End of Fallas

Fallas has continued to be more awesome. tuesday night we watched the fireworks again. This time they started at 1 am. Everything happens so much later here! Then we continued to meet up with a bunch of friends of ours in the program and wandered down to Barrio Del Carmen, where there were tons of young people drinking and dancing on the street. It was a lot of fun. The guys had fun throwing petardos at each other...they're actually pretty fun. I no longer jump evey time I hear one go off, since it happens all the time! Yay! Wednesday we went to the Mascleta again. It was so powerful that we could see the glass windows of the buildings around us shaking. Later, we went to watch a parade of Falleras and Falleros bringing flowers to a huge Virgin Mary wooden frame (ofrenda). People attach all of these one little bunch at a time to form a dress with crazy patterns. It's insane and goes on for two days. We have to check it out again tonight when it's finally finished. Then Jenna and I checked out a bunch of little artisan stands that were set up. They had some really neat stuff. At night, we met up to go to an Irish pub to celebrate St. Patrick's Day a little bit. It was fun and there were so many people there! We ended up making friends with some guys from Manchester, England who were really cool. Then we went to the fireworks, which were magnificent again. After, we headed toward Carmen but wandered around a lot, seeing new Fallas and drinking and talking. Then, we came across one of many neighborhood party tents and asked someone if we could go in. He said yes and we ended up dancing with a bunch of Falleros to Spanish and American music! It was soooo fun and such an awesome experience. We made it home by 6 am and then woke up at 12, the same times as before, so that we could go to the Mascletas. This is such a crazy week but it's so so fun and I'm just so happy that I'm actually here in Valencia experiencing this! Yesterday, Friday, was the creama, or burning of all the Fallas. We chose to watch the violin one (picture in a previous blog). It was amazing! They set off all the noisemakers and sparklers and fireworks and then burned it. It was like the biggest bonfire I'd ever seen! There were electric cables pretty close to the enormous fire which seemed kind of dangerous, and I think that's why the bomberos had to keep spraying water all around the Falla. The problem was, all the ash falling mixed with the water, and when the wind blew slightly toward you, you'd get covered with wet drops of black ash. Kinda gross, but the fire was epic enough to make up for it. Tonight I'm going to a bull fight, which will hopefully be really cool. And, it's 21 degrees! Hot day! Woo woo! Yay for the end of Fallas, it was definitely the most exciting celebration I've ever been a part of.