Hannibal's Playground

Hello Everyone!
So I'm now all safely back home and warm in my beach town and done with travel until Thursday.

So yesterday we went on a day trip to Sagunto. It's this kind of small town in the autonomous community of Valencia and it's famous because it was relatively important during the Second Punic War. A long, long, LONG time ago.

So anyway, around 11 we walked down to the train station and got on the train to Sagunto. The trip took about a half hour, but the landscape wasn't quite as pretty as it was to Xàtiva. It wasn't bad though. So we get there and head to the main square to find the tourist information place.

After a brief consultation we go to to this old house on our way up the hill. Yes, it's another hill. Everybody in Spain used to build their cities on a hill, and now tourists have to walk up them. All part of the conspiracy. So we go to this house which has the remains of Diana's temple

  and some other old things,

 and we watch a brief video about the history of Sagunto. It used to be an old Iberian settlement that sided with the Romans against Carthage in the Second Punic War in 219BCE and was captured after 8 months of siege by Hannibal. So that's cool. And then we started climbing the hill in earnest.

On the way up we stopped at the ancient Roman theatre

which was guarded by a man who we refer to as "the bridge troll" because he was one of those people. I swear, every five minutes he would leave his little guard house and come and yell at someone for doing something that we were not supposed to. Seriously, if there are that many rules, POST SIGNS!!" But it was nice we ate lunch ("not inside the theatre, you must eat outside") and tried to go onstage ("off the stage!!!") but it was gerneally nice and we took some fun pictures. Which I stole from Alexz's Facebook, because I thought that after all 50 bazillion pictures of random stuff from Toledo you might want to see my face.

Or at least my bodybuilder pose.

Is it wrong to find pictures of yourself cute? Because I just look so happy!!
I was very happy. Sagunto was really cool.

Wait- are we-?

Yes, it's Charlie's Angels.
And then there are actual pictures of the theatre

Which was really cool.

Next stop:

up there.

The base of the castle. 

The path we took up. The others took the road. 

Look!

 Old stuff!

 Nice views!

 The sea!

 It was really cool.

 Very dramatic

 And very high up.

So the thing with this historical site is that there was a lot of history, but nothing to tell you about it, which was kind of a shame, because it basically meant we couldn't fully understand the significance of the place. We just didn't have the information. On the bright side, however, 

there was stuff to climb. 

Funny story. I took this photo on a wall that was falling down and about 10 seconds after I took it some guy started yelling at us that it was horribly dangerous to be up there. I think the cue should have been that I took this picture through a gap in the stones. Whoops!

Remember that conspiracy to kill tourists? This place is definitely in on it. 

But yeah, it was really cool. 

 It was a nice day, a little windy, but not uncomfortable.

 And there was a lot of awesome stuff around, even if we didn't quite know what it was.

 and spectacular views

Here's another picture of me in an archway

 Oh, so Alexz and I were walking together and I took this picture of her

 while she took this picture of me

So that happened.

But really it was a very dramatic place. 

That isn't me, that's Katy, another girl on the trip, but I just love these pictures we took of her

she just looks so joyous. 

SO yeah, we kept climbing:

 It's the theatre!

We were just down there!

 Actual arrow slits

I feel like I'm on the Great Wall of China

The climbing is a bit more intense and riskier, though. 

Me looking over my dominion artsy.

Remember how I said windy?

We stole Alexz's camera and took selfies. Aren't I attractive?

The other half of my dominion.

The climbing was so much fun. I mean, we basically treated it like a giant, ancient playground. That Hannibal conquered. 

pretending to be graceful while getting down from a wall

I walk a lonely road

yea, though I walk though the shadow of the valley of a bunch of cactus, my hair will still be in my face.

So basically that was a lot of fun and I'm so glad we did it. I was REALLY sore after two days of hills in a row though. 

So then we went BACK down the mountain. 

And walked through the old Jewish quarter

and took dorky pictures at the Cathedral doors

You could feel the wind coming out of a hole

 and after that we had free time, so Elena and I went to a cafe and had some tea and coffee and chatted and chilled outside. It was lovely, then we walked back to the train station, got on the train and came home. I did very little for the rest of the day. I was very tired. 

Today I woke up past breakfast time and started working on an essay for Elena that I hadn't started yet on different interpretations of David from the David and Goliath story, which was pretty cool. After I did some research I went down to the market to get some breakfast and dried fruit for the week. I bought some banana chips and ginger and found a really really delicious heart-shaped strawberry pastry that made me grateful for Valentine's day. Then I came back and spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and homework and taking a nap. I then skyped Sage, which was lovely.

And, of course, tonight was Taste of Home dinner, and this week it was Asian food, which I have really missed. I love Asian food. It was so tasty. We went to this actually awesome place called "wok to walk" and you choose your base (rice, veggies, noodles) and what you want in it (peas, broccoli, meat, etc) and your sauce (curry, teriyaki, pepper) and then they cook it in a wok and it is delicious and I haven't eaten Asian food in a month. I don't even know how to deal with that. 

The only problem with this, however, is that after you order they ask your name so they can call you when your food is ready. And I don't think I've mentioned this before, but "Katie" doesn't exist in Spanish. In fact the letter "k" only appears in words they borrowed from other languages. This did not occur to me when the waiter asked me my name, so I replied, "Katie" and he looked at me quizzically and said "what?" and I said "Katie" and he said "ca-" and I said, "Katie," and he still doesn't really get it, so I just say "Catarina", finally realizing that this just wasn't going to work, at the same time as he says, "oh! Katie!" and he then promptly beings addressing me in English and asking where I am from. *headdesk* We had been doing fine in Spanish beforehand. And then when I get my receipt:

Of course. 

It's actually really fascinating to me, because in the US and other English-speaking countries, my name is pretty unremarkable. I can find magnets and hats and keychains and other tourist stuff with my name on it, and no one double-takes when I introduce myself, but here, it is positively strange. I mean, most of the people I meet and my professors and such don't have a problem with it (they pronounce it differently, though. It's... with an "ah" sound, not an "a" sound here.) but they are aware that I am from the US, and therefore expect me to have a name like that, but that's not true of a lot of people, including this poor waiter. 

So Taste of Home dinner was lovely. There were only four of us tonight, Jess and me and then Elena and Alexz.  We had nice conversation and many laughs and talked about current affairs and culturally specific names and they quoted Forrest Gump. We then decided that really we needed dessert (we didn't, but we got it anyway) and went to this really classy cafe/restaurant place in Plaza de la Reina. We got coffee and tea and milk and dessert. Jess got this chocolate cake that nearly made her cry with joy 

while Elena and I opted for bañuelos (I think) which are like fried doughnut pumpkin things

which were covered in sugar. And delicious. We had another fine time at this place and wound up telling funny stories from the week and laughing really loudly, and it was great. 

When we got back Alexz wanted to check and see if the Foosball tournament had started, so we went into the rec room, and since it hadn't started, we wound up playing several rounds of very intense foosball and being shamed by Alexz's superior skills. Jess made an excellent point, that it is going to kind of be weird to go back to normal professor/TA-student relations after this. I mean, obviously we respect them (and Elena was being a total mom while we were all climbing over the ruins. She was so worried we were going to kill ourselves) but we also go get dinner and tell funny stories and play very competitive and impassioned games of foosball when we all have work to do, and I like that. It's really cool, and it's nice to get to hang out with them as people, not just as teachers. 

So, that's been life the past couple of days. I highly doubt that tomorrow will be quite as eventful as this weekend, but I'll let you know how life unfolds.

Ciao!