so much for this

yeah, not a blogging kind of summer. more like an intern kind of summer, in a small town where one generally feels pretty foreign among a provincial town's deeply traditional culture and life, except for when at the office trying to keep up with a bipolar boss along with the other young foreign employees. it's a summer of learning massive amounts about people and how to work in multiple kinds of slightly uncomfortable situations and come away feeling good about yourself and what you contributed and what came out of them...and otherwise of drinking and eating and sleeping sometimes. a rich experience, but a bit of a one-liner?

back to work

all three of us gsd kids are pretty excited about going back to work as san fermin comes to a close (tonight at midnight is the ¨poor me¨ceremony at which everyone finally takes off the red neck scarves). also exciting are the competitions we´ll be working on--one stadium, done after this week, and one international criminal court. so by the end of august we´ll be submitting a design for the building where they try people for ¨crimes against humanity,¨ for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/world/africa/15sudan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

san fermin, beautiful reign of terror

this must be said about dozens of festivals that are held in various places around the world, but I can´t think of anything that might be comparable to san fermin, except maybe mardi gras as a baby cousin. the uniqueness has to do mostly with the fact that people do not stop yelling, singing, and throwing liquids for 9 full days, june 7-14 (this year sunday through monday), and our apartment is at the heart of it all. jeff, myself, and the 3 florida guys that were crashing at our place only really got sleep out of total exhaustion and calimucho intake. calimucho is red wine and coke, and actually makes even the cheapest red wine pretty drinkable.

reasons why san fermin is a beautiful reign of terror:
- fireworks. every night at 11pm there is an amazing fireworks display launched off of the citadel in the center of the city. it´s definitely been night after night one of the most impressive fireworks shows I´ve ever seen, but also a little terrifying because no matter where you are, it sounds like the city is getting bombed. and if you´re watching them from the roof of our office building, which is next to the citadel, there are moments where you´re going deaf and it really looks like they´re falling on you (and they are--we all had some debris in our hair afterward). group consensus was they like to make their fireworks as loud as possible here.
- giant dolls dancing in the street. these are cool to see because it´s grown men wearing large wooden dolls and dancing, but they are definitely a bit scary looking. largely transvestite and pirate characters that come around early in the afternoon.
- bobbleheads that bludgeon kids. these are men wearing just the heads of the dolls, but instead of dancing they chase kids around swinging these puffy sacks at them. disneyland gone wrong.
- the flaming bull. also for kids, at night a guy runs around with a bull headdress on that shoots sparklers and other kinds of fireworks out of its horns. everyone runs away from it, including lots of parents and children, as a fun fake encierro. but if you get too close, the sparks really do burn you, as we found out from watching. parents must have a real sense of humor about their kids here.
- the real bulls. they are massive animals, awesomely powerful and also beasts you do not want to mess with. the run is exciting to see for a second, but I think the bullfight each evening is the extreme of the beautiful-terrible fiesta. we decided to go to one as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the pageantry of it was definitely incredible, but watching the actual demise and slow death of the bull was awful, to me. not to be animal-rightsy since I come from a point of view that is definitely out-of-context here, but it was hard for me to party whole-heartedly with the crowd as each bull fell to its knees in submission.. 6 bulls fight and are killed every day for 8 days. one matador did get injured.
- marching bands. these are so much fun, because drumlines and full-on bands go parading down all the streets of old town all day after the morning encierro. people drink and dance along with them, and every day each city ¨group¨has a band that goes marching out of the bullring after the fight. a wicked party, and terror on our apartment because it is so frickin loud. I love the energy, but I will be happy to not wake up to trumpets and drums right outside my window next week.