Here's the new Galicia post. =) with pictures...
Galicia was amazing…. This blog is late but it has to happen… So from the beginning we had to pick a partner for the rooms, because it was two to a room which the exception of the boys, since there was only three in the whole group, it required another room with a three girls, so making it our twelve in total. Anyway my roommate was Lauren Potter once again, because she is TOTALLY AWESOME! Anyway, the weekend of Galicia was the weekend following Portugal for Lauren and I. Galicia was a night in Santiago de Compestela, about two whole days. The first day was a night walk through the town even though most things were closed, it was nice to get a good feel before taking on the city, also the capital of Galicia, with the tourists and locals. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compestela was AMAZING, you know so amazing that I actually miss our own Seattle (puny) one. The intensity of the building and creation is breathtaking. It is a something you must visit kine of thing. The main thing that was really attention grabbing was the HUGE thurible. Now it is quite funny what the story is of why they do this, but then again it may not be true. So the huge thurible, by the way is also called botafubre (which is Giego, the language of Galicia and not in Spanish (castillia)), swings across the longer part of the church across and over everyone’s head, it is sort of scary at first but it happens and everything is fine afterward. But you do see the sparks and whatnot come out, it is kine of interesting. So they tell us that the reason why they do this, irrelevant to the Catholicism beliefs, but because people, and I think they pointed out the pilgrims back in the day, were people of odor, and hence doing the HUGE thurible/incense. But there is also the reason why the religion does it in the first place. Anyway moving on through Galicia. After the first night we packed up to go to La Coruña. La Coruña is a city on the Altantic coast and is also a province of Galecia. Now when we arrived, it was really bad timing of the coordinators for this because as we pulled up to the city, the street we needed to go to was CLOSED. Bam bam bam!! Not for anyway bad if that’s what you’re thinking but because the fútbol team was playing that night, the pride crashed the city just as hard as the waves crashed the beach the city sat on. The streets were closed so that the people can fill them as they prepared to watch the game, which was about two hours til. So with everyone’s luggage pushing through the sea of people covered in blue and white just to get to the hotel. It was a hassle but we got there. I finally got to kind of swim in the Altantic ocean, although even I touched it, Santos yelled at me, “NO!!”… not because he didn’t want me to go swimming, but because he thought I couldn’t make it…. To be swimming home. Haha!! That man is FUNNY! But yeah so, we went out for a little that night because we already saw the potential of fun crowds… haha of course we were all careful, but we found out they lost and then most people went mopping home. So I think that the potential really died, but we went to see anyway, did nothing and then went home. The next morning, we went to see the torre de Hercules… I think it was about 200 stairs in total for that whole thing…. Never again! Haha it was a beautiful view though at the top. Afterward we had beach time, and then lunch and back to Leon. It was a very eventful weekend. I would definitely come back, oh and did I mention I got to view the lying of the Apostle James. It was very touching for me because St. James is my Cathedral, my home.
ALSO CHECK OUT SOME VIDEOS OF THE HUGE THURIBLE….
