toros y mas

La vida madrilena continues to go well. Maureen, Emily and I have all begun to settle in to the routine of teaching and are tired a lot of the time but also really enjoying it. Our Spanish is very slowly but (we think) surely getting better. Here are some pics from last weekend's adventures (narrated below).

mas madrid

On Friday my school did not have classes because we were celebrating the feast day of some saint. Each class went on a field trip to somewhere in Madrid; I went with the 4th level kids (sophomores) to the Retiro (it's a big park). I wasn't looking forward to it too much because I thought we'd have to do activities with the kids in the park all day, but as it turned out we teachers just gave the kids some instructions for a scavenger hunt (not as exciting as it sounds- it involved finding religious statues and writing about how they related to the saint) and ditched the kids. It was fun hanging out with some of the teachers outside of school. After the kids left we went to Plaza Mayor and had a picnic of calamari bocadillos and clara (beer with lemon).

On Friday night we went to a sweet concert in a small club with a few of Emily's friends. One of them knew the manager of the band- a Cuban group called Havana Abierta (download them! they're really good!)

On Saturday, Maureen's principal Maria Carmen took Mo and me to a performance of Footloose at a high school near their school. Although high school musicals aren't as common here, this school is known for having really good ones. Indeed, the performance-acting, singing, dancing, everything- was really impressive! Though they kept the English title of the play, everything was translated into Spanish- so instead of "gonna cut loose, footloose," you have "yo quiero bailar, bailar" - it was kind of comical.

Finally, on Sunday, we went to a bullfight. It was one of the last ones of the season, so it featured younger and less experienced toreros fighting younger and smaller bulls and was sparsely attended. Since bullfighting is not too popular among the current generation of Spaniards, the crowd that does turn up is mostly old Spanish men who heckle the whole time and tourists. Luckily we bought the cheapest tickets and were up at the very top, so we were sitting with the heckling men who seemed to actually know what was going on (unfortunately, this also means my pictures are not very good).

This was my second time at a bullfight but Maureen and Emily's first. It is definitely kind of jarring at first but you get over it pretty quickly. On the one hand, you are basically watching an innocent animal being tortured and killed. They give the bull a good stab in the back before he even gets into the ring so that he is already weakened and the torero has lots of helpers who distract the bull and men on horses with long spears who come out to help stab him- so the torero is really given a big advantage. And despite the stereotypes of bulls as angry, aggressive animals, they are really only like this when provoked. When he first comes out, the bull just stands placidly in the middle of the ring looking like he wouldn't hurt a fly. It is only when they taunt him with bright red and pink capes and stab him multiple times that he becomes aggressive. It also does take a long time and many stabs for the bull to actually die (they're incredibly resilient/strong) and when his legs do finally collapse underneath him it's a little heartbreaking. Then horses drag the corpse of the once majestic animal out of the ring, leaving a trail of blood in the dust.

So why would anyone take pleasure in this sadistic show of torture? Well, in addition to these unnerving aspects, there's also a lot of tradition and ritual involved- in fact, many consider bullfighting a form of art. (I could try to describe this tradition and ritual and art but I think you'd be better off just reading some Hemingway). Although the torero's goal is to kill the bull, he also has to respect the bull. If he doesn't stab in just the right place, thus prolonging the bull's death, everyone boos- we witnessed this with one of the toreros we saw, who really stuggled to kill the thing. People also cheer whenever the bull has any kind of victory- one of the ones we saw was really smart and managed to jump over the wall of the ring and run around the outer ring separating the crowd from the bull ring for a good 30 seconds before he was caught. Later he actually knocked over one of the horses with the stabber guy on it and headbutted him several times. (You do have to feel pretty bad for the horses- they are blindfolded and heavily armored- and likely sedated- so they won't scare, but they often are attacked by the bull and of course have no idea what's going on). Anyway, ultimately I think bullfighting is not as inhumane as it seems. The bull meat is sold at a pretty high price, and if you think about it, most of the other meat we eat is not slaughtered with nearly as much reverence. Also, the sparkly costumes are pretty great.

Ramblings on bullfights aside, the weekend was a good one, despite the fact that Deirdre ditched us for Barcelona! I would give you updates on the week so far, but nothing interesting has happened. I'll let you know if it does.