Comino De Rocio

 Sometimes when I am writing about the events and celebrations that happen here in Chucena it can be hard to fully describe exactly the feeling that comes from these events.

 Imagine that over half of your town goes on a camping trip together, but instead of driving in your car, everyone either walks or rides on a trailer pulled by horse or tractor.  All family groups bring their own tent trailer (also pulled by tractor) and packs lots of food and drink.  During the entire trek everyone is dressing up in festive clothing.  If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ like I am this reminded me a lot of youth groups leaving to go on pioneer trek except it would be an entire Stake doing it all at the same time.

The celebration of The Virgen of Rocio (Another name for the Virgen Mary)  is a Camino or Pilgrimage to the town of Rocio to celebrate the Virgen Mary.  From what I can get from it it really is just one HUGE party.  Rocio the town is usually population 23,000.  During this time over a million people come and stay.  Almost all of them walk or ride on carts and they come from all over the place.  Our small Town of Chucena is pretty close to Rocio (about a half hour drive in the car)  so it only takes a day and a half to walk their.  For other groups that come they walk for 12 or 13 days to get to there.

Anyway,  most our friends and neighbors went so the town was sort of a ghost town all weekend.  It just so happened that Steven was not here for the event because he was in Barcelona all week attending a conference for work.  A lot of people asked if we were going to go to Rocio but there was no way I was going to take our 6 children by myself to Rocio so we just watched and supported our friends on their way out.

As you can see in the pictures there was just a huge line up of carts and campers, trailers and buggies.  It was so much fun to see!

Snails Anyone????

 We tried Snails today!!  They were in this huge jar just full to the brim of snails (we are talking at least a gallon)  You just pick them up and suck them out.  Miranda and I also tried them and both thought that they tasted a little like noodles.  In the end we were not the biggest fans but it was all part of the experience.

Running with the Bulls

 We are constantly amazed by all the wonderful people that we meet here that are willing and excited to invite us into their lives and homes.  Today was one of those days.

Teresa and Manuel live in a small town about 10 minutes away from our little town of Chucena.  Teresa is the manager of our local bank and we met her through other friends.  Their town (Villalba) does their own running on the bulls and she invited us to come and be with them for the event.  We could not pass up such an offer.

The kids were so amazed and excited to watch the excitement and craziness of the whole event.  We were in an awesome house that had balconies we could watch from as well as a patio on the roof that we could watch from.  After the whole thing was over the kids ended up taking turns being bulls and had their own running of the bulls.  It was awesome and our hosts wee so wonderful to us. 

A few thoughts about the run.  First I had no idea that other town across Spain, (other than Pamplona) did a running of the bulls event.  In Pamplona it is a full week event where they only do one running each day but they use 6 bulls and in the evening they do a bull fight.   It is huge and crazy.

In Villalba it is only a one day event and much smaller.  The path for running is just a large square so the bulls gets let loose runs around in a square a few time.  After that they coral it up and they do that 4 or 5 times.  It really was so fun to watch the people down running and how they would jump up on the window bars and climb as high as they could get.  We are so glad that we got to experience it.

A Sweet Goodbye

When you just need to speak in English and feel like someone understands you it is always nice to have a friend that speaks English.  I have made a few friends like that here in Spain but one of these friends is an American Amiga from church.   This great lady (Sky) has been a blessing to the kids in Primary (translating lessons and info for them when needed)  And a blessing to me when I just needed to speak in English.

We said our last goodbyes to her last Sunday as she is headed home to New York.  We just happened to be in Huelva during the week and by pure chance we ran into her one last time.  It was so fun and I hope it was a blessing to her as it was for us to get to say one lat goodbye.

Missing Graduation

 When we were deciding about the timing of this trip there was one thing that Steven was concerned about missing.  GRADUATION  The Spanish Program had seven graduating seniors this year and Steven was very sad to miss this day.

Before we left for Spain this group threw him a going away party to celebrate with him and say goodbye.  They set up a surprise for him and I was able to be there for it.  (see the last picture)

As another sweet surprise they were able to bring Steven to Graduation in Spirit.  They carried around a picture of him during the day.  LOVE IT!!!!

A Trip to a Spanish Hospital (AGAIN)

 Thursday Morning just before walking out the door for school I sent the boys in to brush their teeth.  A minute later Keagan was crying and Jackson and Jacob are running to us saying, "There is blood, lots of blood"

Turns out the boys were playing and rough housing in the bathroom and Keagan slipped and crashed.   Since we have been through this before with Kaden during our first week here and we are much more settled in Spain this event was much less traumatic than the event with Kaden (thankfully)

Keagan got to skip out on school as we drove into the Seville to the children's hospital there and because the opening was not super long just super deep they were able to glue it closed, (no stitches).

He is a little sore but not to horrible.  The hardest part will be not getting wet for the next 7-10 days.  That means he can't sweat a ton on his forehead (it is 95 degrees here lately)  So he will have to not play soccer for the next few days and keep it clean and dry.

All part of the adventure.

Romería

 Wow!!!  The Spaniards know how to party!!!  We have just spent 3 full days having the time of our lives.   There is so much to say so I will do my best to explain what this party is all about.

Romeria is a Feria (A Spanish Fair)  Like many festivals in Spain it has a Patron Saint and a few Sacred parts to it but mostly it is a party of your life. 

It started Thursday Night around 9pm.  That night was mostly for the Kids to go on rides (Miranda went out with her friends at 10 and came back at midnight and around here that is early).  The real party started on Friday and went through into Sunday night.  Our family got up Saturday morning to attend a special Mass for the festival.  They went late into the night each night and started all over the next afternoon.

They had a full and large carnival area with rides, like bumper cars, large carnival rides and the older kids favorite one El Toro Loco.  It was a crazy ride that is hard to explain if you can't see it in action but imagine 3 large padded tubes that rotate back and forth to try and get you to fall off while the entire area the tubes are attached to was a large rectangular platform the moved and swayed like the ground is moving underneath you.  It was crazy to watch and would never fly in the US because of all the accidents and injuries that could happen (Jackson came of twice with a bloody nose but still smiling and wanting more)

Anyway enough about the rides, that not the most interesting part.  The other half of the fair are tents set up like huge fancy permanent looking tents. My first assumption was that it was going to be places to eat and craft vendor store type things.  Not so at all.  The people around here belong to groups that organize there very own tents for a never ending party.  So is Steven and I were apart of one of these groups, We would pay and annual fee (about 400 euros a year)  during the fair we would have a tent with the other members that was just for our group.  We have a certain amount of food that is already covered for our tab and if we go over that they just charge it to our tab and we pay it later.  We can invite friends to join us.  Depending on the group we may have a live band come and play so that we can dance.  So for three days we have never ending place to go were we have dancing, talking, food and drink.  The kids have somewhere to go and play (if we want to spend a ton of money on rides).  It was amazing.  The most amazing part is that we really got to be apart of it all.  In any other circumstance we would walk through and feel like tourists but we are apart of this community and they made us feel it big time. 

Our family was invited to a number of the groups to be personal guests of many different friends.  We ended up having time and energy to visit 4 different tents during the weekend, many of them twice.  We spent hours talking, eating, laughing, and DANCING!!!!

They do a type of flamenco here known as Sevillana.  We really are no good at it but that doesn't mean we didn't try, and we had a lot of fun doing it.

We were just so spoiled by our friends and neighbors.  They were so wonderful and this was an experience of a lifetime to really be apart of this event.  Like so many things the Feria is an amazing sight to see from the outside with beautiful color and pageantry but a whole different experience as an insider and one we will never forget.

 I captured a few quick shots of all the people dressed up in their Flamenco.  It really was amazing to see everyone dressed up and into the party.

 Miranda in a favorite of her borrowed Flamenco dresses,  And look! It has a built in pocket, these ladies are no dummies.

 Above, Miranda danced with our friend and Neighbor Julio and below she is with our friends, Louisa, Gloria, Grandma (Louisa'a Mom, I don't know her name we just call her Abuela), and Louisa'a Daughter.