Every fall Ávila hosts a carnival, which if memory serves me correctly, is somehow related to a festival associated with St. Teresa. If you picture the South Plains Fair in Lubbock, you would not be far off from the one in Ávila. There is a midway, and booths selling all kinds of foods–similar, although not exactly like the food we find in the States–and carnival rides that, very similar to those in the States, I would not get on. They all look pretty suspect to me.
That’s not to say the say the students feel the same, as evidenced by the picture here. It was nice to experience a little taste of something so much like what we would experience at home … my children riding the rides and me refusing to join in!
Also one year and a day ago today
While there were a lot of great things about spending a semester abroad, the times in which Luke came to visit may have been some of the best. Luke spent the previous semester in Ávila and so it was a homecoming of sorts for him. But it also gave us opportunity to see the sites all over again from his eyes and the memories of his experiences.
One of the other cools things about his visit was that a friend joined him, so we got to not only hear the stories of a previous trip, but we also got to experience again the city as someone who was brand new would experience it.