ThankfulThursdays!

So I had this awesome idea: ThankfulThursdays! Every Thursday I will be posting something that I am thankful for. 

‘So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. -Colossians 2:6-7’ 

The Message says, ‘And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.’

There is so much to be thankful for :)

This Thursday I am beyond thankful for opportunities. I have been so blessed in the past to travel to many different places, and this is no exception. This is such a cool opportunity I have been given to truly experience another culture! Not just visit for a few days, but to live here for 5 months!! I don’t want to take advantage of this time in my life, because I know June is quickly approaching. I want to travel and go as many places as I can!! So thankful for my Dad who encourages this mindset! For real. So blessed. 

So early on Saturday morning, (legit early. we saw the sun come up. Sad that I haven’t seen that in a while) Devin and I rode the bus to the airport to get the rental car! My first rental car! {You don’t have to be 25 like you do in the States :) } And my first driving experience in a foreign country! It wasn’t really that different, other than the road signs. The highways were very similar, they drive on the same side of the car as we do at home and it’s a manual, like the trusty Explorer (which I miss. There’s nothing like just getting in your car and driving somewhere). We picked up Adriana and her boyfriend, Jon, and hit the road. We were about 15 minutes out of the city and lo and behold our car breaks down. Shuts off. Donezo. We then proceeded to wait about an hour for the tow truck and a taxi, headed BACK to the airport where they gave us a new car. Of course that happened, haha but it was all part of the adventure!! It took about 2 hours to get to Valencia with the help of the GPS (which Devin borrowed from a German friend. Thankfully he found out how to switch the language from German to English because I would have probably been crying if that thing was yelling at me in German. That GPS was the biggest blessing, can’t even tell you). We parked outside of the city and rode the metro into town. Good call, Devin. We came out of the metro into the hoards of people, in town to celebrate Las Fallas.

Let me tell you a little bit about this wonderful festival. It is officially dedicated to St. Joseph, patron saint of the guild of carpenters, where it’s said this tradition came from. In the springtime, the carpenters would burn their torches and other wastes from their workshops, and from there it has taken off. Now a days, this festival is a display of art. People spend over a year building these huge monumental figures! They vary in size, but the big ones are bout 6-7 stories high! The whole festival lasts for about a week, and goes out with a bang (literally) with La Crema, or the burning of the figures.

This is the day that we came for. When we got there we pushed our way through crowds of people and saw a few of the fallas. They were so cool!! I wish I could have seen how they were made! All traffic was stopped for Las Fallas, so it was a pedestrian paradise. 

We stopped for lunch, then for Starbucks (praise jesus, ilovestarbucks) and continued making our way through the city looking at las fallas. The whole time there are firecrackers going off, which are super loud and I was constantly jumping. The little kids got a kick out of scaring people. Punks. We had dinner and around 930 started waiting to see the finale at 1am. They began burning the little ones earlier (with each burning there were fireworks or mascletás), then the bigger ones, saving the biggest and first place falla for last. 

(1st Place Falla they burned at 1)

We skipped out on seeing other ones burn and the parade, because the big one was suppose to be spectacular, and we wanted a good view. We were not disappointed. After much anticipation, at 1am there was an awesome fireworks show. We were really close to where they were shooting them off from and you could feel your whole body resonating. It. Was. Awesome. Coolest thing. Then within seconds this massive monument was engulfed in flames. Crazy. I think I was laughing the whole time. We watched this beautiful thing burn to the ground with some type of Valencian national anthem (? not sure) playing in the background. It was a really awesome experience!!

We then ventured back to the car and drove the 2 hours back to Alicante. I was exhausted. The 2 lovebirds were sleeping in the back, so Devin stayed awake and talked to me to keep me awake. We talked about his upcoming wedding in July (!!!!!Yay!!!!) and how we wished our significant others were there. True story. Overall this road trip was definitely a success and I would totally do it again!!

Cool: MY SISTER IS COMING TO VISIT ME IN MAY!!!!! I cannot tell you how excited I am!!! My sister is my best friend. She is crazy, beautiful, hilarious, in love with Jesus and now a triathlete. :) The Sassy Sheffield Señoritas will be hitting up Spain together!!! I’m counting down the days. This is way cool.

Not cool: I’ve been eyeing these 2 pairs of boots in this store window for weeks. They are so cool and edgy. They are knee high, and flat like a regular boot (not a heel like my last sassy boot-mistake). So I finally went in to the store yesterday cause I have some extra mulah to spend and knew I wanted these boots. Well I waited too long. They only had one pair of each boot. One was way too big. The other fit me in the foot, but not on my big calves. So now I am boot-less. I haven’t decided if I want to hunt some down or not, because it is getting warmer now and there aren’t as many in the stores. So it would truly be a hunt. We’ll see. It was very disappointing. Not cool, Caitlin. Should have gone in when you first saw them.