Los toros

I went to a bullfight last night! I remember learning about them in Spanish class in high school, but I still wasn´t very sure what to expect or how I was going to feel about it. I went in with the mindset that it was a part of the culture in Spain and to them, it´s the equivalent of a sport for us. I actually thought it was really interesting and surprisingly liked it. It´s not something I´d go to every weekend like a football game, but I would definitely go to another one the next time I´m in Spain.

I´m not going to go into too much detail on here because I´d rather explain things when you can see the pictures and videos. I took a video of the entire first fight. There was a total of 6 fights. There were 3 matadores who each went 2 times. They start out with a bunch of matadores and then the main matadore goes out and does his thing. They weaken the bull a good bit before the matador gets out their alone. I thought it was going to be really disgusting, but it wasn´t too bad. We had really good seats, in the shade and not too far away, but they were just far enough away to where I could detach myself from the bull.

There was one part that I had no clue about and didn´t care for. Two men on horses rode out into the ring and they got the bulls attention. (The horse was blinded and had armor on.) The bull would charge into the horse and the man on the horse would stab the bull with a blade that´s on the end of a long pole. (Sorry if that´s too graphic.) I was scared that the bull was going to kill the horse, especially after the first time when the horse went down. The horse was ok though and didn´t go down the other 5 times.

There were a lot of tourists (especially Americans) at the bullfight. Sandra and I met a couple guys on the metro who just graduated from some college in Iowa and are traveling around Europe. We talked to them a long time because the metro was moving really slow and even stopped at one point. We almost missed the fight. The guys were talking to this other guy (also American) and I was looking in their direction and they guy asked if I was American. They said that they were too and I was like ¨where are ya´ll from?¨The guy was like "ya´ll? where in the south are you from?"

Our family told us that they bullfight would be a few hours and that we should take food for dinner, so we packed leftovers from lunch to eat during the fight. They also gave us a small bottle of wine and told us to drink it between the 3rd and 4th fight, not before. So we had leftovers and wine between the 3rd and 4th fights.

Sandra and I are currently chilling in the living room watching CSI (in español of couse). It´s intresting to watch a familiar show and hear different voices for the characters. They did a pretty good job with CSI, but they didn´t do too well with Friends.

:)