Zaragoza

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This past weekend I went to Zaragoza...its about 4 hours away from Madrid. I was there for 3.5 days; left school early on thursday, skipped class on friday ( I only had one ) and then came back on sunday. I went for 2 reasons; first, some friends that I met here in Madrid live there and wanted myself and two other kids to go. The friends are from Turkey! two girls, and extremely nice. Being here has made me so much more accepting of foreign people and has made me realize that it is ok to be different (I used to get frustrated with Chinese students at Tech when I was working). Second reason for my trip was because tomorrow, Monday, is a national holiday in Spain. Actually its a religious holiday that the state recognizes, which is kind of controversial because since the end of the dictorship (1976) church and state have been separate, but under Franco (the Dictator), church and state were not really together, but he supported the church to great means. Anyways, the holiday's name is La Pilar, which has some rough translation to the Virgin Mary. It is a holiday celebrating the Virgin Mary in simplest terms. This holiday is extra special in Zaragoza because they have a cathedral there named La Pilar, and the city goes crazy for this weekend, and all of next week. Really, its just a drunk fest, which is sad, but i am sure somewhere people still recognize the true meaning.

I forgot my good camera, so the pictures and videos were taken with my phone, which has a remarkably good camera, but I was not able to capture many. Still, take a look.

Nina, as you will see in one of the pictures, is from Belgium, but speaks really good English, along with 3 other languages, and is a good singer. She has her own album too.

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