Upcoming Semana Santa, Passover, and french toast

Next week is Semana Santa, the Holy Week. It's a huge deal in Sevilla. We all get classes off the week before Easter and the entire city celebrates all week long. There are processions and crowds, drinking and pickpockets, religious symbols and churches, and much more! (A word to all the Jewish mothers looking out for me, I plan on keeping my wallet and camera very well protected.) The hermandades (religious brotherhoods) march around wearing hoods and robes (similar in appearance to those worn by the KKK) to symbolize their unity and solidarity. I'm very excited and plan to take many, many pictures.

I'm even more excited about Passover! Using contact information given to me some wonderful Jews back home (my grandparents and Marc's parents), I managed to get in touch with the Jewish Community of Sevilla. I discovered that Sevilla has only 20-25 Jewish families, but there is a synagogue with weekly services, and they have a communal seder. I've been emailing back and forth with the rabbi and trying to organize as many Jewish students as I can to come to the seder. He told me I was doing a mitzvah by helping bring the Jewish students to the seder and to keep it up. I feel very honored. It's also nice to finally find some other Jews in the city, since I hadn't actually met any before. Now I have dinner plans with a couple of them! I can't wait to experience a Spanish seder, this should be very interesting.

My first class this morning was canceled because the professor was sick. Since I had another class two hours later, I decided it would be too much of a waste of time to go home. My friend Alex (Alexandra, not host brother Alex) and I walked around the Centro for most of those two hours. We stopped at a cafe, because I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to have some Spanish hot chocolate. Spanish hot chocolate is very thick and very delicious. Alex got a coffee, and we split a torrija. Torrijas are like french toast soaked in syrup, or sometimes wine and honey and other things. We had seen then around in bakeries a lot lately, because they are very common around Semana Santa, but neither of us had ever eaten one. It was incredibly good. I'm glad we split one, because it was so sweet. It was the perfect snack to have between classes. I don't think this will be my last torrija of the semester.

Pictures:
1) Lisa and Iago, looking cute as always
2) Educalia, the school where I volunteer
3) Miriam, the 11-year-old girl who speaks English quite well (she was making a bit of a funny face when Mercedes took the picture)