International Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Holy Week - what's it like?
I miss Easter and spring back home. Things are a lot more serious here - have you ever seen Spanish Holy Week processions? Compared to the south, it's quite "light" here, but it's still pretty spooky. Here's a photo from the regional capital: 
What's this week like where you are? Is anything happening?
It's major tourist time where I am so the city's population has doubled (if not tripled) and there's a fair downtown. Since it's theoretically a very religious time, the regular stores are closed until Monday.
Re: Holy Week - what's it like?
Well I am another Spanish nestie so I dont have a lot to add. I miss Easter baskets and Easter egg hunts. I do buy some chocolate bunnies.
Everything here is closed and it has been raining on and off since yesterday. I am doing absolutely nothing and enjoying every minute of it.
No theatrics here, but they do take it seriously. No work on Friday or Monday and everything's shut down.
I went to a small (and not very dramatic) stations of the cross this morning and then did a major grocery shop before everything shut down.
Here it's pretty serious as well. Each town has it's own procession. No work Thursday and Friday and a "Ley seca" is followed which makes it illegal to sell alcohol on those days.
For me however it means watching everyone else enjoying vacation days while I work
Your dog is so cute. It is like a cudley polar bear.
I work as a freelance translator and most of my clients are in the US, so I don't get holidays really unless I schedule them for myself (which I'm really bad at doing).
He is a big cuddly bear! He's my baby
The friendliest dog in the world
Well I didn't really think much about it until the local news station instagrammed a photo a re-enactment in the Pilsen neighborhood.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Pilsen-Neighborhood-Re-Enacts-the-Crucifixion-120487204.html
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
I'm the weirdo who pines for Holy Week in Sevilla and wishes it was like that everywhere.
I am seriously doubting France's Catholicism this week. I have not run into any life-size saint statues anywhere all week!
Why does it make you think of Easter in France?
You read it in high school? I think that makes me a million years old. There's a story in there where all the students in his French class are trying to explain their home countries' Easter traditions:
http://scottduncan.free.fr/blog/jesus_shaves.pdf
The teacher sadly shook her head, as if this explained everything that was wrong with my country. "No, no," she said. "Here in France the chocolate is brought by the big bell that flies in from Rome."
I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell know where you live?"
"Well," she said, "how does a rabbit?"
It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That's a start. Rabbits move from place to place, while most bells can only go back and forth--and they can't even do that on their own power. On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character; he's someone you'd like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It's like saying that come
Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks. Who wants to stay up all night so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when they've got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris? That's the most implausible aspect of the whole story, as there's no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker
to fly in and take their jobs. That Roman bell would be lucky to get work cleaning up after a French bell's dog -and even then he'd need papers. It just didn't add up.
Thanks for the snippet, love Sedaris' books.
I learned another Norwegian Easter tradition this year: Apparently Easter is the time to read crime novels. I don't really know why, but it even has it's own word (literally "Easter crime") and all the bookstores put up ads to remind you to buy your crime novels before the shops close for the holiday. In honor of the tradition, I'm reading a grisly murder mystery. Happy Easter.
Are you Hungarian? I just learned that in Hungary the Easter tradition is that on Easter Monday the girls have water thrown on them. My colleague's girlfriend was just complaining about the fact that every year she was woken up by her father tossing a full glass of water on her while she was still in bed!
Well, if it makes you feel any better, high school was a mere foggy memory for me by 2000. (Was 2000 really 12 years ago? Sheesh.) I even have a lot of his books on cassette ... which is actually a sign of my being a poor American student in Germany back in the day than of me being old. Does anyone even buy cassettes anymore, though?
Well... I'm in the US. lol. But we had a great time doing the stations of the cross and carrying a 40 lb cross in downtown on Friday. It was the first time that'd happened and it was fantastic.
In India there isn't anything, since it's only 2% Christian. Ryan went to church, and then in the afternoon he and his parents went air conditioner shopping, lol.
"I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." -Isaiah 61:10 NKJV