More from Pamplona

Daniel & I having coffee in a bar
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Pamplona is a town of about 200,000 people and has two universities. Here Daniel attends the Pamplona campus of the University of Navarra (the name of the province). Every year here, they hold San Fermín , or the "Running of the Bulls", a 6-minute event that over a million people attend annually in July. There are huge 7-day parties in the town square and, of course, the release of bulls on the old part of town in which chaos ensues and some very dumb, drunk North Amercians die. The town is lovely and safe.

I met many of Daniel´s friends from school. Ignacio or "Nacho" and Leire took me around the city and university by foot. In the old part of town we had tappas , Spanish appetizers served in bars and garrote , mini croissants with melting warm chocolate in the centre. One night we went out for dinner with 16 guys from Daniel´s residence to Kaleon Gora , where we had the traditional basque dinner of Chuleta (tender steak), Spanish omelettes, and cuajade (steamed sheep´s milk dessert). The coolest thing about this place is that there´s a huge area with gigantic wooden barrels that spouts sidre , an alcoholic cider.

Does anyone die during San Fermín? Yes, but usually dumb, drunk people from North America.

One evening I cooked an Asian dinner for Daniel and his friends. Thai green curry, vietnamese noodles and fried rice. Oddly, the Asian people here only speak Spanish or Mandarin, so I was pretty useless. At night we went to a Bingo hall. Bingo, apparently, is completely different here than in Canada. There isn´t even B-I-N-G-O across the top of the card and you have never seen something as intense as me trying to catch the numbers in Spanish and frantically looking at the board for the numbers. The number caller even had a very sexy voice. Imagine a phone sex operater saying " veinte ocho" over a loudspeaker. We then went to La travesia, a street of small bars where a lot of university students hang out. Waiting around until 1am to go out and waiting for things to pick up at the bar around 2am is something to get used to. People here stay at bars until the 3am closing time and head to a discoteque until 6am, getting home around 7 or 8 in the morning.

More pictures coming soon