Jamie Fehr

I was not yet asleep late last thursday night when I was suddenly startled by a loud bang, followed by silence, followed by four snappy and progressively louder, earth shattering booms. Surely the end of the world had come. Wait I should start this story from the beginning.

Last Tuesday morning I was walking back to work from a very productive and intensive spanish lesson, when a car pulled up beside me and a window rolled down. It was several of my co-workers and they wanted to know if I wanted to go the market in Puerto de la Torre. Of course I did. I am a bachelor and as such I frequently let my stock of food stuffs dwindle to nothing, and that day I was desperate to put some food in my house.

Gwynn was driving, and while it was a long and exciting 2km drive from where we started to where we were going, that’s a different story for another day, we got to Puerto and found a parking spot. As a group, we walked to were the Tuesday market in Puerto was supposed to be, but instead found only carnies (slang for people who work at carnivals) and trucks hauling rides.

I looked over to Kirsten (she works at MMC and needed food as well), and inquired of her ¿Quieres ir a la feria? (want to go the fair?) Every now and again I have the urge to express my self in a foreign language. Her response was something like: Sí, pero you no sé caundo la empieza. (Yes, but I don’t know when it begins.) And I said: Nosotros vamos a saber cuando la empieza. (We are going to know when it begins.) I really wish I had known how ominous those words really were, because they bring us to loud noises that occurred late thursday night.

It was fireworks to kick off the Puerto Feria. They started at 11:45 p.m. and it sounded a lot like the house across the street was being demolished. And when I finally got out of bed to see what was going on, it was over (not that I would have been able to see them anyway).

The fair had started, and I had other plans. I finally made time to check out the fair late last night. It was kind of small, but really cool. They had a few rides that hurt a lot, vomit inducing fair food, and a flamenco dancing show. That was my favorite part. The singers and dancers, sang and danced stories about unfaithful husbands, the greatness of their land, and other things that I didn’t catch because both my spanish and the sound system weren’t that good.

My favorite act was definitely the dynamic seven year old duo, Juan and María (I didn’t actually catch their names). But they were at the most seven years old, and they danced. He spun her around and she did things too. It was great, I was sad I didn’t have a camera.

Everyone on stage was really brightly dressed, the singing was powerful, and there were hardly any male dancers on stage. I have found my second calling. I will learn to dance, and then I will get to be on stage with all those pretty ladies.

I left the Feria around 12:30 in the morning. I waited for the fireworks to closeout the show, but they never happened, therefore the Puerto Feria cannot be a truly good thing. I still managed to enjoy myself though.