El Conquistador: Slowly becoming Valenciano, The Sequel

(6/01- 6/02) Last Sunday I had one of the most Valencian days I think one could ever have. But before I get the that I have to talk about my trip to Peñiscola.

Peñiscola is a beautiful city with an awesome beach with a great view of a castle! The castle is very old and important. If you are curious, Google will be more helpful because I don't really remember the significance of it. Something to do with a pope and the Knights Templar. We were allowed to go in the castle which was very cool even though I didn't know anything about it. Just massive stone rooms with medieval decorations. I felt like a knight for the hour I was in it! It was excellent weather however since the sun is so hot in Spain the sand becomes unbearable, we tried to play soccer and I ended up burning the bottom of my foot from just walking on the sand! Minus the flaming feet it was a really fun excursion!

On Sunday my Madre woke Sam and I up at 10 am (way too early!!) to head out for our eventful day. If you remember, I mentioned earlier that I was going to meet up with all of my host moms friends again at their huerta (this is a garden with food instead of plants and flowers... its in Spanish of course), this is where I'm going. We had to load up the car with all of the stuff for the paella and then met her friends at the huerta. It was not what I was expecting. The huerta was in a huge plot of land where people can rent out space for their own huerta, like a storage unit... but for a garden, it was very cool. It was right outside of the city, you could get a cool view of the skyline from where we were.

In Spain the men are the people that normally make the paella so we set up the paella stuff and then Sam and I went to work. Good thing we had that cooking class first, I feel like a paella expert now. We all sat around talking and snacking as we were making the paella. There were 8 of us in total so there was plenty to talk about. My Madre forgot to bring the rice so we had a little extra snacking and talking time while one of their friends went to pick some up.

The paella turned out excellent (not like I was doubting myself or anything). I found it surprising that it is normal to just eat straight from the paella (they also call the pan used to make paella a paella... seems silly). It was a great start to my Sunday but only half of my Valencian day.

I got back and was really looking forward to a nap, however I checked my group chat and everyone was going to some really important parade in the center, I decided I had to go. The parade went about way over my head, my knowledge in catholic teaching really failed me this day. Later in school I was told that this parade was over 600 years old and was used back in the day as a way to teach the bible to the less educated citizens. One example is La Moma. La Moma is a man dressed in an all white dress so he looks like a women. He represents virtue and does some dance with these other men dressed in red, who represent sin. Eventually at the end of the dance virtue wins and sin falls. I wasn't able to pick that up after seeing it without some background knowledge. It was a weekend full of experiencing different cultures, and was very successful!