Chag Sameach!!

Happy Passover everyone! so far I've had a very pleasant Pesach experience here in sfarad (Spain). After my parents left, we went to Cordoba and Sevilla for the weekend with our group. We saw the great mosque of cordoba, with the red and white striped arches, and the cathedral and plaza de Espana in Sevilla.... and that's about it. unfortunately it was pouring down rain almost the whole weekend. Luckily we were staying in a 4 star hotel that allowed for me to take great afternoon siestas.

But anyway, the point is that Pesach started on saturday night and luckily, my friend Jess on my program has a friend from high school studying in Sevilla who has a Jewish friend on HER program who managed to find a seder!!! I got so lucky that I mentioned in passing that I wanted to find one. The Jewish community in Sevilla has about 90 people but it does exist! So my friend Dana and I took our map and our umbrellas and went in search of the tiny little synagogue. there we prayed the evening service and then after the shabbat had ended they i helped set up for the seder. There about 8 other Americans who had found this tiny synagogue and 4 Israelis who were in Sevilla for the year studying flamenco guitar and dance. I was so happy to find Israelis!! I was surprised at how easily I was able to switch from Spanish to Hebrew. I think i'm going to survive when I got to Israel this summer. The seder was very traditional all in Hebrew. The rabbi made all the israelis and me read (which is rather embarrassing because I'm out of practice and I don't read as well as the Israelis obviously... but it was fine) and it was so great that we all knew the same songs and the same tunes etc. at the end of the meal we sang some zmerot. and to sing am yisrael chai (the nation of israel lives) in Spain, a place where the Jews were persecuted during the Inquisition absolutely gave me the chills.

i had a fantastic pesach experience and i'm finding that keeping kosher for pesach is pretty easy here. i've adopted the sefardi tradition of eating rice (because we are in sfarad) so its not so bad. speaking of food, its lunchtime! hasta luego!