Responding to some questions…

I had a few comments to my last post and wanted to answer them here. First of all, I’ve never known the history of April Fools day so I decided to do some research. I found a website (April Fool's Day History) that tells about the possible history. They say that no one is completely sure about why we celebrate the day on April 1st. One possible reason is because the Gregorian Calendar (also known as the Western or Christian calendar) was introduced around 1582 and changed New Year´s Day from March 25-April 1 (a week) to January 1. Back then communication was very slow to travel so it took years for this change to happen. Some people decided to be rebellious and refused to celebrate the “new” New Years Day and continued to celebrate it on April 1. Those people were called “fools” and people played practical jokes on them that day.

Other places also celebrate the day (many times on different dates) such as in Rome (on March 25 they celebrate Hilaria), India (on March 31 they celebrate the Huli Festival) and Portugal (the celebration is the Sunday or Monday before lent and they celebrate by throwing flour at their friends). France also celebrates the day on April 1 and they call it Poisson d'Avril (meaning “April fish”). Here’s another website that talks about when and how people celebrate this day in other countries: Fools Around the World

ENJOY!

April Fools Day

This Friday is the 1st of April and in the U.S. it's also a "holiday" called April Fools Day. What is that? Well, on this day people play tricks and jokes on other people. People play tricks like: exchanging the sugar for salt so that when you add it to your coffee, it's sour; placing a whoopy cushion on chairs; and much more! Every year people play different jokes and even some companies participate in this day. Check out this website for more examples: http://www.aprilfools.com/

So what day is similar to this in Spain? December 28th, el Día de los Santos Inocentes! Now you can celebrate this day TWICE a year!

Baena, Baena, Baena...

This weekend was another busy one for me. I originally wanted to go see Las Fallas but couldn´t find anyone to go with me so instead I visited a friend in Baena. I´m not sure if you knew but this last weekend there was the San Jose festival (Saturday). So I headed out Friday afternoon and met up with my friend. That night was the big celebration and LOTS of people were out...playing their drums! The entire night was crazy with people playing their drums from the afternoon into early morning hours. I even heard people still playing at 9am! We had a lot of fun and the next day slept in from all of the craziness the night before. Since people were out so late on Friday everything was very quiet on Saturday. We didn´t do much either but that night we saw a play. The play was Baena´s view of what happened during Easter and it was very interesting to watch.

My whole weekend in the small town of Baena was very fun and I´m excited to go back with my boyfriend during Holy Week to see the drums again!

A rainy weekend

This past weekend was the last weekend that my mom was in Spain with me. We did more traveling but this time we headed over to Seville and Cadiz! This was also my first time to both the cities as well and I loved them. On Friday we were in Seville and we went to the cathedral, Plaza España and a few other tourist attractions there. Unfortunately it was raining all weekend in Seville so we tried to stay inside as much as possible. The next day, on Saturday, we headed over to Cadiz! Since it was raining in Seville I expected rain in Cadiz also but much to my surprise it was sunny! We spent all day wandering around Cadiz and watching people walk by in their costumes for carnaval. We had a lot of fun and saw some GREAT costumes! That night we came back to Seville and spent part of the next day, Sunday, at the Royal Alcázares. It was beautiful! We had to leave early because our train to Malaga left in the afternoon. My mom had a flight that night so I went to the airport with her and then headed back to Lucena. We had a great weekend and I can´t wait to go visit Seville and Cadiz again!

Traveling!

My parents arrived in Lucena about 2 weeks ago and we have been traveling all over. We have been to Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Cordoba, Granada, Ronda and even Toledo! It has been a very busy past 2 weeks and I´m exhausted! My parents will be leaving soon so hopefully I will be able to catch up on some sleep but I have had a lot of fun with them though. I´m going to tell you a little bit about our trips around Spain.

When my parents got here we just hit the ground running, meaning they got here and pretty much the next day we started with our traveling without giving them much time to rest. However they have adapted well to the schedule including the meal times and naps haha. They have love so much about Spain and wish they could stay longer. Anyways, talking about the trips, the first place we went to was Barcelona. I absolutely LOVED Barcelona and so did my parents. We saw the Sagrada Familia, Las Ramblas, the big statue of Christopher Columbus, the market, Picasso´s museum, Park Guell and other random parts of the city...all of this in 3 days! We just stayed busy and it didn´t stop there. After the 3 days in Barcelona we headed to Madrid for another 2 days. There we visited some museums (Prado, Thyssen and Reina Sofia), ate some churros and chocolate, visited the botanical gardens and explored some random parts of the city. We had so much fun and I know my parents would love to come back and see more since we only had a few days in each place.

This last weekend we had even MORE adventures in Granda, Ronda and Cordoba. We saw all the main attactions such as the Alhambra, Albaicin, Plaza de Toros (Ronda), El Tajo, Mezquita and oh so much more! I made sure that when we were in Granda we went to tapas bars all over and we had so much fun doing that.

Overall all of our travels were a ton of fun and we are all now pretty sleep deprived...but we can always sleep later! I will be traveling even more over my last few months here so I will make sure to keep you updated on those travels as I do them. Now to go get some rest!