Guys don´t make passes at girls who wear glasses

In the past, I have been known to sleep through anything. I slept through probably a huge chunk of the Gulf War, most of the 6.5 or whatever earthquake in 1994, I´ve slept through psychology tests, through national holidays, meals, wars, New Years´, and airplane crashes (I didn´t say I was on the plane). Granted, I was NOT able to sleep through Julie´s 300 layer obsessive 20 minute taping of a 5¨ by 5¨ box last year, but I think everyone can still agree: I´ve got a knack for falling asleep.

However, even I surprised myself Saturday night when I sat down and managed to fall asleep in a discoteca at 5:30 in the morning with the music playing at one decibal level below what would actually break your eardrums. This means I´ve got more than a knack: I´ve got a TALENT.

So this weekend was spent in Sevilla with the guy I met on the airplane. If you´d like specifics, don´t hesitate to ask. What I´d much prefer to update about is part of the bullfight I went to see yesterday in Madrid.

Some people I know here seem to think it´s the ultimate cultural experience. Much like you can´t leave Spain without eating a bocadillo (it´s a fact: the chickens here actually do lay eggs filled with the sandwiches), you can´t leave Spain without seeing a bullfight.

TimeOut Madrid describes bullfighting as ¨certainly [not] dying out. Over the last few years the number of events held throughout Spain - and the number of people attending them - has been rising to record levels.¨ The rest of the article goes on to describe in very Hemingway-esque terms the beauty of the bullfight, the ¨dance¨ of the matador in the ring alone with the wounded yet still fierce bull, and the¨the extraordinary emotion transmitted from the matador, charged with the terrible task of dealing death¨ infecting the crowd. All in all, a pretty poetic picture is painted.

One small paragraph does mention that hey, it´s not always quite like this, but, you know, that´s life.

Katie and I arrived at the arena 10 minutes late, so we had to wait outside the rink to take our seats for about 10 minutes until they finished killing the first bull. First of all, I was not expecting to be infected by an extraordinary emotion. TimeOut is the mother of all guidebooks, but I´ve been here long enough to realize that hardly any Spaniard would want to show his face where there´s more than 5 families from the American South.

So when the doors shot open to let us take our seats, I was not too disappointed to see that the huge arena was hardly 1/4 of the way full. Katie and I took our seats on the front line at the top (sitting next to a couple from France and in front of a family from Germany), and proceeded to watch the slaughtering of the next 4 bulls.

I don´t know the first thing about bullfighting, so I can´t tell you if these guys were made of the stuff TimeOut Madrid describes, but I do know that I couldn´t have done what they did.

However, in between the time with the bull was dragged off the arena and the workers raked sand over the blood to clean up, I couldn´t help but feeling a little sorry for everyone involved. The matadors´uniforms still seemed to glitter like it was supposed to, the bulls were still fierce, and the death was still goary, but everything seemed to be shining with just the former glory of a desperate attempt to keep a tradition alive and people entertained. I´m sure most of the people there yesterday, like me, didn´t have the slightest idea what was truly talent and what was just show, so the applause at the end of each bull might not have seemed so spectacular to the men.

After falling asleep through one of the bulls (yep, I fell asleep AT A BULLFIGHT. I had a long weekend people) I woke up to Katie talkin´ to one of those sweet Geooooooooooorgia families who spent their last evening in Spain crammin´in as much culture as possible during a bullfight. After making some comments about animal cruelty, oh we´re in a study abroad program, and yeah, everything is so different and weird here and look, I´m just going to make some intolerant comments about how things work differently here and how the service isn´t performed at top speed in restaurants or in opening doors at bullfights, they eventually, naturally, got around to talking about food. Which got around to talking about bocadillos and how they´re so damn sick of seeing the same sandwiches around in the store windows everywhere.

So bocadillos and bullfights. Looks like I´ve seen it all.