Semana Santa Part 3: Semana Santa!

Happy Easter everyone! It's about 4pm on Easter Sunday and I'm just chilling in my room after lunch, waiting for 9pm dinner date with my American "family" in Sevilla. Everyone is feeling a little homesick this weekend. I've hung out with Brittany and Attie every night because we all feel homesick. I think it's the pouring down rain (blah!) and the fact that this is our first Easter ever not being with our families. On the CIEE facebook website people keep saying that its so weird not being with your family at Easter. I agree! Its also weird that they don't celebrate Easter like we do in the U.S. For example, I woke up this morning to a perfectly normal day and no one even mentioned Easter. Finally I asked if it's common to say "feliz pascua" like happy Easter, and they said no! My family then asked me if its important in the U.S. Heck yes it is! It's a time spent with family and friends and that is what I'm missing today: my family and friends. But that's ok, you've got to expect to be a little homesick every once in awhile when you're away from your family for 4 months. Ok onto what Semana Santa is and what we did this weekend!

What is Semana Santa?
Semana Santa, or Holy Week is one of the most (or the most) popular events that takes place in Sevilla every year during the week leading up to Easter. (A lot of the things I'm going to tell you are based on what I've heard from other people, my family, or read about in the news). Many of the churches in Sevilla have brotherhoods, or Hermandads, which are the groups of people that partake in Semana Santa. The Hermandads carry giant wooden floats of the Virgin Mary (most popular float) and Jesus throughout the city. Some processions (or pasos) take up to 13 hours. Usually the Hermandads are barefoot for the entire 13 hours. They consider this their act of penance.

It's kind of ironic how big Semana Santa is in Sevilla. After talking to my host family, they mentioned that while there are a lot of churches in Sevilla, there aren't as many parishioners and Catholics as a lot of people believe. They think that we're more religious in the United States than here. So if this is true, I think it's kind of funny that Semana Santa is so big and that the Hermandads use it as an act of penance...maybe for all the times they didn't go to church this past year?

Raining on my Parade
Attie, Brittany and I were really excited about Semana Santa. We made sure we arrived back in Sevilla by 1am on Thursday morning just because we wanted to see the most important paso, Madruga, which lasts all night. Well, unfortunately, it was pouring down rain and they cancelled the Madruga procession for the first time since 1847!
Friday everything was cancelled too. It even hailed here! Its so weird that its always gorgeous in Sevilla with great weather, but then the one time it calls for good weather it doesn't stop raining. Well after sitting in our rooms all day, Brittany and I were a bit gloomy, so I went over to her apartment (her family is gone, usually you never have guests over) and we had a movie night! Saturday was another rainy day and by 6pm we were all going stir crazy. Attie and I decided that no matter what we were going to get out of the house and meet up for tapas.

Here comes the Sun (dodododo)
We actually had really good luck Saturday night because guess what?! It stopped raining by 8pm! We saw a ton of people congregating around the Catedral, and after asking a few people, found out that the procession was going to start in a half hour (it was actually an hour, but that's Spaniards for ya!) Here are some pictures and videos of the procession. Some of the pictures are hard to see but it was hard taking them in such a big crowd!

The Hermandad members. They look like the KKK don't they?! Every Hermandad has a different color, the Hermandad del sol is a hunter green.

Paso de Jesus Cristo.



The band. In some sections there were little kinds probably 5 years old in the band. I think its cool that the Hermandads included people of all ages.



Mary!

Saturday night was just perfect. We were so excited to see a paso because we had thought we were going to be able to see one. After that, Attie and I headed over to the Artesania place where they have food and jewlrey from all over the world (as mentioned in a previous blog) and had some greek and mexican food. When we got there, they had singers and a DJ and everyone was dancing. It was so much fun! We joined in and learned a little dance before getting our food. After dinner we grabbed Rayas Icecream which is like the best icecream in town . I usually just get icecream from a mom and pop store near my house where  they speak to me in English and I to them in Spanish, but this icecream was really good too! The strawberry sorbet tasted like real strawberries!

Well, today is another gorgeous day. I spent most of my morning in the park reading and will be heading to the centro in a couple of hours to grab some dinner with my friends. We bought bull fighting tickets for this coming Wednesday (the first one starts today) so I'll be sure to take lots of pictures there! Happy Easter everyone!

Hasta Luego,

Lauren