“Man that 8 year old had an ARM!”

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

I was planning on waking up as late as possible but for some reason I was woken up at 9:40am by my roommates. I realized that I turned off my phone while sleeping so I turned it back on and realized i missed a text. It was Christina, she forgot her map at home and needed the address of the hostel. I texted it to her and then tried to get a few more minutes of precious sleep. Finally got up and made my way upstairs fro breakfast. I found Christina upstairs eating when i entered the room. We exchanged stories about our winter break over toast. She went to Murcia (East coast of Andalucia tat borders the next region, so about the direct opposite of Valverde) to stay with her roommate from Valverde’s family for a few days. After a week she decided to go to Madrid for New Years. She went by herself but she met some people while touring around Madrid.

I wasn’t in the mood to go shopping or walking, I just wanted to read my book and relax but I felt obligated to do things with her since she did just come to Seville to see the parade of the 3 Kings with me. We went into a few stores but nothing really caught my eye. After experiencing everyday of rain during her winter break, she really wanted to find a good pair of water boots. The problem she was encountering was that most stores were sold out of them or they only had one size left and it wasn’t her size. We tried our best to find some but we only found really ugly water boots or nothing at all. I told her that they would be more in season come March so I’m sure she could find some then.

After a few hours we decided to get lunch. Christina really wanted paella so we looked for a good place to get it and found one. The lady asked if we wanted to eat inside or outside and we said inside. Instead of just letting us pick a table she lead us to a locked door. We then proceeded to follow her up two sets of stairs to this private room. It was a little bizarre, I’m not going to lie. She seated us in an empty room and gave us menus. She was our personal waitress and they used a pulley system to relay the food up to our room from the kitchen. I felt like I was on a special date and I had paid extra to get a personal waitress and a room to ourselves. It was pretty funny. Unfortunately the lady wouldn’t let Christina order paella because a minimum of two people had to eat it and I didn’t want seafood paella. All that work and she had to get something else. Oh well. At lunch she told me that Kate was planning on coming with her to Seville for the day but then she wanted to get more sleep and told her she would take a later bus. can’t say I’m surprised. She did that to me once. She said she was going to take a 9am bus to Huelva to get her permiso and I offered to go with her and then when I was on the bus and she wasn’t I found out she decided to take a later bus. I was very aggravated.

I predicted that she wasn’t going to come at all but Christina still held hope. After our romantic lunch I wanted some relaxing time before the parade at 5pm. For an hour I read my book and took a nap. A little before 5pm we headed out in search of the parade. We didn’t really know where to go so I figured we should just follow a group of children because surely they were heading to it as well. Sure enough they lead us straight to the crowd of people lined up on both sides of the street waiting for the parade to start. Still no word from Kate, so we walked down the busy street to find a good stop to catch some candy (for me) and take some pictures (Christina). The parade didn’t start until a little after 5:30pm but it was well worth it.

The kids AND the parents went crazy for candy. I’ve never seen adults jump up and down screaming at the people on the floats for candy. A popular idea that caught on with the adults was to turn their umbrellas upside down and collect candy that way. At first I found that annoying because I was right next to this guy and his umbrellas was in my space, but then it was apparent that his constant screaming really got the float people’s attention so our area ended u getting more candy. My technique for capturing candy was to crouch down and wait for the candy to hit the ground and collect from there. It was a pretty successful operation until it caught on and I had more competition on the ground. I was picking up candy between people’s legs, under their shoes, inside empty strollers, you name it i found candy haha. I almost lost my hand as this one dad started jumping and almost landed on my hand. The fun didn’t really start for me until I got nailed with my first piece of candy in the head. That was just the beginning of the rain of candy that proceeded to hit my skull. Most people would have been annoyed, but i got a kick out of it every time. Occasionally i would catch a piece of candy in mid air and every time i did this i would look back and Christina, smile, and say “I got a live one!”. I gave myself the nickname “Bottom Feeder” due to my candy snatching tactics. my goal was to collect each type of candy. I didn’t care so much for the quantity verses the variety. The moms kept shouting “caramelos” so I figured they were throwing chocolate candies so I tried my best to get those but i never found any. Later on it hit me that caramelos is their generic name for candy, it didn’t mean chocolate at all. What a bummer.

In the midst of all the candy throwing and madness I was able to take pictures of most of the floats. All of the floats were really cool. The decorations, costumes, and makeup were really good. I couldn’t make out if anyone on top of the floats were famous or not but I’m sure they were. I kept wondering what you had to do to get your kid onto one of the floats. If I lived in Seville i would make it my mission to get my kid on a float at least for one year hehe. Each float had an endless supply of enormous bags of candy. I’ve never seen so much candy in my life. Granted I’ve never really been to a parade like this before but I was just shocked at the amount of sweets they came supplied with. I noticed that most of the candies were sponsored by different banks, the Junta, the metro, and other official organizations of the city. I kept my eyes open for Sergio Ramos but I didn’t see him. :( Some of the themes of the floats were Alice in Wonderland characters, Aladin, egyptian, cinderella, star wars, rocket scientists, Mozart’s, fairies, wizards, dice people, toy soldiers, roman warriors, the lion king, and much much more. It was so interesting seeing the different floats. This was the spanish version of the Macy’s Day Parade.

The parade lasted a good hour and half i think. I lost track of time because i was to busy fighting off 8 year olds from taking my candy. They don’t need any more sugar if you ask me. I left the parade with a headache, a camera full of photos, and a bag half way full of mad loot = SUCCESS. I felt like a little kid again and it was great. I really enjoyed myself. To know surprise Kate missed the entire parade and met us at a Starbucks after the parade was over. If it was me and I had realized that i had no shot of making the parade i wouldn’t of come at all. It is suck a waste of money for nothing. I just don’t understand her. After she checked into the hostel we got dinner. We asked the receptionist for a cheap tapas bar and she delivered. Bar Colonias was just around the corner from our hostel and we were lucky enough to get the last table. One thing I don’t like about tapas places is that you are supposed to stand the whole time. I’m not a fan of standing and eating or standing in one place at a time for a long time in general. So we got to the bar around 8ish and were ready to order. All of the food looked really good. The waiter came over and informed us that the kitchen was not going to open until 8:30p so we couldn’t under our food until then. Only in Spain is 8pm deemed to early for dinner. We passed the time by sharing more stories about our winter breaks. Kate went to Chester and stayed with Corrie for a few days but then flew back home to Milwaukee in time to have Christmas with her family. She stayed there threw New Years but then returned to Valverde on the 4th. I asked her if it was hard being home because it made you not want to come back but she said no. She missed Spain and found home boring.

8:30p on the dot we ordered our food. I ordered the stuffed eggplant tapa because Christina told me they stuff it with meat. We split a medio racion of potatas bravas (so good) and a tapa of cheese. When my eggplant came I actually wasn’t surprised that it was stuffed with shrimp instead of meat. It seems no matter how hard i try to avoid eating food with shrimp I ALWAYS end up with it. I picked them out and gave them to Kate. The rest of the dish was delightful. I plan on returning to the bar another time. I was in the mood for desert so we walked to an ice cream/pastry place. I would end up in a town where the one and only ice cream shop closes from October to April. Who does that???? People (mainly ME) do eat ice cream in the winter time. Well Sevilla had an Heladoria basically on every corner so i just had to help myself while i could. I got this chocolate fudge flavor and “After Eight”. Turns out after eight is mint chocolate chip. They were both very good but not as good as the gelato in Austria.

We walked back to the hostel and talked while we ate our ice cream i the common room. We discussed our plan of action for the next day. We could either leave any time of the day and take the buss to Huelva and then to Valverde OR we could wait until 5pm and take the direct and cheaper bus straight to Valverde. No one wanted to make the decision so we decided to sleep on it and go from there.