Today is the Dia de la Virgen Pilar, which honors the santa patrona of Spain. This means nothing to me, except that we had the day off from class because it's a national holiday. These Catholics really take their patron saints seriously. My art history professor asked if we celebrated the 12th of October in the United States as well, and he was shocked when we said no. I don't know why he expected the entire world to honor Spain's patron saint, but whatever.

I went out with the group last night to experience Spanish culture by participating in a botellon, which is basically a street party. Technically illegal, but no one really cares as long as you are discreet about the mixed drinks you're carrying around in water bottles. Hey, if it looks like juice, then it's juice. After awhile it got too cold to keep standing around in the park so, although we were enjoying the drunk Spanish guys who were singing--as loud and as off-key as they could--to the statue of Pilar, we moved the party inside to O'Haras, an Irish pub that was playing American music from the '90s while the natives sang along in their Spanish accents. Yeah, I was disoriented.

We hit a few more bars, which were crowded enough so no one could really tell what bad dancers the Americans were, and the music was actually good. Although I started to get a little tired of the whole scene after one of my drunk friends decided that she wanted to dance on top of the loudspeaker, and the responsibility fell to me to help her up so she wouldn't fall backwards off the stage. Well, I suppose I took the responsibility upon myself, just to stop some nearby Spanish guys, who were only too happy to help her climb onto the amplifier.

I lost track of the number of times I heard "So how come you don't drink? Is it a moral thing?" but I don't really mind. I guess it is something of an anomoly, coming as I do from a generation of binge-drinkers. Each to his own. I had fun, and I got to sleep late this morning, so I give thanks to Pilar. Here's a photo that I stole from Kelly, taken inside O'Haras:

Me, John, Sarah, Matt, and Charlotte