La Máquina del Tiempo

If you have ever traveled to Europe from the United States, you know what it's like to simultaneously move forward and backward through time. Marked by the weight of jet lag on our eyelids, we arrived on Spanish soil after a race against the rotation of the Earth. What was officially marked on our ticket as a seven hour flight carried us through the jet stream an additional six hours into the future, giving us the power every child dreams of: being able to jump across a gap in time, press skip on the VCR of life and arrive later than what your ticking watch can predict. While the fresh Spanish air, compact, fuel efficient, and hybrid eurovehicles, and circular road signs paved the way for our timely triumph, our arrival at Segovia stopped us dead in our tracks. After what seemed to be a trip to the future, had we really gone back in time?

The ancient city of Segovia was originally a Celtic possession, its name originating from the Celtic "castle" or "fortress." As power later transferred to the Romans and the Moors, like a shaken up bottle of Coke, the city now bursts and fizzes with bubbles of Roman history with Arabic undertones. The driver from Madrid dropped all students off at the base of the oldest Roman aqueduct still standing in Western Europe to wait for our host families. My neck arched back and eyes squinted, I had only a few minutes to get a good look at the stony layers of history before Jesús de Frutos Álvarez lifted my bag from under my arm and drove me to his home.

Although I was excited about having my own room and private bath, this was the least amazing thing about la casa. As Jesús bobbed up the swirling staircase with my 24 lb. suitcase, I noticed that what we had been twisting around was a giant hole that continued three stories up. This, Jesús pointed out, is an aljibe, or a cistern that the Moors used in the beginnings of the years A.D. the bring water to their homes. Water that was so easily directed by the colossal, man made, cement free, acueducto. Even more stunning, the side of the house, a giant window that looks to the West over the Alcázar (fortress) and a green field of trees, though seemingly new, is not at all a contemporary fixture. The column in which I was standing and watching the movements of the Sun was a renovation of a Church steeple that had been there since 1100. Then I knew, I was no longer moving into the future. I was zipping back into the centuries so fast, it seemed my heart too had to slow down and remember which way blood came in and which way it went out, so it didn't end up pumping backwards.

After a brief tour of the city, two meals consisting of cheese covered ham, bruschetta, fish filled manicotti, soup, Spanish pizza, parfaits, bizcocho, and yes, Reese's, and laughs with my family, I know that three weeks will not truly be enough to fit it all in. But no one really has 2,000 years to spare do they?