FIESTA

Saturday night, well mostly Sunday morning I experienced my first fiesta. Every town has some weekend to celebrate their saint and this means huge street parties. I'm not sure the total number of towns surrounding Pamplona but it seems to me like there is a fiesta every weekend. For this weekend I had quite a few people invite me out so it was nice to finally hang out with my friends outside of school.

My evening started early, at seven, when I met up with a friend to do a bit of window shopping and stroll through the old part of the city. Then we met up with some other people and just hung out. A lot of my friends had a class dinner so there was only four of us, not in that class, that went out to eat at ten. We sat for about an hour and a half just hanging out and eating before going to catch the bus. As we turned the corner to the street with the bus stop the bus was already there so we all started running the three ish blocks only to stop half a block away when we notice the line up of about fifty people for the bus. I don't know how they do it but these busses take as many people as possible on fiesta nights. This one had so many people they were cramped from window to window, making the windows all fogged up and the front of the bus actually scraped the curb as it left because of all the weight it was carrying. We weren't able to make this one so we sat and waited the half hour until the next one with about thirty other people.

The actual fiesta is a huge party in the street, with a big tent and a stage and another smaller stage outside. There were two bar's one outside by the small stage and another actual bar with the bathrooms. There was also a fair; there was a big bouncy castle thing and a few rides as well as some games. I spent most of the night dancing with my friends. Everyone sings along to the music, the band played mostly popular music, except I didn't know any of the songs until they played one english song; It's My Life by Bon Jovi (John Thomson you would have lost it). I bumped in to a lot of people from my class and some of the other exchange students and had a really fun time. Apparently this town isn't one of the big important fiestas so I'm excited to see what those ones are like. Only 268 days until San Fermin the biggest party in the world! But I plan on fiesta-ing a few more times until then. Plus that's getting too close to my return date so it's best to enjoy what's going on now.

I got home at 4:30 in the morning and had a very lazy Sunday. Lucky for me I have a four day weekend. Tuesday is a national fiesta or holiday. Wikipedia tells me it's Spain's celebration of Columbus day and can be called Día de la Hispanidad but here it's just Fiesta Nacional. So everything is closed Tuesday and Today I just don't have school which leaves me with time to bake something for Canadian Thanksgiving!