Some Like It Hot

I mentioned in an earlier post that Spanish girls don't really wear shorts without tights. The dress code here is a bit different from the US. Spaniards have a pretty excellent sense of style, especially the women. In late spring/summer, the young women in their teens and twenties always have a nice shirt on with either pants, a skirt, a dress, or occasionally shorts with tights.

These girls look nicer taking a casual stroll around Granada than I do at most formal events.

Even the women in their forties dress like adolescents. From behind they look like twenty-year-olds, and then they turn around and I realize that they are at least thirty-five years old.

For example.

Granadinos, i.e. people from Granada, are a durable race. It is an understatement to say that Granada is a hot city in the summer. It's basically Africa, as far as latitude is concerned. In the summer it is usually between 30 and 40 degrees Celsius, which is somewhere in the high 80s and 90s and even 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It isn't humid, which is always a plus, so at least it's not muggy beyond belief like Chicago. However, air conditioning is less popular here than one might hope, and it is almost always sunny, thus the sun does not hide behind clouds very much. I like to wear cool clothing, so I don't lapse into heat exhaustion too often. However, the residents of Granada don't even seem to notice to heat. They walk around in pants, PANTS, which is understandable for going to work I suppose, but on weekends too? Really? Why? I wore pants one day when I thought it was going to be cool, but it was not, it was not cool at all, and I thought my legs were going to melt off my body.

Case in point: this picture was taken on Saturday, June 19. These people are not going to work, they must just enjoy sweating out all their bodily fluids in one afternoon.

Chicagoans will put on shorts the first day that hits 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius) in March, whereas Granadinos seem perfectly content to continue on with pants until...well, ever?

My theory? The Granadinos are used to sun and warmth, and don't need to take advantage of being able to feel their limbs, because they don't have the excessively cold 8-month winters that Chicago has. Perhaps Chicagoans appreciate the sun more and therefore wear cool clothes the first chance they get, or maybe Granadinos really are just a stronger species who don't have sweat glands. Personally, I think it's a mixture of both.