Fiestas, Ferias y Peñas

View of Las Ferias from the top of the Ferris Wheel

Alcalá de Henares is beautiful. It is an old city where Miguel de Cervantes (the writer of Don Quijote) lived and where I will be spending the next four months. A small extremely old city where no one speaks English. I think we all agree that the language barrier is more difficult than expected, but I seem to be managing with lots of hand motions!
We arrived in Alcalá during fiestas. A week long party of activities during the day in the plaza and a fair in a park at night. Both my host mom and Maria Jose (my director) kept explaining how big this fiesta is. On my second day I walked to the Plaza de Cervantes (the center of the city) to find tons of people all doing a variety of activities and a parade-type thing. This parade included giant figures who pranced around the streets dancing and spinning. All of the children had water guns...and much to my dismay thought it was fun to "by-mistake" shot the American. Along with the activities and parade there was music, mostly American music allowing me to feel a little more at home.
That night my host mom strongly encouraged my friends and me to go to las ferias. I am so glad we listened to her. Las ferias is much bigger than anything I have experienced in the United States. It had a flee market, rides and attractions that probably would not be legal at an amusement park and this is a traveling carnival, food vendors, and las peñas. The only way for me to describe las peñas are frats...they have about thirty tents lined up all blasting music and serving drinks sponsored by the individual peñas. At the top of the ferris wheel we could see the whole feria and all of us were in complete awe of the size of this non-permanent carnival, flee market, frat party!