The Iberian Peninsula (currently Spain and Portugal) has had a number of past ocupants including Moors, Arabs, and long ago, The Romans. When the Romans ruled the most important city was not Madrid or Barcelona, it was Tarraco - today known as Tarragona. I got to go visit this city on Saturday and see all the Roman ruins, it was pretty awesome! I went with a small group from the school and we toured the city together. It was a lot of fun! We got to go see the old ampitheatre, parts of the ancient wall that surrounded the city, and a number of museums with statues, ceramics, artifacts, and models of how the city looked in its prime. All the history was really interesting and it gave me chills to stand in the ampitheatre and to touch the wall that once surrounded the Roman capital of the peninsula. After the ruins and the museums we enjoyed just walking the streets and exploring the modern city, but the past just seems to spring up everywhere. They have found ancient ruins while trying to remodel restaurants and houses and now there are corners of stores or hotels that are marked for historic preservation. If fact, before you contract a builder to remodel or build anywhere in Tarragona, you have to call an archeologist first! We all ate lunch together than went out for icecream at a fancy little gelato place by the cathedral. We spent lunchtime and the train ride home comparing our languages and teaching each other small tidbits and laughing and laughing over how wrong we pronounce all the foreign words. It was a good day. We make such an international group - three Belgiums, two French, and one each from Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Colombia, and The United States, all trying to speak Spanish! Love Mikahla P.S. I only have five more days here in Barcelona:( I will leave Saturday morning and go down to the south of Spain for about a week. I will be stopping briefly back into Barcelona before I head on to Paris, France. I will not be taking my computer with me down south so communication may halt for about a week, but I will return with stories and pictures and love for all my friends!