Okay. So - Tomatina time. Wednesday morning in Valencia, our 6th group member arrived at our hotel at like 2:35 a.m. We woke up at 5 to get ready to take the metro to take the train to get to Buñol for the festival. Decked out in throwaway clothes - Adrianne's old cami, bright yellow sports bra (sad to see you go, buddy), shorts that wouldn't stay on in the river, and the 4euro shoes I'd bought the day before. KaraLynn, let me tell you, I was cold. We took epic pictures in the metro, all of us sporting our game faces and rockin' our bandanas. (I loaned out my bandanas to the other girls...they smell like mierda right about now.)
Took a 45-minute train to Buñol with tons of other soon-to-be-revelers. People were there selling sangria and beer already - at like 8 in the morning. Yep. Walked through the town, found a little plaza, ate lunch/breakfast and talked to some British kids, then went in to the square where the festival was.
Okay. To start off the fight, they put up this big tall wooden pole and cover it with lard. Seriously - big, fatty handfuls of lard, just coating this thing. They tie a ham to the very top, and let the crowds have at it. The fight is supposed to start when someone reaches the ham at the top and everyone throws tomatoes at him.
Now, most everyone is already drunk at this point. So we have people from all over the world trying to fight their way to the top, sliding around in the lard, stepping and climbing on each other and tearing shirts off right and left. "Strategy" was hard to come by. They needed to work together, and have some people at the base pushing others up to get higher and higher, but no. These retards would climb up over a few shoulders, get a little higher than before, then turn and face the crowd with a "YEAHHHH!" face. DUDE! You didn't DO anything! Stop posing for the cameras and GO FOR THAT FREAKIN HAM!
Sorry....the square was absolutely packed with sweaty people, and the balls of my feet were tired from standing on tiptoe trying to see.
Disgusting aside - this guy came over to the little steps we were standing on, squeezed into a corner, and peed. Not cool, especially in hindsight.
So, anyway. They got about a meter away from the top of the pole when the trucks started coming out. I guess people were tired of waiting.
So the trucks started coming through - the crowds packed up into the middle to reach for tomatoes as the people inside the trucks started throwing them out at us. Michael and Adrianne, having attempted to climb the pole, were closer to the center of the action. The rest of us had been standing on those steps, but after a few minutes, we moved in to where the other two were.
Once in the center, it was a total free-for-all. The tomatoes were turning to pulp at our feet as everyone kept stepping on them, and people would just grab handfuls of it and mash it into your hair or down your shirt or down your shorts. When you could find whole tomatoes, you got to chuck at someone nearby or throw it up in the air and watch as it fell. It was glorious. I had bought goggles the day before, but it was so humid out that they fogged up, so I just wore them around my neck. It was disgusting - I was so covered in tomato that I couldn't find a clean inch of me to wipe my eyes.
The guy in the mask is Nate, the other boy in our group. He broke his nose a while back and didn't want to do it again. Also, that's my (formerly) yellow bandana that you can just see at the bottom of the frame.
So...yeah. Ridiculous. Two of our girls lost their shirts, because the crowd just starts yanking on them. I was lucky; also, I stayed near Michael so I could yell for him to come get me if anyone tried. I wasn't too keen on the idea of riding the train home in my sports bra...although plenty of poeple did.
The fight lasted for an hour. 9 truckloads of tomatoes. The stats online say that 113 TONS of tomatoes were used. Holy crap, you guys! That's a freakin lot of tomatoes!
When it was done, they fired a gun to signal the end. Then people started moving down the streets, away from the square, and the fire hoses came out to clean it up. It's amazing how fast they did it. Also amazing was the sheer quantity of stuff lying in the streets - clothes, shoes, cameras, glasses, bottles, everything. I don't want to think about what all I rolled in when we took this awesome picture:
As you can see, sitting on the ground, even after the fight was officially over, made us prime targets for the random people around us. That's Lauren on the right with me.
Walking back was intense...people were chucking wet t-shirts all over the place, and Kelsey got nailed in the back really hard. Also, we were trying to find someone with a hose to help us clean off, but they kept saying the hoses were just for the street. You'd get a little bit cleaned off, and then get tomatoed again once you rubbed up against the crowd.
Still, though. It was the experience of a lifetime. Not one I'd like to repeat, probably; I don't ever want to dig tomato pulp out of my bra again, but I'm glad we got to do it. Look how cute and disgusting we were!
We're missing one of our girls in this shot, actually. She went and hung out with some Cal guys or something. She's a networker.
So, after we got out of the square and got as clean as we were going to get, we went back to the plaza and waited for Adrianne, the missing girl, to show up at our meeting point. Didn't show, didn't show, and it was hot and we were thirsty. The boys bought sangria and brought it back to share with us; thirsty as I was, it was good, but I tried some at the restaurant last night and it was just gross.
Oh, btw- Abe looked up some stuff on the Tomatina before we went and decided it just wasn't his scene. He might've exploded. He liked the pictures, though.
Abe came too.
After some quiet prayer time with Faye (oh yeah, Erik did it. I trust he will write about it on here), Molly was waiting to say good-bye. Tears and hugs ensued, followed by Jackie trying to rush her out and Molly running back in 2 times to drop off receipts and maps.
If you still need one, let me know. I'll hook you up.
Making Abes took up the better part of my day. Rebecca had gone out to lunch and Erik had left for the week, so I was alone in the office. I opened my itunes and did what nobody else really wanted to do....cleaned the office. I now have in my possession, both of Kylan's notebooks and some papers, Molly's binder with her Mongo card and a copy of her school registration. I don't know if you need that. It looked semi-important. I also have some other random things that if people want, they can have. I'll probably just toss them though.
I also moved something.
Throughout the day, even though I was alone, I felt like the rest of you were just busy doing something and that I would see you as soon as you were done. As I left the narthex, it felt like it was just the beginning of a weekend and I would see you all on Monday for another week of work...strangely enough we would not be doing anything together this weekend. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I will see you on Monday. It may not be in three days, but it will come.
