Crazy Week!

Wow! The end of the third week?! Already? I feel like this week has gone by so fast, but last Monday feels like ages ago! It has been a packed and fun week for sure! Thursday ended up being a bust with the concert idea due to rain, so I stayed in and dry!

Friday was much more eventful! It was a pretty regular day of classes with Archaeology class at the Acropolis Museum and a Modern Greek test! The Acropolis Museum is new, just opened this year, and is beautiful! You can’t take any photos throughout the museum, which is a bummer, but I saw so many incredible things there. The kind of things that I read about and studied back at R-MC in my Greek Art and Archaeology class and wondered what they would look like for real. I saw things like the Blue Beard Pediment, Peplos Kore, Moscophoros (calf-bearer), Rampin horseman, Kritios boy, and the Caryatids! Seeing as though you may not know what those are, google them, or just take my word for it that they are super well-known and cool. Our class session there was focused on looking at what kind of things were found at the cave sanctuaries we had looked at a couple of classes prior and the Archaic remains on the Acropolis. We’ll go back there later this semester to look at more stuff, but it was great to check it out. I actually snuck a few pictures, thinking it was okay to take photos on the third floor, and got in trouble…but I kept my photos! After that, I ate some crazy cod stuff for lunch and went to my Greek test. Friday night was really fun!

Friday night I went to a concert sponsored by my absolute favorite juice company here, Amita! It was a free concert in the Olympic complex (from the 2004 Olympics). It was ridiculous. First off, it took us forever to get there since we were waiting at metro stations for a while, but the journey was fun because I went with two girls, Kelsey and Melissa. We were chatting away and enjoyed our super long trip to the concert. Also, there were other CYA students around somewhere, but we didn’t run into anyone else. It was Greek teenage insanity! There were crazy preteens and teenagers everywhere, and the place was packed! We took some fun pictures and people-watched for a while before braving the crowd! Once we braved the crowd, we had other peoples’ sweat all over us and annoying teenagers running into us like crazy! Despite that, it was so fun. It was surprisingly fun to be around people speaking no English! We just got to experience it for what it was, a fun Greek pop concert. The bands that played before the headliner, Akon!, were great and all the crowd knew the words. I even recognized some of the songs! After lots of dancing around and jumping, they played some random American songs, like ‘Beat It’ and a lot of Lady GaGa music. We sang along happily to the words we knew, just enjoying the fact that none of these people would see us again! Finally, Akon came out, which was crazy! Quite an interesting performance! Then it started raining and we headed out a little bit early to TRY to beat some of the crowd, and because we had been standing for hours, but we ended up standing at the metro station for another 45 minutes or so. The trains were not running so often since it was so late. We ended up taking the train the opposite direction, on purpose, so we could hop onto one going the right way and try to get seats. We ended up getting seats and coming back by the stop with everyone waiting from the concert. It was insane!!! People were cheering so loudly when the train came in and were hitting the edges of it and it was ridiculous. One kid even broke the window of the train!!! He actually broke it. I saw it happen! My jaw dropped. Then the train filled up and we had some annoying boy leaning all over us, but we ignored him the best we could and tried to enjoy our sleepy ride home. Eventually, with a pit stop at McDonald’s (haha my first and last time going there!) we headed home, super late! Good thing I had nothing to do on Saturday!

Saturday, I slept in!!! It was nice. I spend a while journaling and reading my book about Mother Teresa and it was a lovely morning. Hungry, I went to get pizzas with two of my roommates. It was sooo good! And was my Sunday food too! After enjoying some pizza and relaxing some more, I headed to the academic center to get some work done and I skyped a while, which was great. I sat out on the balcony at our academic center here with my lovely view! I even watched the sun set behind the Acropolis! Surreal. That night, a few of us went to an Open Air Cinema! Sooo fun! We saw 'Inglorious Basterds,' which was a crazy movie! They show movies here in their original language with Greek subtitles, but the movie is in French and German half of the time! So it was interesting!!! The best part was that we were sitting out on a lovely night watching a movie (which was weird because I have not seen one since I have been here) and the Acropolis was in the background. Ridiculously gorgeous! So that was a great night and a beautiful walk, both there and back!

Sunday morning I went to a Protestant church here, about a 45 minute walk away, with a friend. It was a very interesting experience! I'll probably go back when we are actually in town and not traveling! It was mostly an oriental congregation and things were similar to how they are at most Protestant churches I have been to. The sermon was about judging others and focused on how Jesus speaks about not judging. He distinguished between judgment as unconstructive and harmful as opposed to constructive and lifting up others. He expressed that it is important to judge what right is versus wrong and that we have a role as Christians to help keep fellow Christians on constructive paths. He also spoke about how we often look to other peoples faults and don't recognize our own. One of my favorite things that he said was that it is not about changing other people, but about letting God change us. Also, he said that we would be a lot less judgmental if we took seriously the free grace and love of Jesus since it would remind us that there is nothing better about us that earns God's love. His focus was also on restoration in love as opposed to condemnation. It was strange, but nice to be back at a church, even though it looked a lot different than church from home. After church, I spent the afternoon getting work done and doing laundry, which is quite a task by hand!

Last night, we walked up Lykavittos. So beautiful! First we went up to a friend's apartment which is in the neighborhood below the hill, then we walked up and up and up and up! It was quite a climb and so very beautiful. I will post photos but it was spectacular. Such a great view of the entire city, which is HUGE! There were tons of German tourists and they were all singing! Fun. Anyway, I've got to get and get ready for a field trip, but I love you all and will talk to you soon! :)