Summer In Siena: Palio!

I just finished one final, a presentation and a paper and now I just have one more test until I am finished with school. It was a fun and interesting experience, but none-the-less it is still school- and I am READY to be done!

Yesterday was the first day of the Palio festival. The Palio is a festival that goes on twice a year here. It is a bareback horse race between 10 out of 17 Contradas. I was wrong-- in an earlier blog I said that my school's contrada was racing this year but turns out that they won the last one and therefore are not competeing in this one. I am not really sure who I am going to root for because my school and host family are not competeing but I will have to find someone to root for. Yesterday the jockies got assigned their horses. It is interesting because the Contrada's do not choose the horses, they are randomly assigned. That means that the jockeys only have 3 days before the race to practice with the horse that they will be racing with. The Contrada's do however choose the jockeys and they are often professionals. Last night I had to write a paper so I couldn't attend the first trial run but it was on TV. It was fun to watch! There is another trial tonight and tomorrow that I will hopefully be able to watch but I am not sure. Yesterday, the entire city was decorated with flags of the different contradas. The people of the contradas also were wearing wraps worn around their necks to represent. Our teacher actually told us that during these four days, you should be careful wearing particular colors because you could walk into the enemy contrada wearing the wrong colors!! All week there has also been singing, drumming, and marching coming from all the different contradas. Everything about the Palio so far has been really interesting to learn about- people take it very seriously here. I am so excited to be part of such a huge tradition!