Ruins, museums, and markets, oh my!

All right, I’d intended to write at least once last week, but I got a too tied up in my work. Anyway, I’m writing two separate posts for today. One will focus more on Spain, and the other on my trip to Portugal this weekend.

I went to a place called La Itálica last Tuesday for one of the weekly trips we do through the program. It was burning hot, so of course we walked around outside for about an hour. Despite feeling like a sweat monster, I thought La Itálica was a very interesting place to visit. What’s the big deal with this place? Well, it was an important ancient Roman city in Spain. We walked through ruins of houses of the people who lived there and saw the colosseum too. The professor told us more about how things worked there. Apparently gladiators had managers that set up fights for them and told them which weapons to use. When there were bleeding bodies on the boards in the colosseum, the Romans allowed the blood to drip through the cracks to some hungry lions beneath. Call me a little old fashioned, but the Romans seemed to overdo it a bit.

Other than that, we visited the ruins of the Castle of San Jorge, which was an important place during the Inquisition. It was extremely disturbing. We also went to a market in an area of Sevilla called Triana. It was crazy with all the variety of food there. The markets (and stores in general) in Spain are really specific. In the market, there were stores dedicated completely to cheese, meat, or my favorite, candy and pastries. Giant chunks of meat like pig legs were just hanging from the top of kiosks.

As far as daily life goes, I’m enjoying seeing all the fallen oranges in the streets and sidewalks. Yes, that sounds strange, but I like to kick them around like soccer balls. I’ve heard that it’s not a good idea to eat them, but I’m seriously considering trying one anyway. I really like the desserts here. The ice cream is really creamy and there are so many types to choose from. One day, I ate ice cream three times and at three different places. I thought that was bad, but yesterday a friend of mine told me she had ice cream every day for four days straight. We’re addicts. My host mom introduced me to flan. It has a very intriguing taste. It contains a lot of egg, which sounds kind of gross, but I liked it a lot. That’s more than I can say for my roommate, however, haha. Speaking of desserts, I learned a new idiomatic phrase from my intercambio. We were talking about men who worked out a lot and had really defined abs. I told her that we said they had six packs. She also told me that the Spanish called men like that barras de chocolate (chocolate bars). I cracked up for a bit while she looked at me like I was a nut. What can I say? If the shoe fits…