A precurser to Satuday was friday night. After vespers there was a afterglow sort of deal that happened in a little room under the guy's dorm (internado de chicos) called "La Frontera" The room isnt really evolved, but it has a bar area and plastic chairs and tables scattered about the room, like what is used for outdoor furniture. Everyone got some juice (zumo) or tea and sat around talking to people. A few of my girlfriends and i wanted to meet some of the Spanish people so we eventually started talking with two people, Lluia, and her friend, which i did not catch his name. The room was very loud so we had a hard time communicating, although the spoke very good english. The dude was from Romania and the chick was from the Ukraine, but the both spoke english and spanish! We talked about the most random of topics, what to do and what not to do (gestures, words etc). Talking with them was the highlight of that friday night.
Saturday started out like a reglar saturday morning, breakfast, church, sabbath school, BUT for lunch something extrvagant happened. we had HAYSTACKS for lunch! I made a mountain and i ate all of it very quickly! After that amazing lunch, a group of us went into Sagunto to walk whichever way the music led us. Little did we know that phrase would be taken quite literally. When we were on the outskirts of the town we heard music and then a loud CRACK CRACK sound. EYE, i, jumped in horror, with all the violence happening i thought those were gunshots..so what do you do when you hear loud scary noises? go straight towards them of course! (sorry daddy)! When we got to the source, there was no riot going on, but a festival of different groups walking around sagunto with a man and a woman walking in front, with a banner man walking infront of them, with a salsa band walking behind the couple. The couple and the banner man were wearing traditional clothing from their distinct region (i believe, creo) The most cute couples were the little girls with little boys. the girls' dresses were as wide as they were tall! very very cute! we followed all the groups to the roman ruins in which we went to earlier in the week and when we got there the stadium was full of people both in traditional clothing and some not in traditional clothing, but some supporting a certain person. What happened after we got seated and the "fiesta" got started seemed to be full of tradition. It seems sort of like a beauty contest, there were 18 chicas ranging from age 5+ and then two final chicas that were honored above the others. We had to leave before the fiesta ended so we dont really know what became of it, but there was fireworks and everything! When we were leaving some of us had to go to the bathroom so we went, after we came out there was two gentlemen standing outside putting their traditional clothes back together.
I feel like i can draw it better than explain, but ill give it a try. There were two men, one of them dressing and the other helping the first. The scarf that the men wore around their waist was the stage they were at. The first man already had the scarf halfway wound, while the other man held out the scarf so it would go around the first man tightly (to stay on). WELL the man being wrapped was having some problems with keeping his vest out of the way of the scarf so he asked us (he was looking at me, but it was a general question) if one of us could help him. I rose to the occasion. As he wound himself into his scarf i kept his vest from being tucked into the scarf. I TOUCHED HIS COSTUME. it was the most amazing thing i have ever done. The scarf seemed like a burlap fabic while the vest was made out of fine silk, but a sturdy vest. After the escapade, he said thank you in french, and noticing that i wasnt french, he said thank you in english, i giggled and ran away...but that experience is one of my highlights.
My group and i continued to walk down the road back to the school. on our way there was one of the salsa bands playing music in the streets. i TOTALLY started moving my hips and "dancing" oh, it was a freeing experience! This has been my favorite Saturday so far...and im only into 2-3 weeks of my trip
And just to finish off the weekend, Sunday, for breakfast we had chocolate churros..yes...and we went into town and did our homework there...EPIC!!!
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