The Amazing "La Saca"

Day 8

Incredible night in Soria at the Fiestas de San Juan

Today we got up at 11:00 didn’t take showers, put our petos on, drank some hot chocolate milk and drove to where the bulls would be released. We took a really long walk to a good place and saw many of the bulls pass through. It was very beautiful with all the horses. Some bulls however didn’t get into the caral and I don’t think the horsemen were very good not that I know anything about riding horses or getting a bull to run in the direction you need it to. We walked farther down and I got a great seat right on top of the gate where the bulls run through. We had some lunch and Jim met up with us there. The horsemen finally took a break when the bulls wouldn’t budge and had something to eat. I met a really nice guy from Soria. He heard me speaking English to Cesar and told me he liked my camera, he had a lumix too but it was 12x. We talked a little and I was surprised at how impressive his English was, some people try to speak but he had no problem with complex sentences and questions. I took a lot of videos and I’ll explain to you more about the saca when you seen them. My shoulders are completely ruined with burns :/ Right now I am going to take a nap and then we’ll go into Soria tonight and stay at the apartment. I hope I remember everything I do for the next few days because I know I wont have time to write.
This is what I remember from that night (I am writing this on Sunday and you know how my memory is): We hung out with the boys tonight and I am really glad we did, at around midnight we found the pena. Mostly they just bar hop all night but I liked being with Ian, Nayla and Jim because it meant that I wouldn’t be left out of every conversation and that I could speak some English). I danced a lot. I decided not to let it piss me off how stupid they look when they dance instead I just learned to dance like them-except I am a lot better at it than they are. There is a marching band that follows the pena around whenever they go to the next bar and also plays music at the bar. I was dancing through the band and going all through the boys. It was a lot more fun than the previous night. We hung out with them for the majority of the night. At about 4:00am though everyone kind of splits up and does their own thing. At that time the bands close too so everyone goes to the discotechas (disco bars). We went in all of them just to see what they were like, it’s not really my thing though-there’s too many people and the music isn’t very good. Another thing they have here are kabobs. Everyone eats kabobs late at night-it’s weird and their gross-I had a bite but it was too spicy for me. We stopped at a discotecha and Ian started flirting with some girl. Nayla and I took the hint to leave so we went back to the apartment.
Another interesting thing here is that I really don’t find anyone attractive. But when you meet someone you judge them on appearance and I just don’t find anyone attractive. Nayla thinks there are lots of cute boys in Spain but we have very different tastes. I have seen only few guys that I think are attractive and girls too, I look in the crowds or see people and can only point out maybe one or two that I would deem as pretty or beautiful. As far as I am concerned, I am the best looking one here!! Lol. She points out guys to me that she thinks are cute and I gag a little. I don’t know what it is but Spanish boys and girls are not attractive to me. I see more cute guys walking around UNR than I do here and prettier girls just in my sorority house! Weird huh?
Another interesting thing I have seen here is the racism. It is so blatant I find it disturbing. There are Chinese shops here and everyone calls them chinos (highly offensive), they are so rude to the Indian people selling kabobs and they call black people niggers like its nothing, even worse is how they treat gays. Javier tried to explain that here there hasn’t been a martin luther king jr. here and no civil rights but it was a little bit of a shock to me growing up I always thought every where had had a civil rights movement. There is also political unrest here because the basque country wants to be their own country and even radicals in the region around Barcelona don’t consider themselves catalon. So many of the problems here revolve around race.