Random updates & beach pictures

Hey all. Been a while again...apologies. In my defense, there´s not a whole lot to report. Not that´s it´s been a banal couple of weeks, mind you-- I´ve been having a great time. But there have been no grand voyages, no breathtaking daytrips, no borders crossed since the end of spring break. The few days of Semana Santa processions that I saw upon return from Istanbul were worthwhile, and I´ll put up some pictures of them as well. The only other trip I´ve made was to the beach at Nerja, about an hour and a half from Granada. It´s a beautiful strip of coast. Swathes of brown-grey beach dotted with umbrellas are broken into shortish chunks, partitioned from one another by hulked formations of rock. Despite their impressive silhouettes, most of these rocks seem ready to crumble underfoot-- they are composed primarily of small stones and shells sedimented together with sand by centuries of surf. It´s a nice town, more or less what I expected from a coastline that has been progressively built up over about a half-century. I´m looking forward to seeing some other beaches when Josh & Dad are here.

So that was two weekends ago. This past weekend Sebi was at a wedding, Eddie was with some friends at a rented mountain house, Bart was hanging out with his parents, and I was living the bachelor life in Granada. It was fun. I could have made more of it, certainly, but it was way relaxing to sprawl out on the couch & watch soccer (most of it bad soccer-- La Liga games are usually on premium cable channels). Think of it as an independence recharge-- there are a ton of things I love about Spain, several attitudes I prefer to their American counterparts, but I could never jamas get used to the invasive motherliness that seems to define generations and generations of Spanish women.

The weekend before Nerja was spent recovering from and longing for Istanbul. Megan and her boyfriend were in town after what sounds like a fascinating but stomach-churning week in Morocco. The three of us went up to the Puerta de la Justicia-- the main entrance to the Alhambra-- to see a procession leaving the fortress to make for the Cathedral.

These are from the Saturday Alhambra procession...cool stuff. They had to take the float apart to get it through the arch, and then reassemble it to carry it down a really long hill, march around the city for about 5 hours, and then carry it BACK UP THE HILL at about 1 am. Oh, and it´s solid silver. And it rests on the crown of the carriers´ heads. Good times.

It´s hard to get clear shots of the hoods at night. (these were from a different procession, the night before-- good friday. very sad. not supposed to clap when they pass). These guys look like ghosts, which is actually a good thing because if I´d gotten them in tight focus they´d look like Klansmen.

A lot of kids make balls out of the wax drippings from the thousands of candles that accompany these processions.