For the second part of my Semana Santa (Spring Break/The week of celebration leading up to Easter), I went to Sevilla, Spain which is supposed to have the biggest and coolest Easter celebration in all of Spain. Spain has an extremely traditional Semana Santa celebration full of various parades/processions in which the men carry tremendously heavy floats through the streets of their city in order to serve penance for their sins. It is a super painful and grueling process, but they are proud to do it because it is such an honorable thing to do.

The processions are split up into different "brotherhoods" and the hermanos (brothers) of that brotherhood are the ones who carry the float and also the ones who dress up in the colored cloaks with the pointy hats (they kind of resemble KKK members but they have different colors on instead of all white). Men, women, and children do this and they march through the streets (sometimes barefoot) for hours on end in the hot sun under their warm clothing carrying candles or crosses to serve their penance as well.

It was a really cool process to see, and it was awesome how the whole community was a part of it. Sevilla was packed full of people wanting to see the incredible celebration. I was there with my friend Chris, and we saw all sorts of processions. My favorite ones were Thursday night (when Chris and I watched them from nine to midnight, napped from midnight to two am, and then watched processions again until 5am. This is a special night called the Madruga where the most important floats are shown and people got dead silent when the float would go by.

It was the coolest cultural experience I have since I have been in Spain, and I am very lucky that I got to witness the entire thing! The best part was, I got to meet up with my friend Shannon who is studying abroad in Sevilla and watch a couple of the processions with her and her friends. It was nice to talk to someone from home. :)

I had a great time throughout my entire semana santa, but after 10 days of jumping around, I was ready to come home to one cozy, non-bug-filled bed and Maribel's delicious meals. :)