¡¡¡SEMANA SANTA!!!

After a two day school week, the authorities liberated the youth of Spain to two weeks of vacations. The strange part is that after our nearly twe weeks off, we will return for two days before our next vacation. ... The logic is beyond me. So why do we have this loverly break from rigorous studies? For Semana Santa! Translated to the Holy Week, La Semana Santa celebrates from Domingo de Ramos (the day that Jesus came to Jerusalem) to the Crucifiction and Resurection. Practically speaking, this means that there is a procession every day of the week (excluding Saturday, because that is the day when Christ chills in heaven before being resurected) in every city in Spain. These processions consist of a huge representation of whatever scene corresponds with the day (say, Christ on the cross with La Virgen de las dolores, or the virgen of pain, weeping at his side -usually represented with manneristic sculptures), a band of wind and percusion instruments, and many other elements that have names that are beyond me. In order to substitute my inadequacy, I have included a decent description from another web source:


"The holiday, jubilant in Seville and Andalucía and solemn elsewhere in Spain, is practically defined by its stunning processions. Each of these processions typically boasts two intensely adorned floats, one of the Virgin and the other of a scene from Christ's Passion. Take in the lavish decoration of these incredible creations as they slowly pass before you accompanied by the music of coronets and drums; its hard to do without getting chills. Underneath each float, you'll just barely be able to make out rows and rows of feet. There are up to forty men, called costaleros, who haul the float on shoulders and control the swaying motion of the float. In fact, they practice so much and are so in sync with each other that the realistic figures on top look eerily as if they were walking along to the music.Impossible to miss are the seemingly endless rows of nazarenos, or penitents, who walk along with the float.. You may even see many nazarenos walking barefoot, which is pretty impressive considering some of the processions last up to 14 hours! Oh and don't be thrown off by the resemblance between the pointy hoods and long robes of the nazarenos and those of the Ku Klux Klan; it's coincidental and completely unrelated.Don't be surprised to see how nicely the people dress to watch the processions, especially during the second half of the week. Women often dress to the nines while many men brave the sun in full suits. Of course not everybody dresses up so much, but basically if you want to fit in watching the processions, just leave the t-shirt you wore to paint your garage behind." (http://www.enforex.com/culture/semana-santa.html)

Right, so you get the idea. I´ll include pictures when I can. The heavy floats are carried by rows of men and this description says that this consists of up to 4o men. Not true: I´ve heard that in the bigger processions it gets to be up to 4000 men! Since I only saw the procession of a small town here in Malaga, the float was equally small. Here in Spain, the Holy Week along with Christmas are the two biggest holidays. I asked if they have easter eggs and it appears that they do, but they certainly don´t have egg hunts like ours. So what are we doing this Easter Sunday? Well, I woke up and had my breakfast of toast with strips of deli ham atop and colacao (otherwise known as Nestley´s hot-chocolate), followed shortly by a little tinkering on the computer. This afternoon we will go to lunch with los abuelos -the grandparents- before an afternoon of lazing or strolling through the city, like yesterday. We might take in a procession, but everybody is pretty tired of the processions after seeing them every year since forever. Maybe if we were in one of the big cities -say, Seville- there would be more hype over Semana Santa. As it is, I wouldn´t mind the egg hunt right about now.

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Enough on Semana Santa. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

On Monday I got back the results of my English test and I am happy to say that I passed with a practically perfect score! I cannot espress my relief at this improvement in my performance -yes, improvement. On their grading scale from 1-10, with anything below a 5 being fail, I came off with a 6.7 on my first test. A fair share of my classmates even took away better scorew than me! I attribute this to a) the sections where I had to translate from spanish to english or vice-versa, and b) the fact that I actually don´t know so much about the english tenses as I thought I did. After getting that aweful score, I started studying in my English class, and I am happy to say that my vocabulary section, where I translate between English and Spanish, was perfect. Thank you Janire for studying with me! Well, now that I have my lovely 10 in English class, I can chillax over break. lol! What a sad life I lead!

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ROCK CLIMBING WITHDRAWALS!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCKKK!

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More thoughts later.

Love,

Jocelyn