Blog #9

Every time that I think I this trip can't get any better, it does. Today we went to
a festival for Santa Caterina, which included a parade in Orroli. We started off at the beginning of the parade in the countryside where people were getting dressed and setting up for the parade. We were given lots of wine, beer, limoncello, and mirto while we were there as well as some Sardinian sweets. On the way to the town where the parade is supposed to end, we briefly visited a bigger nuraghe than the one that we saw the third day of this trip. When we got to the town, we waited for about an hour and a half before the parade arrived. There were basically three different parts of the parade, and the first part involved a lot of horses. There were at least a hundred horses walking down the street with people riding them in traditional Sardinian clothing. Annalisa told me that anyone who has horses in the area will put them in the parade. Some of the horses seemed a little skittish and nervous because they were near so many people, so the riders sometimes had to stop and turn to get the horse under control. The second wave was of decorated wagons being pulled by tractors. The wagons were covered with handmade sheets (which were very intricate and beautiful) and people sat on top of the wagons and threw homemade cookies to us. The third wave was of traditional clothing that was worn in different Sardinian towns. Each town had a sign and we could see behind it men and women and children who were wearing the traditional clothing from that town. I didn't realize that each town had their own style, and I noticed that the towns that Annalisa told me were in the mountains were particularly different than the others. There were also lots of musicians in the parade as well. There was a band made up of a line of heraldic trumpets and a few lines of drums. They stopped a little before up and played a song. There were a few adults and kids playing the accordion, and there were a line of people playing the launedda (which are Sardinian pipes that kind of sound like bagpipes, though they are much smaller). There was also a small group of women who were signing a song as they walked by. Before tonight, I felt that I had not heard that much music that is specific to Sardinia, but now I believe that I have!

 I had also felt that we had not done a lot of dancing, which changed today! After the parade, a man started playing his accordion on stage and three of the people from the parade started doing a dance in a circle to the song. A few people joined in and then I eventually joined in and learned the dance. The dance was very simple and bouncy, but it was hard to figure out because the women's skirts were very long so it was hard to see their feet. The circle got bigger and bigger as more people joined, but I became more comfortable with the dance and had more fun as it went on. I danced two more times, and the second time I learned a new dance step. All of the dances that I did were only with my feet and not with my arms because I was always holding hands or hooking arms with people on my left and right. I was surprised at first to see that many young teenagers were going in front of the stage and dancing as well, and that they already knew the different dances! It seems that since they grew up here, they learned the traditional dance when they were kids. The dancing was a lot of fun and I'm glad that we had time to fit it in and going to this festival/parade before we have to leave.

There's only a day and a half left of this dialogue left, and I will be very sad to leave Sardinia. This trip was definitely worth coming on and I 100% recommend that anyone go on it.