Feria

It has been far too long since I've posted. It's because I really haven't had much to write about. Things have been very chill the last two weeks.

This week, however, is Feria. Feria is the annual celebration in April when everyone gets work off, dresses up in Flamenco dresses, and dances Sevillanas until the wee hours in the morning. The entire city transforms. In Los Remedio (a neighborhood near Triana) a fairground is set up including a pretty impressive set of carnival rides, streets upon streets of tents called casetas, and a portada or arch that is different every year. The portada is the main spectacle of Feria and is designed to look like a special part of Sevilla. This year it's modeled after Plaza de España (go watch Star Wars Episode II and you can see it) which is a semi-circular building with two large towers at either end and is richly decorated with ceramic tiles. It's one of the biggest tourist attractions of the city for a reason.

The Portada is covered with lights and you can see it from almost any point in the city. It marks the beginning of the giant city that pops up for Feria. 

 

Thanks to Francie for this pic. Feria began on Monday night with the lighting of the Portada. I joined my friends Noa and Mia and Mia's parents and we wandered around soaking in the splendor of Feria at night. We eventually made our way to the carnival part of Feria and seeing the rides that were there we all started skipping around like little kids. All three of us are serious roller coaster and thriller ride fans so we found the two craziest rides we could. They don't know how to make a ride in the States. These things were crazy. They both swung around a center throwing us upside down multiple times with spinning us within our own cab. The second one shot us up way into the air where we could see the entire city before flinging us down again. Needless to say I lost my voice. It was epic :D It was a wonderful night and made waking up at 8am the next morning after getting home at 4:30 worth it.

We had normal classes on Tuesday, unfortunately, and I proceeded to sleep all afternoon. Tuesday night was my favorite night because everyone was so excited and went all out. My friends all rented or bought Flamenco dresses and so we had lots of Sevillan spirit that night. Walking around the city during the day, every other woman was wearing a Flamenco dress and the men were all in spiffy suits. At Feria, however, everyone was dressed up. It was magical. From the smallest child to the oldest abuela (grandmother) the women were decked out in these dresses ranging in all kinds of colors and styles. The casetas (tents) that line the streets in Feria are mostly privately owned where their owners and friends would all eat and drink and dance Sevillanas to a live band. The streets were packed with young people drinking and dancing and everyone was giddy with the whole scene. 

(I raided my friend's facebooks for these photos because I didn't bring my camera)

On every block or so there are public casetas with Sevillanas music playing, a bar, a bunch of tables and chairs, and a dance floor. This is where we went on Monday night. We danced the night away. From midnight until four in the morning we danced and danced and danced. We've been taking this Sevillana dance class all semester but we're serious gringos and looked super awkward at first. Once we were in the midst of Feria and all my friends had their dresses on and we had a few Spanish copas in us, we lost all inhibition. 

(Mia, Alyssa, and Francie looking fly in their dresses)

We actually got really good. I can safely say I could dance with any Spaniard and not embarrass myself. I just can't get enough of it. I got home about 4am.

Again, 8am rise for classes on Wednesday. Even our professors didn't understand why we had class and they went easy on us. They all wanted to be out at Feria as well but this being a half-American program, Spanish rules and "no pasa nada" don't matter. We talked about Dalí in art history. WTF? He's weird. Like super weird. Again, I slept from 2pm to 8. I've become nocturnal. After dinner, we all went to Feria and danced some more at the public casetas. 

Here's another cute pic of Francie and I (she's my picture buddy)

At about 1am a friend of ours helped sneak us into a private caseta and which wasn't all that different except for the music. This place was more like an discoteca in a tent where everyone had long classy Flamenco dresses on instead of tiny bits of fabric attached to them called "clothes." 

(Here are some of the lovely ladies I get to spend my days with.) 

We danced some more and I went home about 3am. 

The next day, our group leaders Juank and Laurena had a surprise lunch for us at one of the best restaurants in town. We all pigged out and drank good wine and chatted like we did every lunch while on our viajes around Spain. After lunch we went up on to the top deck for coffee and discovered just how close we were to the Cathedral and the Giralda.

I was completely worn out from my weird sleep habits and needed a break from Feria. I went home, read, slept, wrote my papers, and slept some more Thursday and Friday night. After months of the night life in this country, I'm worn out. I also have 25 pages to write for my final papers. This is 25 pages in SPANISH that is. Ugh... 

Sunday night I went to Feria with Khetiwe to enjoy the last day there. We went on the Ferris wheel, which went super fast and spun us around like a thrill ride. It was really fun. Then we walked on over to the bridge by Feria where we saw the most incredible fireworks show. Every Feria ends with this big show of fireworks and the entire city stopped for twenty minutes to watch. It was gorgeous. I’ve got a ton of little videos of it but blogs don’t do well with videos. It was a wonderful way to end a very interesting and cultural week.