United Statesian

Dear Citizens of the world! It's Spring...time for Spanish country weddings! I have been to a few weddings but this one took the cake for length and for... rowdyness. Any celebration in Spain involves food. The wedding was three days of eating, but with a ceremony and white dress somewhere in the middle. The white dress The festivities started with a long dinner, dancing and drinking until the wee hours on Friday. Saturday morning's ceremony was "traditional" but the tossing of rice and rose pedals became a pumelling that had everyone diving for cover. After a snack of rosquilas (the local version of donuts, but with more grease), we headed off to lunch. In between the various courses, the bride and groom were "forced" by their rowdy friends to do all manner of rituals. The groom being paraded around the reception wearing only a diaper.. . After lunch came dancing, drinking, a siesta and then more eating that evening. The grooms friends cutting his t

Dear citizens of the world, Burn! Burn! Let the village burn! Although it might come as a shock, my Pueblo is not the only pueblo in Spain. Just five kilometers away there is a village called " El Puente del Arzobispo" (The Archbishop's Bridge - An Archbishop that owned the neighboring village ordered a bridge built over the Tajo River to make the pilgrimage to Guadalupe easier and safer.) On the 25th Novermber the village celebrates the " Chozas " festival to honor Santa Catalina . The bonfires are built in the middle of the roads all around the village. When the fire burns down the embers are used to BBQ meats (some call the meat juicy, others might call it fatty, yet others just call them tasty). How did the festival start? The origins are not clear, but most likely, people waiting to cross the river (pre-bridge times) often had to camp out and they would make big bonfires while waiting for dawn when they could forge the river. Here I offer you some pics fr