Las Fallas part 3, and FINALE

Ok guys, I know you've been dying to read what I've been up to for the last days of the Fallas festival...so here it is! Sunday, there were lots of things going on.  I tried going to the Mascletá at 2, but woke up at 2, so I was like eh, whatever.  I did some yoga, and my flatmate Ana made arroz en horno for a late lunch, or a dinner for us Americans haha.  Natacha and her friend Marie-Eve who is studying in Alicante came and met me to see if we could find what was suppose to be going on at 6 in front of the Torres de Serrano.  We didn't see anything, there were just tons of people and lots of falleras walking around.  There was a group forming to watch a group of breakdancers though, so we joined in that.  In the end, they grabbed four people from the crowd to come up for their last dance act.  It wasn't me thank heaven!! No re-run of my belly dancer in Egypt incident.  I am usually picked for those things, but they picked Natacha!! They had the four girls bend over in a row and one of the guys jumped over them.  I was scared for them! But all went well.  After that we walked to Natacha's flat so they could eat.  We ended up watching a movie and hanging out there for a while.  Then one of Natacha's friends invited us over to their flat and to later watch the fireworks with them that started at 1.30 a.m.  My Danish friend Ben was there, with his whole attire consisting of zebra print.  Interesting. And I convinced Josh to come as well.  We went over to someone else's flat to their roof to watch the fireworks.  Ben and his girlfriend wanted me to go with them to one of the bridge's to watch the fireworks, but everyone else seemed to want to stay and it was getting too close to the time it was going to start to get to the bridge on time.  In the end though, some huge apartment buildings were blocking our view of the lower fireworks. :(  At least we saw the huge ones! The best ones hehe.  After they ended, the city looked like Gotham city with the amount of smoke that was in the air.  It was pretty awesome looking.  After that we walked over to the city center near my house to hang out.  We found another street party with a live DJ and danced there for a while.  Then we found a churro place to eat churros! Yay!! More churros and buñuelos!! I was happy.  That night was the last crazy night of Fallas before they burned everything called Nit del Foc.  Night of fire in Catalan.  Before going home, early in Spanish standards at 4.30, we ate a bocadillo de salchicha, a sausage sandwich, that so many people were selling on little grills on the streets.  Delicious! So delicious! I was very happy with the amount of food I got to taste that night.  Everyone headed to my house for a little while, and then Josh and I ended up talking until 7 in the morning, when my flatmates and their friends finally came home haha.  I talked with Kim on Skype for a little while and ended up going to bed at 9 a.m.!!!

Natacha and her friends ended up coming to get me for the final Mascletá yesterday at 1 p.m.  I woke up at 1 p.m. and just went haha.  It was the shortest mascletá! But we had a good place in the street to stand so it wasn't too big of a deal.  They wanted to go eat paella, but I wanted to take a nap.  I got ready for the day, blow-dried my hair, and everything, and took a nap.  Then Kim and I Skyped again and she bought her plane ticket to come see me on April 9th!! I'm so excited to have someone from back home come see me! Everyone had their friends and family visiting this week and I had wished I had someone come see me, so this will be awesome and it's super soon when she comes. :) After that, I met up with Natacha again in front of the Torres de Serrano to watch the infantile, small, falla in front of them burn.  I missed it somewhat though.  My fault for being late! But then we decided to walk past Plaza de la Virgen and see all the flowers.  It smelt sooo  nice!! They were beautiful and I can only imagine the amount of money they spent on all the flowers in the plaza!! We thought we would try and see the infantil fallas at Plaza de Ayuntamiento burn, but we couldn't even get close enough to see it burning there were so many people! So we headed over to the da Vinci Falla that we had decided to go to watch burn.  So many of the Spanish people I had asked said that was the one to go to.  The petardos were RIDICULOUS tonight.  I seriously was scared I was going to lose my hearing or something.  They threw a petardo in an open portapotty while I was waiting for Natacha and I thought it had blown up the whole place! Geez.  Everywhere I walked I was so suspicious of every single guy standing there, afraid they were going to pull out a petardo!! Not just the little ones either, one of them that went off behind us once made an alarm on a building go off!! So insane.  I am not sad about those going away after Fallas.  We got to the Falla and it was already jam packed a half hour before, we tried moving closer, and pissed a lot of Spanish people off by standing in front of them.  Eh well. We just ignored them.  We were in front of some funny English people.  All the Fallas were suppose to be lit at 12, but we had to wait for ours to go off around 12.45...and while waiting we got rained on by other debris from other fallas.  So much ash coming down haha For every Falla, they have a set of fireworks that go off in front of them before they light the fuse to burn it down.  Not just little fountains either, they were huge ones that were so beautiful!! They turned off the lights and lit the thing on fire.  Awesome.  The da Vinci one was so sweet! His beard was made with 50 kilometers of bamboo and it really was just a spectacular and huge Falla.  I am surprised the maker of that one wasn't holding onto it changing his mind about burning the thing!! So much time and effort put into it all of the year to be burnt down in 15 minutes.  Since it went off late, we couldn't make it to the burning of the Falla in Plaza de Ayuntamiento at 1, which is the last event before Fallas ends, so we walked around and found a few little ones that were lit late to watch.  We ate a kebab on calle Caballeros, and then it started raining.  It was so light at first, but then it turned into a DOWNPOUR.  It was raining so much...Good timing though! I'm glad it didn't rain during the burnings! Good for the city also to clean up the pee that was all over the streets and all the trash from all the people.  My feet got soaked, I'm afraid I may have to buy some new shoes since mine were soaked with dirty gross water...and it seems that every time I actually try to make my hair all nice it rains or is way too humid and just ruins it.  That is why I don't do my hair in Spain hehe ;)

All in all, Fallas was definitely unforgettable.  My schedule is totally messed up now, and I have class again! But it's amazing how much detail and effort was put in by so many people to make Las Fallas 2012 a memorable time.