Carnaval!

The wall outside the old town of Cádiz, during Carnaval

CARNAVAL!!

Hello everyone!!!

Sorry it has been almost 2 months (yes, 2 months!) Since I have written in my blog. Lately, things are going really well (minus the constant rain). Work is good, my friends are good and hopefully soon the weather will be good as well so I can start living on the beach! Normally, I guess during the winter in Cádiz is really good, lots of sunshine, a little bit of rain but mostly really mild. Well, obviously the year I come here we have been living with rain literally everyday for 2 months. Literally... every single day. I didn't realize how inconvenient rain is until I moved here. You have to bring an umbrella everywhere you go, all of your shoes should be water proof and forget about having dry, clean clothes (yah life without a dryer sucks too). And of course none of the apartments have insulation here so even when you

hang your clothes inside, it takes about 4 days to dry and at the end I have to get in there a little bit with a hair dryer- classy I know. My apartment is a piece of crap and we have to bleach our walls every 5 seconds because of the mold. The wood on our door swelled up because of the humidity and we started getting locked out of our apartment because it wouldn't open. We finally had to call some people to shave the door down so we could open it. So in conclusion, the mix between constant rain, no insulation, no dryer, and a shitty old ass apartment isn't a good one. Oh living in southern Spain!!

Anyway, as most of you know, during February in Cádiz is a festival called Carnaval. Since we live in the center, we were like in the middle of all of the festivities! They set up all of these delicious food stands everywhere, and people are allowed to just drink in the streets for pretty much the whole month. I guess a good festival to compare it too is Mardi Gras in New Orleans. However, a part from the constant partying, there is a deep rooted tradition in Carnaval as well. There are many singing acts and joke groups that go around the center performing for people. A Chorus is about 50 people and they go around on floats singing. There are also joke groups that go around singing and performing called Chirigotas. These are about 8 people in size and they sing and perform right next to you on the street. These groups also do performances in the theater in the weeks leading up to Carnaval and there is a big competition. When the last day of performances end (when the winner of the competition is announced) this is when the celebration of Carnaval begins! There are also groups called "illegales" (the illegals) and they aren't technically in the competition but they go around singing and performing anyway. They are aparently hilarious but you have to be very fluent in Spanish as well as be from Cadiz to understand them

(A Chirigota with a few of our friends... every group is a different theme, this group was roman statues!)

so I didn't really get much out of it but they are still very entertaining to watch. In the middle of all of these street performances is pretty much a huge botellón (drinking in the streets). The first weekend is the biggest one, and many people from all over europe come to enjoy it. Everyone dresses up in costume (as whatever you want!) and pretty much forgets everything else in the world and just enjoys cadiz! Carnaval is like nothing else I have ever experienced before and I feel it is probably best explained in a few select photos....

enjoying the streets! dancing apparently...

Abbey, Ellen, and me. Abbey is Marge Simpson ( they LOVE the Simpsons here!), Ellen is an Avatar, and I am ROSAtar! (Like a pink avatar... Rosa is pink in Spanish for all you English speakers... and I really just wanted to wear my pink wig!)

Rosatar and Marge... the hosts of 13 (yes 13) of our friends for the weekend!

Abbey and I on our terrace... getting ready for day 8 I think? We lost track

All of the streets are lit up with different lights for Carnaval... this is one of the streets- the lights look a lot cooler in person.

The streets on the first Saturday... the biggest night

Mel... my good friend from Ronda and the other Avatar!

More Botellón on Saturday

Carnaval. After.

Life After Christmas...

Hello again everyone!

I am officially back to teaching and living life in Spain. I must say, traveling here was a bit of a challenge. I got stuck at the Dublin airport for about 6 hours all because there was like an inch of snow and they decided to close the airport. Seriously, people here like freak out over ANY sort of weather... it is pretty humorous until you have been traveling for 20 hours and find out that you have to sit at the world's most boring airport for another half day. On top of that, I flew in to Malaga and had to take a 4.5 hour bus home to Cadiz. Needless to say, I was a little bit over traveling at that point so the past week I have just been taking it easy. We have a long weekend coming up at the end of February and my friend Sophie and I are thinking of going to Paris. I even bough a self-study French book so I could remember the 8 years of French I seem to have forgotten!

The weather this week is absolutely gorgeous! There isn't a cloud in the sky and the sun is out. I can't wait until it is full on beach season because that is where I am pretty much going to live when it gets hot enough. This weekend, my friend Mel from Ronda is visiting so that should be really fun. She and Abbey are planning on taking surfing lessons and they asked me to join but to be honest, I am not sure that will be happening for me. It just seems like the sort of thing I would be so terrible at that it would almost be embarrassing so I think I might pass on that little adventure.

On a side note, I just want everyone reading this post to take a minute and be so thankful for how lucky all of us are to have our health and happiness and family. I cannot even fathom what the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people in Haiti are going through- it really breaks my heart. The kind of despair and destruction that country has suffered is unimaginable. An entire city- completely destroyed in only a few minutes. I think we all need to realize how lucky and blessed we are. I have donated $35 dollars to a charity called Domes for Haiti (or something of that nature, I got a free shirt too! haha). They are currently building relief domes for people to stay right now and money will go to help the eventual re-building of the city. If I can spare some money to donate, I KNOW each and every one of you can. This amount may not seem like a lot but if I can convince 10 other people to donate this much, then it can definitely make some sort of difference. SO... I am encouraging each of you to do some research and perhaps find a legit Haiti charity and donate to the cause. If not to help the poor people of Haiti, then at least do it for the extra Karma points!

I love you and miss you all!! (the next entry should be more interesting, sorry)

~Jade