Bullfight April 10, 2011

I had no idea what to expect when I was on my way to a bullfight. I knew I was naive going into it, especially since I thought only one bull got killed. My friends and I were excited to find our seats and wait for the bullfight to start. We thought we paid for seats in the shade, but sitting in the direct 80 degree sun sure provided for a nice tan! Luckily Maggie brought sunscreen. Once the bullfight started and the band played, I was excited and anticipating how this was going to go, since Maggie told me actually 6 bulls get killed and it lasts about 3 hours.

When the bull was released and started running around and being distracted by the "Capote" (cape) I realized that the bull gets stabbed multiple times by small bladed type swords that stay in their body through the whole thing. After the first bull was stabbed many times, and then stabbed for the final blow to make him lay down, the crowd was cheering loudly, and my eyes started to water, realizing bullfighting was not for me, and that this was going to be a LONG 3 hours.

All I had known about bullfighting before was from a segment on 60 minutes. I remember thinking I always wanted to go and experience that part of Spanish culture. I was surprised to see that there were so many young children at the fight, but then I realized that if you were brought up with this gruesome custom, you wouldn't think anything of taking your small child to witness it.

The bullfighters that stab the bull in the end to bring him down, are the most respected. But I thought that the ones who stab the bull first many times to weaken him have the harder job. It seemed to me that all the respected bull fighters have to do is stab it once with a giant sword, and they don't even kill it. To win, they just have to make it lay down after stabbing it. So if it doesn't lay down after a while, they just keep stabbing it until it does. When I was thinking about how disgusted I was with this, I felt hypocritical because I eat meat. Even though it's not the same. Oh, speaking of eating meat... after the first couple bulls are killed you start to smell food.... which would be the bulls that were just killed cooking to be sold after the fight. This experience put me one step closer to becoming a vegetarian.

It found it interesting that as the first bull was being tortured and killed, I was about ready to cry, but as more came and went, I found myself becoming desensitized to it; but still disgusted, as my group left before the last giant bull came out to fight.

The last one that we watched was as difficult to watch as the others, but was also awesome. Because as it was stabbed in the head for the final blow, it got back up... My friend Jenna and I cheered and wanted the bull to tackle the fighter. (yes I know that's gruesome, but after the first fight we were cheering for the bulls) He took about 2 more blows to the head before he wasn't able to get back up again.

The cheapest and worst thing I found about bullfighting is that, the bullfighter doesn't even kill the bull. After he stabs him with the sword and the bull lays down, the crowd cheers and waves their pañuelos in approval, another guy comes up and stabs it in the neck a couple times until they are sure it's dead. I could only watch that part twice. Then they cut the ears off and throw them into the crowd, and if the crowd really likes the bullfighter, they cut the tail off and the bullfighter holds a hot bloody tail and waves it around and receives the crowd's applause.

So after reading this you probably don't want to hear any more about bullfighting, but I took a lot of videos for people who want to see it "first hand" So, the videos are taking way too long to load, so if you want to see them, you'll have to visit me when I get home!

Saturday April 2nd. The best day in Mallorca!

After eating breakfast we headed on the extremely crowded bus to spend the day beach hopping in Palma! We started out at one beach laying out until we got hungry and went to.... you guessed it... SUBWAY!! We were loving life. After subway we were going to go shopping, and then we all realized we didn't care about shopping and went to another beach! It was an amazing surprise to spend the rest of the day on this gorgeous clear water beach. We played cards, frolicked in the water, and laid out. We had so much fun. Afterwards we continued the amazing day having dinner at Hard Rock Cafe! I actually didn't have a burger this time (because I had one the last weekend at another Hard Rock haha) We all got drinks and got nachos as an appetizer, it was so great.

Then we had to head back to our hotel :( We weren't able to sleep in because our flight left early in the morning. We were all sad to leave because it was such a great weekend!

Friday April 1st

We ate breakfast at the hotel and then went to the tour of Palma, the major part of Mallorca. It was nice to see because our hotel was far away from everything except the beach and there were only 15 people who went to Mallorca so the tour wasn't bad. On the tour was got to take a tour of a castle, cathedral, the town square, and we were able to purchase some Mallorca pearls as gifts! It was really cool but the weather was cool and cloudy so I wasn't fond of that. Once we came back we laid on the beach again and ate lunch. We were very excited that we found out on the tour that there was a subway in Palma! I never liked subway too much before but I was so excited to see that something was there that resembled American food.

Later on, we got bored of laying on the beach so what did we do.... RENTED A FOUR PERSON BIKE! Maggie, David, Gloria, and I toured the beautiful island via 4 person bike. It was wonderful and hilarious at the same time. I think I was laughing for 10 minutes straight once we took the bike on the beach.

After we had to take the bike back, we went to the cuban place again! We ate some delicious pizza and had some cocktails. We took some more pictures and then played cards and hung out on the beach for the rest of the night. Life is great in Mallorca!

MALLORCA!!!! Thursday March 31st

Today Maggie and I got up early to get to the Mallorca flight that had changed. Luckily I only had to miss one class, but Maggie had to miss three. We all met at correos at about 9:30am. Our friend David forgot his passport and he had to run all the way home and come back. We were all amazed that he made it. We all got on the flight and made it safely to the island of Mallorca! Of course the first thing my friends and I did was eat at a pizza place haha! Except our friends Gloria and David didn't eat because their Señora packed them bocadillos (sandwhiches) to eat for lunch, but Maggie and I couldn't handle eating ours so we were the awkward ones who ate giant pizzas ourselves while they just got a drink haha.

After lunch we were all excited to put on our swim wear and lay on the beach! Unfortunately it was about 70 degrees and windy but we were still loving it. We took some pictures and then ate at a cuban place for dinner that ended up being our favorite place for the weekend. Except for dinner a couple of us had nachos... which turned out to be American doritos with cheese melted on them. But I was content since I had a tropical margarita! After dinner we all hung out and talked on the beach for the rest of the night.

Sunday March 27th

On Sunday we had a relaxing day. We slept in and went to the Sagrada Familia again. We were going to go in, but the line was way too long. We just enjoyed the weather and walked around the park surrounding the Sagrada Familia. Then we went to Park Guell again because we loved it so much. It was more relaxing that time because we had seen everything before so we just took in the environment. We had dinner at the airport and had some random annoying old lady from Bosnia or something asking us questions. She only knew English and was constantly asking us if that was the way to Granada. We could tell she was pretty disheveled. But then we got back and her luggage got lost, so we felt bad for her. Another trip back home safe in Granada!

Saturday March 26th

On Saturday we had breakfast and then tried to find the Cathedral. We got pretty lost and then hung out at the city center instead. We loved taking pictures by the water and looking at all the sailboats. Maggie was loving the giant statue of Christopher Columbus haha. We had lunch at Hard Rock Cafe. Then we bought tickets for Camp Nou, the famous soccer stadium. We learned about the history of Barcelona's team and got to see the world cup and the stadium which was pretty cool. After we had dinner at sandwhich and friends again, and had homemade gelato! It was great.

Friday , March 25th

We had a good breakfast (it was included! gotta love that) at the hostel and then set off for our first real day in Barcelona. First we visited Park Guell. It was my favorite part of Barcelona. This amazing park was designed by the famous architect Gaudí. The park was huge, and we had to walk up a giant incline with escalators to get to it. It was full of interesting and beautiful buildings and nature. It took about 2 hours just to see everything in the park.

After we enjoyed the park in the beautiful weather, we headed to another of Gaudi's famous works, the Sagrada Familia. We decided not to go inside because it was too expensive, so we eat right along side of it at a pizza place so we could enjoy the good view and good food. We took some more pictures of it after lunch and then we walked around and shopped along the souvenir places along the street that were really cute. We also visited other Gaudi works, La Pedrera which is a very eccentric looking apartment, (I don't know how to describe architecture) and then visited the Casa Batilo. We had hagen daz icecream... of course!

Later on we went to dinner at a place called sandwich and friends. (we wanted to go to Hard Rock Cafe but the wait was too long) We celebrated our first night in Barcelona with a Margarita! And then headed to bed :)

Barcelona! Thursday March 24th

Today after our classes Maggie and I packed for Barcelona!! We still needed to print our boarding passes and since our host sister's printer is conveniently out of ink and broken, we had to find a store that would help us print documents. After bouncing back between 2 different stores, we finally got our passes. We had Cristina (our host sister) call a taxi for us and we were on our way to the Granada airport. I was disappointed to find that the best looking Spaniard I had seen remotely close to my age was the taxi driver haha. We made it to the airport and got through security. We ate half of our sick ham bocadillos and then went through security and immediately checked out the snacks. Maggie got some cookies and I got some peanut m&ms. I had a fail trying to say peanut m&ms in spanish and the woman was laughing it me. Atleast I got them! Our plane had been delayed but we finally got on...

The Strug Begins...

Our baggage took forever to get out of the terminal.... After many announcements every 10 minutes that it would come out we finally got it, and had to rush to the metro because it was about 11pm and the metro closed down at midnight. Once we got out on the closest metro stop to our hostel, we beasted up a huge flight of stairs with our suitcases, only to go back down because that exit looked really creepy... Luckily we saw a woman coming out of the metro station who was just getting off of her shift. We asked her where to go, and we were on our way to the other exit. We started walking up a giant hill, and were scoping out "non creepy" people to ask for directions, considering it was midnight. As we started to turn around, thinking we were going in the wrong direction, a man stopped us and said, "Do you know where you're going?" and we said we were looking for the Agora hostal. and he said he lived there and would show us where it was. We were actually headed in the right direction and continued up the hill.

We were soon forced into awkward small talk, and he asked our names. Since I couldn't think of a fake name fast enough, I said Lauren. He thought I said Morgan so I just went with it. Maggie soon came up with a fake name too haha. We finally checked in to a surprisingly nice hostel. We were getting nervous because creeper was hanging around and wanted to hang out with us tomorrow and we didn't want the front desk to give up our real names and room number in front of him. But he was gone soon enough and everything was fine. The hostel was like a university type and the rooms were super nice. They even had a mini fridge and a nice bathroom in each room. We went right to bed and were ready to get a fresh start in the morning on our trip.