Mérida, Monfragüe, Semana Santa, Lisboa

Where to begin?  Well, the oldest ruins I've seen since I was in Rome.  Mérida, another city in Extremadura, houses tons of Roman Ruins.  The most notable of these is the amphitheater that is in near perfect condition.  This is because the smart people of Mérida, for one reason or another, thought that their ruins were threatened and decided to bury nearly the entire city underground to protect them.  Years passed and people forgot so think about how excited they were in the 19th century to discover this massive Roman theater.  They even use it nowadays for shows!  Merida also has a museum full of statues and Roman artifacts.  The reason why there are so many artifacts is because Mérida was the retirement place for Romans back in the day, just like our Florida.  I learned about Mérida from orientation and it lived up to expectations.  The cool thing about Extremadura is that it has cities that represent Roman, Medieval, and Moorish cultures.

I also went to the closest Portuguese town called Elvas.  Elvas looks similar to Badajoz as it has a wall and a castle and a little town at the bottom of the hill. It's actually much smaller than Badajoz, but it has something that Badajoz doesn't have: an aqueduct! We also got to see reindeer and eat Portuguese pastries.  I'm sure that my family remembers how delicious they were!  Here is a panoramic view of the main plaza of the town.

 

 Also, at the end of March and early April, the weather started getting better and we started going out more.

That picture above is from the bridge looking out towards the countryside.  I was running and I had to stop because it was such a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky.  Speaking of good weather, my friends and I went to one of the two national parks in Extremadura.  This one is called Monfragüe and is located in the north of the other providence, Caceres.  It's honestly one of the most beautiful, natural places that I've seen.  They have this cliff that houses the nests of vultures.  These aren't the vultures that you see in movies, but beautiful, brown vultures that don't look like their heads are shaven.

I also tried watching the lunar eclipse.  The one they called the blood moon. I only got to see it turn into a banana eclipse.  I luckily only had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning, but the reason why I didn't get to see the luna de sangre was because the sun was rising around 7:00.  When I left, it was only yellow. But I imagine that it must have been beautiful for the people who saw it turn full on red.

After going to Monfragüe, I went back to Lisbon.  I had been itching to go back ever since I left and this time I looked for any excuse to get back.  When I found out that my friend was traveling during my week off, I pushed for her to visit Lisbon, which became one of my favorite cities of Europe.  I'm not entirely sure why, but it just has this awesome feel of being a big city in a really small area that I like.  Also, it's right on the shore so maybe it reminds me a lot of Boston.  Regardless, I went back and met up with my friend, Julia.  I was a proud tour guide the first day, reminding myself of all of the cool facts that I had learned on my first trip to Lisbon.  The second day that we were there we did something I hadn't done before.  

 

If you will recall, I talked about this giant Jesus statue that was the protector of the city and I believe it's the national monument of Portugal.  Well, the story goes that Portugal had a dictator until 1974 who was really cruel to the people and eventually he was overthrown in the Portuguese Revolution.  He was dictating (I know that's not the real word) during World War II and prayed to God that his country not enter the war.  If that came to pass, he would make a statue in honor of Jesus.  As luck would have it, Portugal remained neutral during the war and Salazar, he even has the name of someone evil, commissioned the Jesus-Building-Project.

This actually was my favorite sight from my first trip to Lisbon that I was excited to climb to the top and look over the city that I had also come to love.  I bought a little token from my first trip of this statue because he is the protector of the city.  For those of you world travelers, this Jesus is a smaller replica of the one that you find in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.  It turns out that the Lisbonians copied a lot of things from well known places.  The bridge into the city is a shorter version of the well-known bridge in San Francisco.  Those sneaky Portuguese.

As you can see, I'm enjoying every minute of my life here and trying to make the most of it.  I'm enjoying it so much that I am going to come back next year to continue the adventures that I've come to love this year.  Teaching has been an absolute pleasure and I'm not referencing my the program I'm in.  I'm talking about the academy that I work for.  Unfortunately, I am no longer working for them because the person I was covering for just came back after her maternity leave.  The academy, however, told me that if I return to Badajoz next year, they will offer me a position, or if I land in some other part of Spain, they will write me a recommendation for whatever position I want.  I was really tough leaving these students, but now I have experience to bring towards whatever I do next year.

I hope you sifted through all these words, or more importantly the pictures, and enjoyed catching up with me.  I return home in a month and two days, not that I'm counting, to spend three months working.  As always, my thoughts are with my family who I wish I could be with during this time.  I love you guys.