Tuesday, April 19 through Thursday, April 21

Tuesday:
I didn't do much on this day except figure out plans for my Semana Santa travels. I did receive an Easter "basket" from my mom in the mail, which contained way too much candy (or just enough, depending how you look at it), a cute blouse, and a few other things. Thanks, mom!

Wednesday:
Again, I didn't do a lot this day either. I worked on my travel plans some more, since I had just decided on going to Italy after Paris. I did go to a little bar to watch the King's Cup football/soccer game, featuring Barca and Madrid. It was insane!!! The game was more interesting than usual because of the tension and hype of the game. After the game, Palma went crazy. On my 10 minute walk home, I saw some very interesting things. First, a man was standing in front of the bus stops in the street in front of Plaza Espanya taking his clothes off and singing. A bus almost ran into him, so he chased it down the street for a little bit before returning to his previous position in the street and taking more clothes off. After passing that man, I saw an ambulance parked on the sidewalk and a man leaning against the fence on the sidewalk with a huge head wound. He could barely hold himself up, and the paramedics were acting weird. They only left about 1 foot of space between the ambulance and the wall, so it was quite annoying to get through that part of the sidewalk. After that, I was waiting at a stop light when the two first cars waiting at the light starting honking songs and taking turns completing them. It was pretty funny. All night, all I heard was screams and horns honking and sirens sounding. Palma went crazy that night.

Thursday:
First line of business, print off all of my boarding passes, hotel information, and everything else. Oh wait.. it's Jueves Santo in Spain; everything is closed. Thanks to a super nice friend who offered to help me out via Facebook chat and file-sending through Skype, that dilemma was resolved fairly quickly. Second dilemma, how to pack 10 days worth of clothing and stuff into a tiny carry-on bag. I laid everything on my bed that I needed and slowly and strategically packed throughout the day. Brittany and I went on a little shopping trip in the afternoon then to my friend's apartment to pick up my printed papers (again, soooo thankful for this!! I don't know what I would have done otherwise) then I headed home to eat and finish packing. We all met at Plaza Espanya to head to the airport to go to Sevilla. We saw a procession going on, so we ran to watch a little bit of it quickly before hopping on the bus and going to the airport. We had a short flight to Sevilla with lots of turbulence and a scary landing, but we made it. We had to take taxis to our hotel, which was super far away from the city center. It was raining all night, so the processions for Semana Santa that we had gone to see were all canceled. We wandered around Sevilla for a while until we had to seek cover in a Starbucks (where I enjoyed my first chocolate chip cookie since January) due to waterfalls falling from every building. It was pretty disappointing, because the sunrise processions are supposed to be incredible but due to the rain, they did not have any. We went back to the rooms, soaking wet, to sleep and hope that the rain would go away for the next day.