Adventures of Jenommy: El Toro

Oct 16th, 2011
I teach in a village on the outskirts of Madrid. The village is named "Villanueva Del Pardillo"

fun fact 1: The translation is "new village of the pardillo," pretty obvious you say? Well the word pardillo has two meanings. The first meaning is the name of this small bird.

Bird: Pardillo

These little birds are found all over the village. The second meaning of the word pardillo is "naive." So, the name of the village could be translated as "Suckers new village." My principal (his name is Jose, super cool guy) gave me this little bit of information. He also mentioned that whenever he tells people what village he works at they respond with a slight chuckle.

Every year the villages of Spain take a few days off to celebrate. During my village's celebration they had a bull run (amongst many other things). Now these bull runs are not nearly as big or have as many bulls as the runs that happen during the summer. (see video below)

However, it was still entertaining.

contemplating survival

In this picture I am contemplating my chances of surviving the bull run. I come to the conclusion that my chances are not good... bbbbuuuuttttt........ I'LL DO IT ANYWAYS!!!!

I enter the ring

As you see (below), Jenine has great concern for my well being.


Jenine concerned

And so, because Jenine was so scared for me, I decided not to do it :D No, I kid. I actually think Jenine was pushing me in the street to do the bull run but I decided that, if I break my leg, the rest of this year is gonna suck. And if I did do the bull run, and survived, I would have to walk around town with pee stains on my pants. We got some great pictures of others running with/from the bulls.

a few Spaniards ready for the bulls

HERE THEY COME!!!

Bulls are pretty big

I took some video of the bull run and I have to say that I felt pretty bad for the bulls. They ran up and down the streets like 10 times and were visibly tired towards the end.

After seeing this we decided that we didn't want to see the bull fight. Watching the bull run bummed us out a little (we felt bad for the bulls), so we decided to walk around. Jenine got to take a few pictures with her new camera (thank you Mom for the new camera) as we waited for the bus.