the sparkling city...

Well okay then... :)

If you were wondering, here's a little bit more information about Corpus Christi. (I posted a few pictures I took about a year ago in my photolog.)

The city of Corpus Christi is named after Corpus Christi Bay, on which it sits. The bay was named for the feast day on which it was discovered, according to legend. I can't help but be a tiny bit sorry that it wasn't discovered on the day of the Feast of St. Hedwig, but that's another entry altogether. :)

Corpus Christi is nicknamed "The Sparkling City by the Sea," which always seemed a bit too ambitious to me. We spent a lot of time as kids trying to think of ways to distort the nickname.

I spent most of my elementary school career believing that Corpus Christi was a Spanish phrase, but it's actually Latin, of course. It means "body of Christ." People periodically interpet this to mean that everyone in the city should embrace whatever religion they're peddling, so that we'll all be saved in this holiest of cities.

Corpus Christi is one of the windiest cities in the country -- windier than Chicago, which bears that meaningful moniker, "The Windy City." We never let it bother us -- we just never expected to have a good hair day.

Because the Bay is part of the Gulf of Mexico, we only have one high tide and one low tide per day, and our surf is rather uninspiring. However, we use the wind as a draw and host windsurfing regattas.

Anyway, the wind must've been helpful to the Karankawa Indians who lived on the beaches of Padre Island when the Spanish explorers arrived. As any third-grader living there would be happy to tell you, the Karankawas are by far the most colorful piece of history in this area. They were cannibalistic and rubbed skunk scent all over themselves to keep away the mosquitoes. So that stiff breeze was an asset, so long as they stayed downwind of whatever (or whomever) they were hunting.

(Actually, the truth is that the Karankawas didn't really hunt people for food. They did, however, eat the flesh of their enemies as a way to capture their spirit as they died. It was a custom that was commonplace among the tribes in Texas. The skunk scent part, though? Totally true.)