Oooops.

It´s official, I´m a bad blog keeper. Not that you all want to hear every detail of my life (nor do I want to share everything with everyone, no offense), I do wish I included a few more updates... if I don´t write stuff down, I just forget about it (I guess you could say I´m becoming more like my mother everyday... hehe, love you Mom). Anyway, I´ve been up to quite an assortment of things lately and would like to give a bare bones outline about what I´ve seen and done the last few weeks. To avoid making this the longest, densest post ever, I´ll split up recent events into a few more managable posts, so keep checking this over the next few days!


First thing on the list is el Carnaval de Cádiz. I think I could write multiple blog entries on this alone, but basically it is a Marti Gras a la español and amplified by about 1000. Everyone and I do mean everyone -- babies in strollers to gray haired folks dresses up in wild costumes and celebrates... what exactly, I can´t say, but for a whole week there was a constant stream of confetti, parades, musical performances and a general vibe of frenetic energy is unleashed upon the city. Forgive the bragging, but it is said that Cádiz has the best/craziest Carnaval in all of Spain, and I must admit, I fully believe it lives up to its reputation. People stay out all night in their costumes dancing, singing, socializing and drinking on the streets... all of this makes for some pretty good times because when thousands of people are packed like sardines into plazas, streets, and pretty much any other public space available AND they are wearing silly outfits AND have varying levels of sobriety, well.... complete strangers can turn into best friends after about five minutes of chatting.

One part of this that I liked was that groups of friends tended to dress up in similarly themed costumes. Examples include life sized tetris shapes, a pack of hungry hungry hippoes, various farm animals and a group of Guantanamo prisoners. Popular fall-back costumes include disney characters, pirates, fairies, and cross-dressing in general.

Saturday night/Sunday morning was the biggest night of celebration with the most number of people on the street. By 7:00 Sunday morning, all the plazas contained enormous piles of garbage everywhere, the streets smelled strongly of urine, and an unmistakeable stench of general filth hung around in the air. Don´t worry, by 10:00 city workers were already sweeping up and disposing of the garbage and hosing down streets, so by midday everything was sparkly and new again. I´m not writing this post from my computer, but when I get the chance I´ll post a couple pics for you all...

Okay, that´s all I have for now, so stay tuned for the next segment of my update!