Bull Fight!

I had the amazing opportunity of being able to go to an old-fashioned bull fight with my friends Derek and Kevin. It was definitely a new experience, and much different than what I was expecting. The bull fight was in an incredible stadium called Campo Pequeno. It is an old arena that looks like a Russian castle. It is a closed arena, so it got pretty hot in there and everyone around me was smoking so I smelt pretty horrible by the end of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. They started the fight with some ceremonies where a lot of people on horses and carriages came riding out and greeting the crowd and the dignitaries. After the ceremonies, the action was on! There are three main parts of the fight. The first part is a man riding around on a horse, sticking spears into the back of the horse. He tries to put the spear in the bull, and then run away from him on his horse. This is the most gruesome part of the event, because the bull does bleed a decent amount when the spears are in him. The second part of the fight is the part that everybody sees in movies, when the bullfighter holds the red carpet in the air and the bull rushes after him but misses. It is interesting, because the bull actually does do that thing where he drags his feet in the dirt before he attacks that you always see in cartoons (I didn't see any smoke come out of his ears, but I was sitting pretty high up). The final part was the most unexpected for me, but easily the most exciting. They finish things off by having a man walk up right in front of the bull wearing a red shirt. He walks kind of funny, somewhat teasing the bull and shaking his hips. He screams loudly, and the bull rushes him! He hits him harder than I have ever seen a man get hit before. The man has a group of other men similarly dressed behind him that all try to grab the bull and get him to relax. If they don't succeed in this however, the bull pretty much just runs everybody over and stomps on them. And if they don't get it on the first time, they try again until they get it right. I was blown away the first time I saw them do this, and every subsequent time I was on the edge of my seat to see what would happen. These guys would really get beat up too, there jackets and pants would get ripped, they would get bruised and their faces would get bloody. They were also covered in blood from  the blood that was on the bull as they tried to wrestle it to get it to settle down. After this event, the horse rider and the guy that got beat up walk around the arena catching flowers from the audience. My first bull fight was quite the cultural and enjoyable experience to say the least!