friends joined. It was kinda boring at first because when they got in their own conversations I couldn’t hear well enough to follow because there was loud music. I was also distracted by watching the people around us dancing and socializing, especially the girls in their flamenco dresses with all their jewelry and hair all done, everything was so pretty and bright and colorful! I did talk some, mostly to Isabel. When they addressed me I could normally understand them fine. It was funny though because as we sat there they kept refilling the rebujitos and I kept having to say no or I just wouldn’t drink it. I’m not really sure how much is too much for me and I can see how it would be easy to lose count of those little cups! By the end of the night they finally just ordered me a coke J

Anyway, after everyone had drunk a bit they were in the mood for dancing. Some other guys that they knew came up and they all tried to convince me to dance Sevillanas (traditional dance done with a partner during feria) because I was in a Sevillanas class at my school. Jose Manuel got me to dance with him and then I danced with this other guy who didn’t really know what he was doing. It was probably some of the worst dancing I had ever done because I was so nervous being watched by all these random Spanish guys I barely knew! On top of that, I was only used to dancing with other girls in our Sevillanas class (there was only one guy in my class) and the natives do it all their own style which is totally different, and I was still in the process of learning it to begin with! It was funny though and they didn’t care. I danced with Isabel later and this other girl named Maria Jose and they helped me a lot and it was really fun. I was really glad I knew the dance! Later we got up and went to the dance floor and just danced however. Even though I didn’t know any of the songs like they did I still had fun dancing. They introduced me to a random Spanish guy who actually apparently lives in Miami now; he asked me something about Hillary and Obama and I said I supported neither and he just couldn’t believe it. He was like, “You are too young to be a Republican!” He later said that even though I am a Republican I still have to dance, lol. I met this guy from Belgium too, who was really nice, and then a girl from England, too. But we ended up having to leave kind of early—1:00am—very early for Spaniards! I later found out (Magdalena had happen to found out from Jose Manuel about a week later and told me lol) that one of the guys that we had been with us the whole night who had been like a friend of a friend of Jose Manuel had been hitting on Isabel so that’s why they wanted to leave. That guy was pretty drunk and all over the place; apparently his girlfriend (who was there as well) made him call later and apologize to Jose Manuel because he didn’t remember doing any of it. I was pretty clueless about the whole situation at the time though. On the whole I had a great time, and I was super happy to have a little bit of a genuine Spanish experience!!

The next night I went to Feria with Leigh. We rode one of the amusement par rides and then got a bocadillo in a public caseta. Then we walked around some more and ate chocolate covered apples. We eventually ran into another group from our school and there were some others who were in the class so we all danced and had a lot of fun. It was so nice to dance with guys that actually danced the same way I had learned! We tried to change it up and do some different stuff we saw the natives doing…weren’t very successful but it was really fun nonetheless. Then I walked home with Leigh at about 1:30am and packed to leave for Portugal the next day!