Adiós Alicante, Hola Sevilla

I cannot believe how quickly my time in Alicante passed. What's even harder to believe is that I was able to fall in love with a city after only a month of living there. The scenery, the beach, the people, the classes, my host family: everything there could not have been more perfect. Of course, I was tearing up yesterday morning when I had to say goodbye to my host mom Lucia and my host sister Raquel. In such a short time, their family made me feel like Alicante was my home.

Las Hogueras

As inconvenient as it was, I had to leave Alicante during the middle of their most important (and crazy!) festival of the year: Las Hogueras. It's extremely difficult to explain just exactly what Hogueras is, you would just have to see it for yourself to fully understand. However, I will do my best. Hogueras is basically a festival that takes place every June in Alicante, where the people and neighborhoods contribute millions of dollars to build huge, colorful, artistic statues (shown to the right) to be placed throughout the city. During the week of Hogueras there are many fiestas and people are out partying pretty much all hours of the day and night (not kidding). Then, on the last day of Hogueras, all of the millions of dollars worth of beautiful statues are burned to the ground in "la quema," or the burning. I was lucky enough to be in Alicante for the first couple of days of Hogueras, but my host family was very sad I wouldn't be there to see la quema.

Anyway, it is now time for me to find my place in my new home, Sevilla. After only a day of being here, I really love my host mom. Her name is Lola and she is probably one of the coolest people I've met. Sevilla is one of the hottest cities in Spain, and can be up to 120 degrees in the summer time (I picked a great time to come here), but it is also one of the most beautiful. One downside: I was forced to say goodbye to spending every afternoon on the beach in Alicante. That I will really miss. However, Sevilla has a huge history and a culture to match, and I cannot wait to spend the next month here.