Ecuador at its finest

Wondering what the blog title is about?  Yeah I was too until I realized what it was and then it was kind of violent and gruesome, but cool at the same time.  Last week and the week before, we had "Fiestas de Quito."  Pretty self explanatory, but basically the people of Quito celebrate their city for about a week and a half.  Awesome.  Let me tell you, these people know how to party. Our next door neighbors had a party going on from around eight o'clock at night to about 5 in the morning. A very loud party.  None of us got any sleep that night, it was bad.  But the whole time they celebrate, they have parties all the time and signs that say "Viva Quito!"  It was so much fun to see all of the spirit and patriotism that they have for their city.  So the week and a half of the "Fiestas de Quito" is the only time that they have the bull fights the whole year.  They built a whole stadium just for this time of year.  We went two Fridays ago and it was...interesting.  I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen because I think I have seen it on Discovery Channel or something with my dad, but my roommates didn't know that the bull was gonna die... Its like a Harry Potter complex where, "neither can live while the other survives." Either the matador has to die, or the bull has to die.  The day we went, there were gonna be six bull fights, however we were done after three.  But it was kinda cool, I know that sounds vulgar and disgusting that I think that its cool that they were killing a bull for a spectator sport, but hey, its all part of the culture so why not embrace it?  Here are some pics from the day.

Look how close he is!

This was our favorite one, he was the cutest, his name is Diego and he was awesome with his bull.

Ok this guy, seriously was magic.  He had stabbed it but then it hadn't died, so his
assistants were gonna help him and then he was like "NO!" So he gets off of his horse
while the bull was still alive and he was face to face with the bull, the bull could have
charged him and killed him, but he puts his hand on the bulls horns and then the bull
collapsed. Seriously. Magic.

So did you know that panama hats originated in Ecuador
not Panama? I didn't until today when Amber told me.
Look at all of those hats!  Everyone was wearing one!

So yeah it was a pretty cool day and the whole stadium was outside, so it was pretty hot but still fun.  Oh, the other thing is, we never felt so united with the country when we were there because randomly someone would get up and scream as loud as they could, "Que Viva Quito!!" and then the whole stadium would scream back, "Que Viva!" We did that several times. It was awesome!