Dia 9: El Camino del Rocio

Bienvenidos to my 9th day!


This morning we woke up with the sun at 630am so that we could make it on time to El Camino del Rocio mass at 8am. We drank our cafe desayuno quickly and headed out the door to see this spectacle of a mass.

When we arrived at the plaza there were some people milling around outside of the church and a couple were dressed in authentic spanish outfits. We were mesemerized. Wanting to get good seats, we hurried into the church at 745am ish. It was AMAZING inside. Reminder, this is a church, this isn't even a cathedral and it's still decorated so lavishly. Oh, and its PACKED with people. Cassie and I are feverishly snapping pictures of all the amazing statues and paintings when I hear some whisper/yell "Raquel!"and it's my adorable professor Reynaldo Jimenez (the UF one who joined us on the trip). He was sitting in a pew with his wife and we quickly sat down next to them as all of the other pews were basically full. As we sat snapping pictures and waiting in silence for the mass to begin, Reynaldo was listening to the old spanish ladies sitting in front of us and he told me that they were fighting about sitting in the pew. Apparently one of the ladies had saved a seat for her friend and a random lady came up and said she didn't care that the seat was saved and just sat down! Abuelas can be such silly gooses!

(in the Iglesia Salvador)

 (with Reynaldo and Eva in the pew)

(crazy altar... so much detail.. I was mesmerized) 

 (silly abuelas fighting over seats)

 (are we in the Renaissance Era???)


Cassie is Jewish so she doesn't know anything about masses and she periodically asked me questions about what was going on, OBVI because I'm the catholic master jajaja. The service begins and I'm instantly lost because the accents are so heavy and the words are all strung together. No pasa nada. The real good stuff happened every time we stood up because that meant the choir was going to sing again. I have to admit that referring to this as a choir is weird because it was way more like a Mariachi Band than a choir. When I say that I'm referring to the emotion and passion behind their singing. The singers were GETTING IT! Honestly, they were doing their thang. Singing their little hearts out. Guys were strumming the guitar and clicking castanets. It was a party in the "choir" section. I was legit dancing. I couldn't help it. They were good. I was into it. 

I continued to not really listen and just stare at the unbelievable artwork in the church and look around at the other people in their awesome outfits. It was cool beans. THEN, when everyone began saying Padre Nuestro ("Our Father"), I participated. Gracias a Sra Chapman for teaching me that. PERO it's been 4 years since I've recited it so I really only participated in the first 3 sentences and then trailed off, whoops. Cassie totally thought I recited the whole thing, and I will continue letting her think that until one day when she maybe reads this blog post. Whattttt??  I need the street cred.

At 840am everyone RUSHED to the main aisle way to receive the Eucharist and Cassie and I scooted out because she had class at 9am. Well apparently the real action was not in the church at all because there were people EVERYWHERE in the Plaza Salvador. The coolest part was that 50% of those people were on horses. I couldn't believe it. We were walking in the plaza for all of 30 seconds when these boys on horses started calling out to us asking if we wanted to ride the horses. Mind you. LEGIT NO ONE is riding horses other than the spaniards dressed in traditional clothing that are about to partake in the pilgrimage to the city of Rocio. This isn't something that ever happens. However, we deff looked like tourists with our massive cameras around our necks and to add insult to injury Cassie is a blonde girl wearing a fanny pack and a backpack. hahahah we were easy targets.
I asked them if it was free to get on the horses and they said yes so obviously I did it. Now, I've ridden a horse a couple times so I'm not an idiot but it was really hard to get up onto this horse. The saddle must have not had long foot holder things because I could barely get my foot to reach up into the holster. Clearly, this was all very amusing to them. Once I hopped on Cassie snapped my picture and then we swapped and she hopped on.

 (caballo!)


After we had sufficiently drawn attention to ourselves, we walked over to where they had the carriage with the Virgin Mary figurine on it. Then, Cassie had to leave for class but I stayed in the plaza taking pictures and just being in awe at the whole event. Horses spook so easy and none of these horses were wearing blinders or anything and there were soooo many. It did make me a little nervous because if one bad thing were to happen it would be chaos. Fortunately, everything went smoothly.

Reminder, Cassie is gone. Now I'm alone. AKA Super mega target. An old man calls at me from 30 feet away and says "Oye chica! Quieres montarme en vez de los caballos?" (Hey girl, do you want to ride me instead of those horses?) Everyone around me starts cracking up and I'm just thinking "Dammit!! I don't know how to be sassy in Spanish". I walked over to him because I was under the impression that he didn't think I understood so therefore it was extra hilarious to him and everyone else. I decided to defend my honor and attempt giving him some sass right back. I told him "Yo se que tu estas diciendo. Pero no gracias. No quiero montarte." (I know what you're saying but no thanks I don't want to ride you).... it was the best I could do. He quickly responded with "No te preocupes, puedo montarte" (Don't worry, I can ride you). Maybe this man's name was Angelino. I mean he wasn't handsome so he had one of my future husband's characteristics. Sadly, I didn't get his name so I will never know. 

I ran back into Reynaldo and his wife and they invited me to go have a coffee with them! They are soooo cute. After our little coffee we watched the procession of all the horses and the carriage of the Virgin Mary walk through the city. 

 (cows pulling the Virgin Mary)

(people are super eager to touch the carriage that the Virgin Mary figure is in)

We parted ways and I headed to the ISA office to do my homework. Well... I ended up going into MJ's office and just talking about life and random stuff. Her and I could talk forever. Mainly because we never shut up. I told her that we would make great roommates because we are so much alike and she said that it would be a good idea except we would never get anything done because we'd always be talking. Needless to say, she's totally awesome and I love her. She also gave me advice about what to do with our free weekend from May 24-26. Some of us had been considering Ibiza. MJ has been there before and she says its really fun but it's really expensive and there's a ton of drugs, I had already assumed both of these things. What she recommended instead was a city that is two hours south of Sevilla called Tarifa. There the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea and she said it makes for this great dichotomy because the Atlantic has big waves and the Mediterranean is very calm. Apparently the city is a trendy beach town where lots of young people go. I hope we can plan a trip to visit it!

After my chat with MJ, I went to the 4th floor of the ISA office to the roof top terrace and enjoyed some sun as I did my homework before class. It was quite the serene experience. Class was great, como siempre.

After class I walked home and had pasta for lunch. Nothing really amazing to say about this dish. I'd rate it a 5. I don't plan on asking to learn the recipe. It was fine for today though because I was starving after having eaten breakfast 2 hours earlier than usual. 

Then, Cassie and I ventured out onto the main shopping street to check out the fashion. I'm currently on the hunt for some presh sandals. We stopped in lots of shoe stores that were all super guay. We realized that Spain doesn't use the same tallas (sizes) as America and discovered that we wear size 40 and 41. BTW everyone in Spain is tiny with tiny little feet so when Cassie asked to try a shoe on in a 41 they had wide eyes and then when the shoe was too small for her, their eyes almost popped out of their heads. They told us that size 41 was the largest they carried . Basically we had a Mean Girls moment "I'm sorry we only carry sizes 1, 3 and 5... you could try Sears". Pero, NOPANA (no pasa nada, I just made that up... maybe it'll catch on??). 

Some of the stores that I enjoyed the most were: Zara (duh), H&M, MaryPaz, and Pimpkey. At H&M Cassie and I decided to try on the classic genie pants that spaniards are always rocking. They were cool but I honestly could never wear those in the US and not feel like a goon, so I decided against it. Cassie ended up making a few great purchases at H&M (not genie pants). We got some delish gelato, I had coffee flavored and she got galleta (cookie). 

We strolled home and when we arrived we found Rafael in the sala (living room) watching some tv. 
I took advantage of the moment and decide to ask him a question that Cassie and I have been uncertain about for a while. If you don't know anything about the spanish language I'll lay down some quick knowledge on you. There are two ways to say the word "you": "tu" or "usted". La forma de "tu" is more informal and la forma de "usted" is more formal. There are a lot of varying opinions about when and with who you should use the "usted" form. Some people think that everyone you meet you should talk to in the "usted" form until you know them better and then you can talk to them using "tu". Some people think you should only using "usted" with older people. You get the jist. Well I am never the kind of person that wants to separate myself from being equal with an adult. I want to call everyone's parents by their first names because I think we are equals. I'm 21. I'm an adult. Let me call you by your first name dammit! Okay well I have the same feeling with the "tu" form. It's the form I want to use, but Cassie was under the impression that if we spoke to our house parents in the "tu" form we would offend them. However, I always forget and use the "tu" form anyway and then she corrects me. Finally, I just asked him which he preferred and thank heavens he said the "tu" form because that is way easier for me to deal with. He said that A) he thought we didn't know how to use the "tu" form because we kept switching back and forth lolz and B) he thinks that when we use the "usted" form with him we are saying that we can't be friends with him, that we thinks he's too old and that he can't relate to us. So there we were using the "usted" form to avoid offending him and come to find it was the exact opposite. I'm glad I finally asked.

We also asked him what he honestly thought about our spanish speaking abilities. He told us that  compared to the girls that lived here before us, we came in at a higher level. However, he doesn't think we are improving at the same rate that they were :(. For this reason, Cassie and I agreed to try to only talk in Spanish together when we are at home. We'll see how that goes...

Dinner was revueltos which is basically breakfast food in America (scrambled eggs with homefries). We also had salchichas (hotdogs) for dinner. This was not my favorite food day so far. Revueltos were tasty, but I just wasn't digging it. Too greasy especially with hotdogs that were filled with cheese in the middle nonetheless. 

After dinner I met up with some friend at Cien Montaditos (100 Small Snacks) which is a bar that I had gone to in Madrid as well (clearly its a chain) to get beer for 1 euro and have snacks. We had some beers and then headed to another bar and had a few more. Then, one of my friends decided we should go across town to Plaza Alfalfa to go to a cool bar he had heard about. This is where it all went south. Somehow our group got split up and OF COURSE I was in the group that didn't know where the bar was. Well we got lost almost immediately. Hooray. And it was freezing out (which is shocking considering we are in the south of spain in summertime). Mal, mal, mal. By some happy chance we ran into the ISA office which helped us to get our bearings to figure out at least how to get home. The night had turned a little sour, so I decided it was time for me to just head home. Triste, I know. I can't wait for the day when I go out and don't get lost. It will be a true treat.

Here is my list of new vocab words that I've learned in class or from my host family:

- Entender: this word has two meanings. 1) understand (I already knew this meaning) and 2) to be gay. Crazy right?!? My culture teacher said if you are in a bar and someone walks up to you and says "Entiendes?" they are asking "are you gay". I told this to Rafael and he was convinced that our profesor was lying to us until he asked Maca and she said she knew of this phrase.

-Que mona: how cute (it directly translates to "how monkey" haha)

-Canela: cinnamon

-Judias: Beans (this word also means jewish girls, and some girls on my program are jewish and we cracked up when we learned that they call beans judias)

-Chandal: sportswear (what girls in college wear to class. spaniards hate chandal)

-Marca Blanca: Generic Brand (like the publix brand) 

-Poner Bote: When you are out with your friends at a restaurant/bar and you all throw money into a "kitty" to use to pay for everyones drinks for the night

-Pagar una conda: When 1 person pays for everyone at a restaurant/bar (what parents always try to do  and what college kids avoid like the plague)

-Forrado/a: a millionaire

-Dar calabazas: (directly translastes to "give pumpkins") when you reject someone who is hitting on you

-Ser pan comido: the spanish version of "can of corn". basically something was really easy to do/make

-Pijo/a: posh (my culture profesor referenced Victoria Beckham when she was explaining this jaja)

Hasta Luego,
Raquel

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