Novatadas

For Spanish students, the fall semester started Monday the 27th of September. However, very few students actually went to their classes the first week.

Here in Spain they have a tradition of initiating (read: a form of hazing) the new 1st yr students. This involves the sophomore class as sort of wranglers who carry around megaphones and order the freshmen around. The freshmen, according to gender and major, wear matching tshirts that on the front say things like infantil, novatada, etc. and on the back sport their first name. They then proceed to have the following done to them: roped together in a line, eggs and flour covering them, singing songs to degrade themselves, magic marker signatures on their skin from upperclassmen, etc. Surprisingly they all seemed to be in a pretty good mood about it.

So we've been told, here in Cáceres the novatada business is fairly light and upbeat. It makes me wonder what the rest of Spain does.