Quitenos know how to Party! part 1

So these last week was fiestas de Quito, celebrating the founding of Quito, it was from the 28 of November till 6 of December. It was wild, imagine a city that is all united for one cause, a huge party to shake the planet. I went to two bull fights on monday and thursday. And went out three nights this last weekend. The first things to note are the flags, for the week there were the flags of Ecuador and Quito flying everywhere. There are tons of songs... I of course picked up the songs that have to do with the youth. The whole week was really fun.
The first thing I can remember was watching the bike race down the Panecillo. There were many competitions for the festival, the bike race I only caught on TV but it was crazy! The Panecillo is a little mountain in the south of Quito, I actually went there on my first night. There is a big statue of the Virgin on top. It actually has a nativity scene on top right now, there ia a giant lighted nativity scene for christmas. It was lit up for the first time on the 28, I was in the car and actaully watched as the lights went on. There was also a lighted sign that said, ¡Viva Quito!. At the same time the smiling face off Jupiter, Venus and the cresent moon was But it is really steep, and cobblestoned. On Tv it looked so gnarly... flyinging from street to street and crazy scetchy landings like staircases... it was wild, again I was thinking of you Ben, and when you saw downhill biking in Viseu.
So the first weekend was uneventful, but on monday I went to Los Toros, the bullfight. The fair here is the best in the Americas. There were some of the best matodors in the world. I want everyone to know my reasons for going, I've never seen a bullfight and it is a deeply ingrained part of the culture here. Anyways so I skipped school on monday and met Adam at the plaza at about 9:30. We couldn't buy tickets and had to go to the scalpers. THey were everywere, and we couldn't find any tickets for cheaper than $25. Well we didn't really have an idea what we were doing so we bought our tickets and waited to enter, they would let people in at 10, we also learned that the bullfight wouldn't start until 12 so we had plenty of time to kill. We entered at 10 and walked around as preperations were being made for the after party, there were many... wow I cannot remember the word, just in spanish, if you know spanish carpas but I'm stumped... anyways Im talking about big outdoor tarps, and I can't remember the name. Anyways there was one for Brahma, a beer company, one for Wine, a healthcare company, and lots of booths selling spanish style sandwhiches, I was very tempted to buy a sandwhich with real jamón but I bought a cheaper sandwhich to bring into the plaza. Adam and I cruzed around watching people make the corn empanadas, sandwhiches and packaging wine and beer so that it can be easly brought into the plaza. We were recomended to enter early, so we did, we learned a couple of things as we entered. The first was that the doors have names, Sol, Sombra, sun and shadow, have no real meaning. The place is a round ring and the bullfight starts at 12, I'm about 25 from the Equator so as you can imagine the sun was directly over head. The other thing was the error in our intelligence, in our hurry to buy tickets we bought tickets completely seperate from each other... Well whatever we thought we'll work it out. As we sat down to take in the scenery I caught sight of Lorenz, he is another Rotary exchange student from Germany, he is easy to spot... as easy as Adam, he's a redhead, anyways he is really cool, we shared a class during my two week crash course in spanish that didn't teach me anything. He was with a friend from school. They had bought the tickets the week before hand and got them for 4 days. We talked as I was admiring the bullring. After the toros del pueblo, what I went to in August in Sangolquí. That was the place where the ring was breaking on us... anyways it was a circle about 50 meters across with two white painted rings in the dirt about 10 and 12 meters into the ring. The structure was concrete and we were seated quite far away from the ring, but the elevation gain made a good view. We waited as the ring filled up, our group of four creeped around and sat where there was space, slowly but surely people would come up, stick their tickets in our faces and tell us that we would have to move. But we found a spot for the beginning of the fights. There would be 3 matadors and 6 bulls, we would see every matador fight with two bulls.