Spain!!!

Hi again! A lot has happened over the last week so I have a lot to update on. Two of my roommates and I spent last weekend in Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls festival. I had no idea it was such a huge event!!! It took us 18 hours to get there because the Torino train drivers were on strike and we had to find a bus to get to our airport in Milan. But once we got there, we were shocked at the thousands of people that were in the streets celebrating! Everyone had the same traditional outfit on, too. We took a white t-shirt, but we went straight to one of the gift shops and bought the rest of the gear. Here is a picture of my roommate Colby and I in our outfits!


Like I said before, the crowds were enormous! Every street had some kind of performance and people were dancing and forming their own parades with banners displaying their saint. I think this is a conga line haha:


While we were there we met tourists from all over the world. We spent one night with a group of Americans who had been going to running of the bulls for 30 or more years. Their kids were college students too so we went to some of the events with them. We also attended a bull fight, but made the mistake of buying the cheapest tickets. We had to sit in what we would call the student section that apparently had no rules haha. We stood out because we didn't know the songs and the chants, but everyone was really friendly. We also didn't realize we would be caught in an ongoing food fight of sangria, beer, fruit, and seafood haha. Luckily our American friends warned us, but we couldn't avoid it and were completely soaked by the end of the fight haha. One of my roommates has pictures of it, so I'll post those when I get ahold of them. We also didn't book a hotel because we decided to go at the last minute, so we smelled like sangria the rest of the time we were there haha. I had to buy another white outfit at the gift shop for the last day, and my hair was purple until I got back to Italy haha.

The last day my roommates decided they wanted to do the actual running after getting advice from the veterans. So I met up with a group of French people that we had met the night before and tried to get a spot on the fence to watch them. This worked out until I fell asleep on our bookbags and someone stole my spot haha. One of the French guys woke me up in time to see the running but I couldn't get a good view. I ended up going to one of the cafes right after and watching the footage on their tv haha. I was actually published in one of the Toronto news papers in a picture of me asleep on the fence... oops haha. The guy that I traveled with ran a little ways and escaped from the bulls and the girl that I went with didn't get to the entrance gate in time to actually run. So we all met up after and had a drink with some of the people we had met before we boarded our train.

Here are a few more pictures of the crowd and I'll add some more from my roommates soon!