Ash Wednesday

---

Those of you that know me, know that I'm Catholic. However, those that know me well know that I'm not a practicing Catholic. Regardless, a group of us decided to check out the mass at the cathedral in Sevilla tonight for Ash Wednesday. Didn't understand a thing they said, but it was a typical Catholic mass. I'm still able to appreciate everything that Catholicism has to offer, even if I don't accept the bread and blood of Christ, or participate in other traditions while I'm there. Now I can say I've been to a Catholic mass in Spain, pretty cool.

The cathedral is beautiful inside, it was my first time inside since I've been here. Here, they put the ashes on the very top of your head (so now it's all over my hair) instead of on your forehead, like I'm used to in the states. It was really cool to see, I'll probably attend more masses here, it was a very serene and relaxing service.

One of the girls in our group is Jewish and she came to mass with us tonight. It was her first Catholic mass in her life, she was very nervous and confused by everything. It intrigued me to want to go to Synagogue with her later this week, so we all decided to do that with her on Friday and learn about her religion.

I'm really enjoying my group of friends here, all of the girls are really nice and fun to be around. There's a lot of us, but that's nice because there are different subgroups that we can hang out with too.

Today I had my Literature and Cooking class, it was our first day of cooking and it was pretty intense. We made Soufle Custodius (a soufle with lamb brain) and Escabeche (fried cuttlefish). The chef leading the class was awesome and it was super interesting. He showed us the actual lamb skulls and had us take the brains out. He also cut, skinned, and cleaned the cuttlefish in front of us and walked us through step by step on how to cook everything. I can't believe I actually ate lamb brain today, but it was good.

For the class we have to keep a recipe book of all of the recipes we made, I'm excited to bring that back with me, even though I probably won't be catching and skinning a fish any time soon. I've posted a few pictures on here of the class today, but I'm also going to put all of them on Facebook to document the class throughout the semester.

We all also recieved our Sevici passes (bike passes) yesterday. It's a bike service all around Sevilla where you scan your card and pick up a bike and ride it to the next stop to get to where you need to. I know larger cities in the states have them too, but it's going to be nice for getting around faster, even though I'm enjoying walking everywhere.

I've been running a few days each week too. It's nice because I don't start class until 11 on Monday/Wednesday and 1 on Tuesday/Thursday so I have the time. Me and this other girl from my program usually go together, we've been checking out the trails along the Guadalquivir river, and it's beautiful. My legs are really sore from soccer this week, running, and walking like 5 miles everyday, but it's helping me work off all of the bread and chocolate I've been eating!

(this was a long one, just had random thoughts I wanted to share. Hope you find it interesting!)

Love,

Haley

---

Photos

Cooking Class
Lamb skulls

Cooking Class
Lamb Brain

Cooking Class
Cuttlefish

Cooking Class
Preparing/skinning the fish

Cooking Class
Pre-frying pan, prepared cuttlefish

Cooking Class
Finished product- Escabeche (cuttlefish)

Cooking Class
Lunch prepared- Fried Cuttlefish with onion/garlic/ pepper sautee (left), multi-grain bread with lamb brain soufle (right)

Comments

[mom]

Wow, I wasn\'t expecting all this. I can see why you wanted to take this class.