Festival San Sebastia

 Yesterday we left Palma and headed to the east coast of Mallorca. Our home exchangers have their main home in a little colonia on the beach. 

This week is the Mallorcan festival celebrating San Sebastia, who is the patron saint of Mallorca. We went to a nearby town near the colonia, named Arta, to join in the festivities.

To celebrate, bonfires are lit all around town, and grills are set outside most restaurants and bars to cook sausages and meat. A procession begins at the cathedral and marches though town. At the front of the procession are people dressed as demons who are symbolically battling the good. And everyone wears red scarves around their necks.

Bonfires getting set up all around town

Demon masks were in most shop windows

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Everyone began in the cathedral with a short message from the priest, some songs, and then the procession.

 

Procession through town

Statues around town dressed as demons

We didn't get a good view of the demons, but it was so fun to be right in the middle of the party. The kids, for some reason, were both super cranky, though, and I literally had to cover Q's mouth while the church service was going on.

The most fun part, though, was the bonfires and the meat. Even the kids enjoyed that part. Levi cooked us up some meat, but was so mad when some random lady came and took all our sausages off the grill!

Levi bonding with the Mallorqis over our stolen sausages

Q said, "Mommy, the fire is dancing with me!"

The meat to grill was all freely provided! And it goes without saying, deliciosa!!

The bars were giving away these bottle-holders, ha! As you can imagine, there was a lot of drinking going on.

The weather was especially cold and windy yesterday, and the wind at our house on the beach rattled the windows all night! We slept in, and woke up to a little bit of snow falling!

Little bitty snowflakes on the patio!

We snuggled in the house today, watching the enormous waves in the ocean from our windows. Later we went to lunch at El Sol, the restaurant owned by our home exchange family. Super YUM!

In the next few days it is supposed to be 15 degrees warmer! But today it was fun to have an excuse for a lazy day. We are enjoying the big beautiful beach house, watching the sea.