Confessions of A Working Girl

The bus to Segovia left a little before 9am. It was a two hour drive.Segovia was really pretty. Their big attraction is the aquaducts that you can see for a kilometer. The rest of the aquaducts are underground, and its thought that they are approximately 2000 years old. The guide said that the part of the aquaduct that is above ground has the potential to work, and is used on special occasions, but other than that, it isn’t in use. The part below ground, which goes for another 3 kilometers doesn’t work anymore.We visited La Caja de Segovia. It was a museum type place that was pretty interesting. That’s where I got photos of tapestries and sets of armor.  Most of it isn’t original, since the place burned down a long while ago, but some things were replaced in that age, and others have been replaced since. One of the things that there are copies of are the ceilings, since those were one of the things that burned. Part of La Caja is a tower, since it’s sort of like a palace. The tower was probably for guards or something.Anyway, we had the option of going up to the top. I figured, why not, since we were already there. That staircase is now at the top of my ’staircases I don’t like’ list. First of all, there were 150 steps. The sign said 156, but I only counted 150. That could be because I had to stop to breathe every so often. And they weren’t even normal stairs. They were taller, and much narrower. It should have been a one way staircase, but since it was the only staircase, people were going up and down at the same time. And when that happened, one of the people would have to stop and squeeze against the wall. Going up wasn’t so bad, despite the fact that it was like 10 minutes before I could breathe normally once we reached the top. It was going down that was the problem. It was a spiral staircase, so there was a pole in the middle. But because of the height of the steps and the spiral, it was scary going down. Especially when I came across people who were going up at the same time! I think the people generally realized that I was sort of scared, since some of them were very careful to squeeze against the wall or the spiral so that I would have plenty of room to go down. I found some of the other kids from my group and ate lunch with them.Then we headed to a place that is apparently known as a ‘mini-Versailles’. It was like a museum, and it had pretty gardens, although they are probably prettier when the flowers are actually alive.  After that was the 2 hour drive back to Salamanca.At 11,  I met up with friends. My clothes still smell like smoke, since the bars we went to allow smoking. The first one was relatively quiet, and there were just three of us, me Marissa and Matt. I had coffee with milk, since when the person came to take our orders I didn’t understand that they were ordering beer. Marissa left after a while, and Matt and I waited. About a half hour later, she called us and told us where to go. We went to another bar, this one loud. Apparently it was the birthday of one of their english teachers. Here, I got rum and coke. It was 6.50 euros!!! At that price, I figured that that was the only drink I was going to buy.I’m not sure how long we stayed in that bar. Long enough for Marissa to introduce me to about 20 people whose names I don’t remember, and long enough for some of the others to get tipsy. Then we left and went to another bar, this one the quietest one of the night. I got a chance to talk to a couple of the English teachers.Which is what led to, at 4am, a discussion on religion. At that point, I didn’t know when we were going to call it quits for the night, and I had passed the point where I was tired. I had never thought though, that there would be a time when, at 4am in the morning I would be discussing religion with people who had all had lots more to drink than I had. It was….interesting.When we actually called it quits, we still had the walk back. So I ended up getting back to the house at 5am. No wonder I slept till 11 this morning.  Then, a little after noon, Marissa called and asked if I wanted to go to her house for lunch and help her practice her english. I said sure. Marissa’s parents were really nice. Her dad and her little sister both know a little english, so the one or two times I misinterpreted something or didn’t understand, they jumped right in and helped explain. We had paella for lunch. Until coming here and eating paella, I’d never eaten shrimp–I think they were shrimp–whose heads I had to take off before I could eat them. But they were good.I had to leave a little before 4, because I had made plans with other friends a few days ago. These friends are Japanese students studying here, and they’re helping me learn Japanese! They’re really nice. There’s three of them. I’ll think of names for them later.And tomorrow, I have class at 9. And I forgot to memorize the lines for the ISA play…