This past Friday was an absolutely beautiful day. It was 25°C or 77°F with a vibrant blue sky and lots of sun. Now before anyone becomes too envious, I’ll just say that that is not normal in January, even for Mediterranean climate Southern Spain. It was thanks to the warm Sahara Desert winds from Africa. So since it was a one day kind of thing, I took advantage of it and spent quite a few hours outside. I walked to an area along Murcia’s rather lame excuse for a river, and then went to the Reina Sofia Hospital, not because I was ill but because that’s where Tania works. I got to see the area where she works and meet a few of her coworkers before we headed back out into the sunshine to go to her family’s home for lunch. Her family was out so I didn’t get to meet them, but we had a delicious lunch of tortilla de patata (my fave) and vegetable puré/soup. While eating we watched the first half of a movie called There Be Dragons and it’s about St. Josemaría Escriva. Then I walked back across the river to the Plaza Circular (center of Murcia) to meet Pilar for our usual Friday conversation exchange. Being a nice day we went for frozen yogurt and then spent the next three plus hours walking around outside. Yeah, I’d say I definitely made the most of the good weather.
Glorieta España, Murcia (near the river)
I’d made plans with Tania to go hang out at the beach on Saturday. We were going to read, siesta and have lunch (sounded wonderful) but the weather had other plans. It went from a glorious day Friday to a slightly rainy, crazy windy and cold day on Saturday. Hanging out on the beach had become less appealing under the circumstances, so thankfully Tania came up with a plan B. We went to Orihuela, a town on the way to Alicante, and visited it’s mercado medieval or medieval market. It turns out it is one of largest medieval markets in all of Spain so maybe the weather worked in our favor after all. I’d been to a medieval market once before and that was in Córdoba back in 2012 when I was studying in Sevilla. Basically they are a lot of fun. I think we should have one in Nebraska. Essentially the market consists of tons of stands where the vendors are dressed in medieval costumes and sell handmade items. They are similar to the Christmas markets, but some differences are the costumes, food (roasted pig and sausages among other things), and the medieval music. It was Tania, myself and Ana (another girl from Opus Dei) and we wandered around (or were blown around due to the strong winds) looking at the various wares, enjoying the smells and taking pictures with the camels and the whole roasted pig. After enjoying an aperitivo (snack) of patatas bravas (potatoes in a relatively spicy sauce) we headed to Cristina’s flat. Cristina is another Opus Dei member who happens to live in Orihuela. We ate lunch at her place (we brought our own sandwiches) and Cristina had a whole bunch of little appetizer sorts of foods. They forced me to eat a mussel and it wasn’t pleasant. They looked so unappetizing to begin with that I had a really hard time making myself actually put one in my mouth. Ew. Then I made all of them try a piece of my peanut butter sandwich. Tania and Cristina tried it willingly, but Ana was extremely reluctant to taste such a “strange” kind of food. She eventually did try it and admitted it wasn’t bad. I mean really there’s not much to dislike about bread and peanut butter. I wish I liked the combination with jelly so they could have had the full American experience, but for that they’re on their own.
Me touching the camel!
Ana and I with the camels
Tania and I with this attractive background
On the way back to Murcia, we listened to the girls’ favorite Spanish songs and they were adamant that I work on learning the words to all of them. So I now have them included in my spotify list. I’m always excited to find new music, especially in Spanish. Then Ana started singing “Y Si Hacemos Un Muñeco”, the Spanish version of Frozen’s “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” which I responded to by singing the English version (what I knew of it anyway). Then they all got excited and wanted to learn some of the lyrics in English so I taught them all the first few lines to the song. Good times.
Later in the evening, once back in Murcia, we had the usual Saturday night talk and then in honor of Sandra’s birthday we ordered Domino’s Pizza and watched a scary movie. Now the majority of us admitted to not being scary movie fans, but it was Sandra’s birthday and she likes them, so we didn’t have a choice really. The movie we watched was Spanish and called Los Ojos de Julia or Julia’s Eyes. It was about a woman (Julia) whose twin sister is blind and dies right at the beginning of the film and a disturbing way. Then Julia (who is also going blind from the same disease as her sister) tries to look into her sister’s death and what follows is a very disturbing and somewhat gory story. Let’s just say that I thought there was something hiding in every shadow once back in my flat for the night.
Sunday, the Catholic Church in Spain celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord or Candlemas as I guess it’s also called. Candlemas, because it involves a procession with blessed candles. So what happened in San Miguel’s Parish (the church I go to) is that parents with their babies born within this last year processed in with candles to show they were offering their children to God. There were seventeen babies and I’m sure that many parents chose not to come because just since the time I’ve been in Spain, there were a ton of Baptisms. Still, seventeen is quite a lot of babies and they were all in the front of the church so it was rather distracting. It is a neat ritual though, and I think it would be cool if we did something similar in the US.
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