Andrew's Blog: Valencia

Wow, again it has been wayy to long. We've had tons of visitors in over the past three weeks and have had almost 10 people sleeping in our house every night. That, coupled with final exams, are the two reasons I'm citing for a lack of updates. Enough excuses, here's the latest happening.

Last week, I took a trip to Valencia w/ Joel to get a glimpse of las Fallas and stayed w/ his friends from Singapore, Paul and Kelly. Las Fallas is basically this massive, 10-day firework and flame filled party that takes over the streets of Valencia in honor of Saint Joseph. The way it works, is that there are small groups of people in each neighborhood called Casal faller, who work all year fund raising to getenough money to produce a falla. A falla is essentially this massive painted, wooden construction created by an artist that is said to respresent some negative aspect of society. These fallas are placed in street intersections all around the city and go up in flames on the last day of the festival. Leading up to the burning, they have fireworks every single day, twice a day. First at 2pm (which you cannot see but it's the "rhythmn" of the explosions that is important) and then again at 2am. They also have constant parades, people and kids throwing fireworks EVERYWHERE, paella making contests and the whole city turns in to one big party from 2-6AM. Unfortunately, I missed the burning of the fallas, but was able to experience the general merryment and overall experience of the festival.

P.S. (If you haven't noticed by now, you can make the photos larger by clicking them!)