Merida, Caceres, Trujillo

So on October 25th, our group started the last of our overnight trips. Our main stop was Merida. There we saw the old Roman anfiteatro, teatro, templo de Diano, and the Museum of Roman Art. It was cool to see all of the old Roman ruins because I had never really thought about the Roman ruins in Spain before, just the ones in Rome (which I get to see in less than 2 weeks!!). One of the highlights of the trip had to be me and my friends performing a ridiculous dance on the huge state at the teatro in front of lots of other tourists. We definitely embarassed some of the other students in our group with that little number. Haha. Oh, Spain!

After exploring the ruins and the museum, we headed to Caceres where we spent the night. I didn't really get to go out to explore the town that night because I was working on an ORCA grant proposal that had to be turned in that night. It turned out that everybody just went out to eat though, so I didn't miss much. Then the next morning we walked around Caceres. We went to the Cathedral of Santa Luisa (you need to look up her story on Wikipedia sometime...something to do with taking her eyeballs out...kinda out there.)

Then after we walked around the city some more, we got on the bus and headed to Trujillo. Our professors had never been to this city before, so we got there, and they just set us free to explore for about 3 hours or so. A small group of us went and ate at a little restaurant at the Plaza Mayor, and then we watched some dancers that were performing and then just walked around the city. There were some monuments to Pizarro and some random places we ended up at where we saw some great views of the city.

After that we just headed home. Then later that night we all met up at the mall to find out where Dana (one of the girls in our group) was going to serve her mission. Her parents had received her call that morning, and so she had them read it over the phone to her and then came to the mall to tell us. Her family had just been in Spain visiting a week or so earlier, and her dad had been one of the first missionaries in Spain. So he and some other people gave a fireside over the missionary work in Spain at the Stake center near the temple in Madrid. So it was cool that she was getting her call right after all this had happened. It was even cooler when we found out that she was going to be serving in Malaga, Espana!! (That's the South of Spain where we had just visited a week earlier, right after her parents had left). While we were in the South, we had actually run into some of the missionaries serving there. And Stella and I have a friend, a girl that lived next door to us last year, who is serving in Malaga and just got there a couple weeks ago. Basically, it was really exciting for everyone to hear the good news, especially Dana. So she basically gets to go home for a couple months and then returns to Spain next semester to serve for a year and a half! (in the coolest part of Spain :) )