Sevilla/Cadiz

I went to the famous Carnival of Cadiz last weekend. The Carnival of Cadiz is very very famous in Spain and I soon found out why. Last Friday I got on a bus at 3:30 and traveled all by myself for a 3 hour bus ride to Sevilla! The girl who sat next to me was a teenager from Granada and was so sweet. We sat there and talked for a while and she helped me with some Spanish homework I had. Conversing in Spanish is getting a lot easier and it was really challenging and fun when I couldn’t talk in English all of last weekend. I spoke in English maybe twice and it was helping others with their English. I slept the rest of the way and when I arrived Elena was right outside my bus waiting for me with her friend Anna. (for those who don’t know, Elena is the girl I stayed with when I went to Spain my jr. year of high school. She now studies at a University in Sevilla which is about an hour from Cadiz. When I got off the bus she had a kinder bueno waiting for me in her pocket, which is only the best chocolate bar in the world!!! Her friend Laura picked all of us up from the bus station and we headed to her flat. We got there, showered got all ready and sat down for supper. Laura’s boyfriend made us all supper, we had Spanish tortillas and these really good sandwiches which were like two pieces of bread toasted together with coleslaw type food on the inside. Then we went out to a disco called SOHO. This place was super packed, and for the first time no one stared at me like I was an American. I didn’t see any other American there so it was nice because no one thought I was, people would come up at start talking to me and then once I opened my mouth they figured it out but other than that it was nice. Another nice thing was when creepy guys would try to talk to me, I would just say I didn’t understand them because I was American, (in Spanish), and Elena would say she was American and we would start talking in English so that they would leave haha. Something I noticed was that guys loved to dance with guys and girls with girls but rarely did I see guys and girls dancing together, but if you want to see guys dance- spain is the place to be. They straight up get it on the dance floor in like a goofy 80’s dance sort of way. We stayed at the disco till about 7:30 a.m. and then headed back to laura’s hous/piso. We woke up at 12:30, packed up and then headed to Cadiz. We got to Elena’s house/apartment and her parents were so excited to see me! I was excited to see them too and hold a conversation with them as where the last time I talked to them all I did was respond with “Si”. So after we showered and got ready I noticed that there were a lot of people coming over to her house. I was really confused because literally her living room was packed with people, turns out her niece was having a birthday party there…who knew. She probably told me but I wasn’t listening- if I don’t know to listen- the Spanish just goes one ear and out the other. So anyway her niece turned 3 and was the cutest little Spanish girl I had seen yet. She had brown curly hair and eyes that could melt ya. All of the guests were family members- cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandma. Some of them I had met before but I got to meet a lot more this time! All of the kids dressed up in different costumes and ran around while the adults talked over coffee and hot chocolate. I was sitting on the couch with Elena and Anna, and all of her little cousins would surround me and try to show me the English that they knew. One of the little girls was 4 I think and started rambling off in Spanish and then goes, 1,2,3,4,5 in English and gave me a great big smile. Her aunt really made a conscious effort to talk to me throughout the whole party and did a great job of asking me questions that I knew the answers to and could elaborate on! It was really fun to experience a Spanish birthday and see how they were similar or different from ours. That night we dressed up in all black, wore red sweaters, red hats and held cardboard guitars. We were tio pepe, it’s a famous wine bottle here that wears a coat, hat and has a guitar. (you can image google it if you’re insanely curious) We got to the carnival and it was crazy!!!! The best costumes I had ever seen in my life! It was Halloween on steroids! In the US girls just kind of want to look cute in their costume and everyone just kind of does something at the last minute, not here! It looked like people spent all year on their costumes!!!! There were Avatar characters with the apparel, hair and then blue sparkly skin. There were sims characters, every animal you can think of, A table with a table on his back with a table cloth, food, drinks, and silverware pasted to the table. The amount of people there was so overwhelming too! People dancing in some of the streets, performers, just different stuff going on everywhere we went. I met a lot of people there and actually ran into some Americans and I learned that one of the girls’ there- her boyfriend goes to my college! I didn’t know who he was but it was still pretty cool. We didn’t leave the carnival until about 7 that morning too. Needless to say, the next day on my 4 hour bus ride back, I slept the whole way!