Weekends exploring Mazarrón; the Easter blog (aka it lives again!)

A calm January morning at the beach

I'M SORRY.  There's really nothing else that I can say.  It feels like time has really flown by in this second half of my stay, and when I look at the blog and see that I haven't posted since January, I know that it's true.  Filling you in on all of the happenings of the past three months won't really be possible, so I will post lots of photos and provide some (hopefully) insightful captions.

And, just so you all know, I will get another shot at this whole blogging thing because I will be staying in Spain next year to continue working as an auxiliar.  I don't officially know where I will be working, but I requested to stay at Infanta Leonor (and the administration asked that I come back as well).

Here's something that I wrote way back in January/February.  It's interesting to see how much things have changed in a few short months: Weekends here in Mazarrón seem to alternate wildly between fiesta-filled and endless sunny days where I curse myself for not having a driver's license.  The people are what give this town a little spice and as a fellow teacher said when I talked about how quiet it was on Friday, "Mazarrón [en] enero, febrero y marzo es así. O suele ser."  Translation: This is how Mazarrón tends to be this way in the winter. Remember, Charlotte, tourist town.  I suppose that my expectations were a little high after the week before when the teachers went out for lunch, we celebrated Fran's birthday, and then on Thursday some of us got together for another late dinner.

Now, I don't think I can imagine a quiet weekend.  Although this weekend has been a little cool and foggy, the weeks since Easter have seen this little tourist town fill up.  The paseo is packed with children and families, and many cafes and shops have since reopened their doors.  You have to mentally prepare yourself to go to the Sunday market because not only do all of the permanent residents go to get produce, but all of the visitors as well.

Some students in the Carnaval parade

Briefly, here is what spring brought in Spain.  In February, we celebrated Carnaval in town and at school.  The school theme was the Olympics, so the students dressed as athletes and the teachers dressed as national representatives, even though we really looked like Iberia Airlines flight attendants from the 60s.  The cool weather seemed to drag on and on, and when my mom visited in March, the warm weather that I was expecting still hadn't come.  We spent some time in Granada, came back to Mazarrón, and then used the free time in my spring break to take a series of daytrips and one overnight excursion to a Renaissance-era town in northern Andalucía.  After 10 days, she went back home to Seattle, and I went back to my quiet, routine Spanish life.

My fourth year students didn't get the memo that scubadiving is not an Olympic sport

So to tell the rest of my spring story, here are some photos that I would like to share.  Enjoy!  And I promise to be better about posting...I really, truly do.

The abandoned mining complex in Mazarrón.

A sunny motorcycle trip 

Goats in the hills - not what you might expect when you go hiking

Summer seemed to come, and then it left

Pit stop at the Alhambra

The Alhambra's iconic Lion Fountain

The mineral-laced water from the old mines

Mac n Cheese mineralization

Danger!  There's a extremely deep well right here!  Just this short wall separates you from a painful fall!

Our trusty Seat Leon, right before we nearly got it stuck on a very rural road

The hill town of Velez Blanco

And the view from the Velez Blanco castle

The abandoned "service road" that our GPS chose

Sounds like a great place to visit!

The foggy Renaissance (aka not car-friendly) streets of Úbeda 

It's like time travel

Same view they had way back in the Spanish Renaissance, but now
we have antibiotics, so walking in the rain isn't quite so dangerous.

Definitely worth the drive and weather

The Semana Santa procession that went right under our window
in Alicante.  At midnight.

The less grand, but still highly somber
processions outside my apartment.

A mourning Mary.  Charlotte, why don't you blog more???