31.Enero.2009
Good morning all!
Can you believe I am heading into February over here? It is pretty incredible. So on to what I have been doing and related news.
About Anna: Right now she has an appointment on Tuesday here in Sevilla. Hopefully they will be able to take the screws out of her gums. After, she will leave on Wednesday on a flight back to the States. Her mother has a friend who is a maxilofacial (spelling?) surgeon who will take a look at her case and decide what to do about her jaw. That appointment is on Thursday and I think she said she will be spending five days in the States. It all depends on what the surgeon says. Her flight is round trip so she is leaving with the intent of coming back but it is all up in the air. I do hope she can come back. The problem is classes: if she has to stay back in the States for another surgery, she will be miss classes starting here and classes have already started in Chapel Hill. She is worried she will miss an entire semester of school. It is very unfortunate and I hope everything works out for the best. She loves Spain and does not want to leave.
Traveling news! I have booked flights to Dublin, Ireland for March 12th through the 18th, which will place me in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. It is supposed to be a great celebration. I will fly into Dublin and take a bus to Belfast, where one of my Chapel Hill friends, Meredith, is staying. She is also studying abroad this semester, although I think she is only there until May. Andrea and Angela are flying into Cork first to spend sometime there and we will all meet in Dublin for that night. I am missing three days of school but I think it will be well worth it. Then, immediately after, I will be in Portugal. There are some runners from my program who wanted to go for a half-marathon (13.1 miles instead of 26.2) and found one in Lisbon, Portugal. We will take a bus (7 hours!) there on Thursday and run the race on Friday. I am very excited. That will be a long week of traveling for me! I am glad I have four day weekends to take advantage of. Also, we are looking to go to Madrid. There are round trip flights for about $100. Very reasonable. Also, we can take a bus to the Strait of Gibraltar, which is something I would love to see. Maybe next weekend. This weekend it is supposed to rain.
Yesterday we went to la Catedral de Sevilla, which is the city's symbol. I will post pictures when I find my uploading cord, but I do not have many because my camera died twenty minutes in. However, once I get my student ID card, I can enter for free. It is amazing to me that there was a huge Arabic influence in Spain before the Christians reconquered it. The cathedral was originally a mosque and construction started in 1184. However, after the Requisition, it was consecrated as a cathedral in 1248. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and the third largest cathedral overall. La Giralda (the bell tower) is its shining feature and stands 98m tall which converts to about 322 feet. The tower is the tallest point in the city and from the top you can see all of Sevilla spread out below.
We were allowed to go up to the top after climbing 35 "flights". Instead of stairs, the Giralda has inclined planes. During the time it was a mosque, the bell man had to come ring the bells five times a day for prayer and 35 flights is very long. So, to make it easier, the inclined planes allowed for a donkey to carry the bell man up. It was quite a work out getting to the top. It was very windy up there but you could see everything. The cathedral itself is in the perfect shape of a cross from above.
Below, we first entered into another orange patio which was preserved from when it was originally a mosque. Hanging in one of the corridors is a wooden crocodile (cocodrilo) and an elephant's tooth. The legend is that one of the Spanish kings, I think it was Alfonso, had a daughter whose renowned beauty attracted a sultan. This sultan brought a caravan with him to Sevilla in order to ask for her hand in marriage. As wedding gifts, he brought along an elephant and a crocodile. Unfortunately, the elephant died not long after arriving. One of its tusk's was chopped off and hung in the hallway of the Cathedral. However, the crocodile lived. The king, not wanting to insult the man asking for his daughter's hand but also afraid and unsure of what to do with this crocodile, did not want to keep it in the Alcazar. It could hide in the gardens and ambush people or even worse, get into the building at night while they slept. To remedy this problem, he put the crocodile in the Orange Patio of the Cathedral. There was running water and sunlight, which he thought the crocodile would enjoy. Well, crocodiles can live very long and this one did. It grew lazy and fat in its Orange patio palace. People from all over the city would come to see it and eventually it grew so used to people that it would allow them to pet it like a puppy. The crocodile began a symbol associated with the Cathedral. However, time passed and eventually the crocodile did die. Everyone was devastated. It had become the pet of the Cathedral. So, they mummified it and placed it in a sarcophagus in the shape of a crocodile and it is hung in the hallway of the Cathedral entrance.
No one really knows if this is true but there was a Spanish king whose daughter married a sultan and there really is what looks like a wooden crocodile hanging from the ceiling along with an elephant's tusk. Who knows.
You have to see the inside of the Cathedral to believe it. No description I could fathom would even come close to capturing the feeling of entering the place. The ceilings soar. Enormous stone columns reach up and are checkered in the colored lights falling through the stained glass windows. The air is cool, it is dark, and all is quiet. Footsteps echo. The organs from the Baroque period run all the way to the ceiling. Behind the altar is a wall of golden sculptures and at the top is perched Christ from his crucifix. Each private capilla is a new work of art. There is one with works entirely done by Murillo, a famous Spanish painter from the Baroque period.
In the western corner, there are two enormous wooden doors. One of the doors is never opened unless a new cardinal is to pass through it. However when Franco came to Sevilla to visit the Cathedral (he was an extremely religious man), no one had to the courage to tell him he could enter through the greatest door. What happened instead, is the cardinal with the key suddenly went on vacation and disappeared with it. They simply told Franco it was locked and they could not open it. He entered through a different door.
Also in the cathedral is the most creative looking tomb I have ever seen: the tomb of Christopher Columbus. His library and two of his children are also buried in the Cathedral. The tomb consists of four kings of Spain, the kings of Leon, Aragon, Navarre, and Castile carrying his coffin. The fifth king of Spain, the king of Granada is represented by some sort of fruit (I guess whatever a granada is) that is pierced by a cross one of the other kings is carrying. The symbol is the conquering of Arabic Granada by Christianity. Now, there was some controversy about Columbus' remains. Originally, he died in Spain and was buried but his remains have been moved from Spain to Santo Domingo to Cuba and eventually to the Cathedral in Sevilla. The Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Spain all claimed to have his remains. In Cuba, they opened the tomb and it was empty. No Columbus. Well, the Dominican Republic refused to open the tomb. The cathedral in Sevilla, however, has his children buried there. They exhumed the body and did a DNA test. It was confirmed. Columbus is buried in the Cathedral of Sevilla. However, he was not intact. To make it appear like a complete skeleton, a couple of other body parts from unknown sources were placed there along with Columbus' remains. The Cathedral had those parts removed and buried in the floor of the Cathedral. We do not know if Columbus' missing parts (for instance, there is only one leg in the tomb at the Cathedral) are located in Santo Domingo. So it is possible Columbus is buried in two places at once. Some interesting controversy.
Well, that is all I have for now, but I will update again soon. I love and miss you all.
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