Easter Sunday in Sevilla

Woke in good company with the plan to go to the Cathedral with Anna and Brittney for mass. It didn't 'start' until 10, so we aimed for being there around 9, expecting it to be sort of like at home where mass fills up on Easter, especially it being the Cathedral in sevilla. Well, we needn't have been so worried. Mass didn't really start until 11. It was as though the priests were pregaming from 10-11. It was a lovely way to see the inside of the Cathedral without being charged as well as a good cultural experience: a pre-Vatican II like mass in Spanish. It made me really grateful for both mass at Redemptorist and the Newman Center (both very post Vatican II). No lie, this has been the most out of tune with my religious life I've ever been, not too fond of it, I'm hoping that that, along with many other aspects of my more structured US life will return when I go home... however I intend to start working on that (and those other parts that are off-balance) sooner, as in now.

After mass, we went to the cafe right under their apartment for lunch: empanaditas and a pastry for yummy dessert. I can't really recall the rest of the day, but I think we all just hung out for quite a while. Anna and I were unable to cancel our Sunday night hostel reservation. [Explanation: we'd made at least this one reservation beforehand. After finding our new friends, we thought about cancelling it. Website said that for Semana Santa they required a 7 day notice... so, we didn't think we could... once we got their though, and found it to be a shitty one (internet down, laundry out, cold water, found out we could've canceled it in only 24 hrs notice; worst hostel yet]. Well, we went ahead and took our siesta at the hostel before returning to our friends' for dinner. Wow, Marie made a delicious spinach, cream, garbanzo and potato dish and Hannah a veggie curry and rice dish, yum! We stood there til it got to being around 10 and then we went ahead and made our way back to the hostel. We stopped for our first (delicious) Spanish ice cream in the center.

Anna liked to do inventory regularly, just so that we could look at what was going on, and really appreciate it. I think that night was my favorite inventory. It went something along the lines of "Inventory: we are sitting on a park bench in Plaza Nueva in Sevilla, we are eating delicious ice cream on a beautiful Easter night (really, we need hazelnut flavored ice cream in the States!), we went to mass at the Cathedral on Easter, we had a delicious dinner, we saw everything we wanted to see in this city, we didn't have to sleep on a park bench once and we made five new friends!" Talk about being grateful!