Ronda!

So yeah, I’m about a week behind on events, but we can do a quick catch up…

Going back to last Sunday evening, Feria went out with a bang…literally (ahaha, I’m so witty). There was a HUGE fireworks show beside the river, and the best viewpoint is the Los Remedios bridge, not too far from where we live. The fireworks began at midnight, to mark the official end of Feria, and it was quite an awesome show. I felt way too close to the fireworks, and we commented that the fire safety standards are probably different here than the US – but it made for a more fun time!

The rest of the week passed fairly normally and went by VERY fast. Friday was our last ASA excursion, and we took a day trip to Ronda. Elisa, our director, is sick with the flu, so we went as a group alone and met our guide there.

We got there around 11:30 and by the time we walked around a bit and found a great plaza to sit in, we had our lunches at a normal lunch time, sitting in the sun and enjoying some awesome background music from a woman playing the harp.

Once we met with our guide, we walked around the city and went to the Arab baths.

He pointed out to us that since Ronda was a Muslim city, all of the windows with gates on them belonged to women, who were “locked in” to prevent gossip and “peeling the turkey” with the guys in the neighborhood.

We walked around and got a great view of the famous bridge of Ronda that Hemingway wrote about.

We also got to peek inside a typical Andalucian mansion and the bullring of Ronda.

9 Bulls are selected before a fight, after being inspected by a doctor. Six bulls will fight and 3 are just for reserve .Once a bull is sold from its farm it HAS to go into a bullfight and die, there’s no way it can go back since bull farms are regulated by laws and can only have a certain number of bulls at a time – once a bull is sold, that’s it, it’s fate is sealed.

I don’t think I can go to a bullfight…the way that its described and hearing from people who have gone…I think it would just be too bloody and brutal for me.

I do enjoy pretending to be a bull though!