Here I am, on another mode of transportation writing my blog! I’m on a ferry this time! Visiting with Mom and a friend Jess this week! I am so excited! (We are officially on Fall Break with school and we have classes again next Monday.) You’ll hear all about it next week. But, this past week has been FULL of good times. We were gone all week on a school trip to the Peloponnese. For those of you not up on your Greek geography, the Peloponnese is the part of Greece that looks like a hand! Anyway, we spent the week there with school from Tuesday early morning until Saturday evening. It was amazing and now I miss Virginia even more! Seeing all of those trees and the beautiful mountains! I love it!!! It was a great week, full of travelling, so I’ll fill you in on the details!
Let me preface this by saying that I did not even know about, or knew little about a few of the sites we visited this week! So if I mention a place that sounds unfamiliar, maybe Google it and check it out. Everywhere we went was awesome! Tuesday morning, I got on a bus with 40 or so students and we all began our five day long tour of the Peloponnese! Our first little stop was at the Corinth Canal! We all had potty breaks and opportunities to accumulate snacks for our journey ahead!
We got to Mycenae after some driving, which was met by much excitement by dorky archaeological students excited to see the Lions Gate there. It is an incredible site, but since I had been there last summer, it was a bit less cool! Anyway, it was great to be guided around and learn more facts and theories about the site more relevant to my Archaeology course. In addition to the crazy big Mycenaean Palace remains, there are tholos tombs that are great. A tholos tomb is a tomb that was usually used for royal families that looks like a big bee hive/cone structure. The largest tomb, the Treasury of Atreus, is absolutely huge and impressive! After a visit to the little museum there, wandering, and lunch, we hopped back on the road to drive to Olympia. The drive was a few hours, so when we got to Olympia, we checked into our hotel and had free time for the evening. Some friends and I visited the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games (I think is the name) and the Archaeological Excavations at Olympia Museum. I had also been to both of these museums last summer, but it was great to see them again and know a little more background knowledge to the pieces I was seeing, etc. Afterwards, the evening consisted of some jogging around the modern town of Olympia (woohoo) and a light dinner.
Wednesday, we jumped right into the site of Olympia! I had also been there last summer, but still enjoyed my visit and again enjoyed having a guide leading us around highlighting relevant facts. The site is huge and pretty incredible. After organized wandering, as well as a jog in the old stadium, some friends and I wandered the site more and checked out the big Olympia Museum before lunch. After lunch, our class met up to go to the museum. This place is so cool, even if you think archaeology is lame! The craziest big sculptures were found from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia and they truly are beautiful works of art. Also in the museum was the Nike of Paionius and the Hermes and Dionysus statue. I joined up with the other class from our bus’ tour after mine, and after a bit we all got back on the road again! We drove to Pylos, which was kind of cool and kind of lame. The town is unimpressive today, but in my Ancient Greek language course right now, I am reading from an author Thucydides. We are translating his account of the Peloponnesian War and specifically, the battle at Pylos. So, it was great to be there and see the place we were reading about, but there was not much to do in the little town but eat, so a group of us went out to dinner!
Thursday, we went to Methone, a crazy awesome Venetian palace. It was so fun and they just set us free for an hour. I felt like a kid running around a backyard fortress! It is very well preserved and really beautiful! We also visited the Palace of Nestor, which is an incredibly preserved palace structure right outside of Pylos. It has a very well preserved megaron, a sort of sanctuary area. You can even see the flame paintings on the edges! After exploring these areas, we went to Sparta for the evening and checked into our hotel. We had a walk around ancient Sparta and a lecture by one of our professors, which was interesting. The remains of Sparta are few, since the Spartans were not big fans of showy architecture and such like Athens. Also, the modern town was built over the ancient town. Anyway, a friend and I also jogged in Sparta before going out to dinner with a bunch of other students in a nearby town our professor recommended. The food and wine were both great and we had so much fun. Plus, we got free baklavas and chocolate turtles. That was a fun night for sure.
Friday, our group went to Mistras! This was probably my favorite site by far!!! It is a very well preserved Byzantine town with tons of old churches and a monastery and fortifications. It was a very important site in the Byzantine Empire and especially since I have heard about in class, it was great to see it! It was such a beautiful place. We had lunch in Sparta and got back on the road to go to Nauplion! This may have been my favorite town! It was so cute. One of our professors took us on a walk around the town and the old town, which was beautiful and fun! Also, Nauplion is said to have the best gelato in Greece, so we got tons! We got some before and after dinner! Our professor recommended a great little place for dinner! It was so good!!! It was so fun to visit with friends more and chat over a lovely dinner. I wish things were a bit more like that at home. I guess meals seem to be so much more rushed and lame at home. I love how Greeks put more emphasis on meals and spending time with each other. Anyway, that was a fun evening wandering around Nauplion.
Saturday, our group went to Epidauros. I forgot what was even there! There is a healing sanctuary of Asclepious there, as well as a really well-preserved Greek theater! It was so interesting to be at such a site. It was in the beautiful countryside, which is in itself therapeutic. It was pretty cool to imagine how so many people came to this healing sanctuary in antiquity. After exploring that crazy site for a while, including this circular structure with a sort of maze beneath, we checked out the theater. This theater was amazing and the best preserved Greek theater! It started raining there and everyone's umbrella came out! After wandering up and down the slippery wet stairs of the theater, we headed back to Nauplion for lunch. More gelato! We then began our journey back to Athens. Part of the way there, we stopped off in Tiryns. The walls of Tiryns, an ancient Mycenaean fortress, are huge and very well preserved. They were crazy to look at and going through the fortress we all wondered why they needed such a wall! After checking that out a while, we finished our drive back to Athens!
By the end of it all, I was/am tired, a bit sick of being on the road, excited, a bit sick of being with American students in hoards, and loving being on break from classes! It really was an amazing week and to be led around looking at ALL of those sites was incredible. Good times for sure. You’ll hear from me soon about this coming week of break. Being off of school is awesome, too bad classes are coming back in merely a week! The semester is already halfway over, can you believe it?!
Love!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Only the beginning...
This has been a busy week and is only the beginning of tons and tons of traveling I've got ahead of me the next couple of weeks!
Last weekend, I did a lot of studying getting ready for midterms. On Saturday, my friend and I went on a search for cheap wrist watches and did some shopping and wandering around Monastiraki and talked. We had fresh squeezed orange juice at a nice cafe that looked up at the Acropolis and did homework. It was a great morning. The rest of the weekend was pretty chill with tons of work.
The week was full of midterms and boring studying, but it was great to get them over with. We had some fun throughout the week! It was my friend's birthday, so we all went out to Yum Yum and had yummy Chinese food and took a study break. A few of us also went jogging most nights, which is so fun and gorgeous. It is so nice to jog, even late at night, to see the city and get a workout! How incredible to be jogging on the Olympic Stadium, past Hadrian's Arch, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and the Acropolis! We also had a lecture on Wednesday night about the Thessaloniki Film Festival, which was really interesting!
Thursday morning was great, despite the rain! I was supposed to have class at Kerameikos (Ancient Cemetary), but as I was on my way there with some other students, but class got cancelled due to the intense rain that made the site pretty muddy. I kept walking to the site with a friend that didn't know where it was exactly, then decided to just camp out at a cafe for a frappe and wait for the travel agency to open. I wanted to book my Fall Break ferries to Santorini and Milos with Mom! I ended up at a nice little cafe and drank an amazing frappe for over an hour, watching the shop owners and Athenians interact in Monastiraki. It was really interesting. I got a different glimpse into daily life for Athenians that I usually don't see at 8:30 in the morning. I had a really pleasant time just being solo, journaling and praying, and figuring out some things that have been on my mind. On the walk back, I went into a few Byzantine churches in Athens and checked them out. After a while, I went to the travel agent and booked my ferry tickets before meeting up with girls to buy train tickets to Litochoro!
Friday night was so crazy! We saw a bunch of stuff, something like stage, being set up in the area beside school right at the plaza area of the Marble Stadium. We had heard from someone at CYA that it was some sort of Street Theater show and was going to start at 9. So, around 8 we left school, grabbed food, and ran back to see. It was absolutely insane!!! It lasted about 45 minutes and was all in Greek! Most of the actors were running around on stilt things doing crazy flips and carrying fire around, while the ones without stilts did crazy acrobatics on the stage/scaffolding area. At one point some of the guys had fire shooting from their feet! They also did the awesome acrobatic thing where you climb up a piece of fabric and spin around and such (wow I wish I knew the word...). The simplicity and yet complexity of the show was beautifully done and really a work of art. It was a very powerful and moving performance, even though we did not know what they were saying. We took a few pictures with some of the actors after! :)
This weekend, two friends and I ran away from the crazy big city of Athens to seek after the solace and beauty of Mount Olympus. Yep! Right now, as I type, I am in Litochoro, a small town at the foot of Mount Olympus, in the restaurant of our hotel, eating amazing fried potatoes and drinking a frappe. Let me explain how we got here!
Upon an earlier whim this week, we decided to come visit Mount Olympus, so we started looking up trains and such. I kind of hopped on the boat with their plans, and I'm so glad I did! Nice and early (5:45 am) on Saturday, we hopped on a bus and metro to get on a train to end up in Litochoro! We arrived at 11 am and upon calling our hotel, we got a ride to our hotel! But on the train, there was lots of studying, eating, and snoozing. At one point, Kelsey was trying to put my backpack in the overhead storage and it cascaded down into the floor, as the guy across the aisle offered to help us. Pretty funny.
At the train station, we had a sort of rough time trying to communicate with the person from our hotel on the phone! We ended up having two people help translate what we were trying to figure out (a ride to our hotel) to the person on the hotel. It was interesting, and we shortly after hopped in a car with a really nice guy to head to our hotel! He enthusiastically welcomed us to Greece and Litochoro! I awkwardly slammed my seat forward trying to give the girls in the backseat more room! The driver and I had a great time chatting in the front seat as I tried to practice some Greek and communicate. We got to our hotel and had a lot of fun meeting the people at our hotel. They are so sweet!!! They treated us to frappes and we chatted with the lady, Zoey, for a little while using our little bit of Greek, which was really fun and good practice for sure! She also gave us this strange alcoholic drink, which her mother (yiayia) made, and it was super fruity and yummy.
Afterwards, she set us up with a taxi and we spoke some Greek/English to him as we drove up to Mount Olympus. We had a deal that he would take us up to an area to take lovely photos, then bring us to a monastery, drop us off at the center of Litochoro, then would pick us back up at 10 pm to bring us back to the hotel! It was great! We headed up this crazy mountain road up to a restaurant area and field and practically drooled over how beautiful the mountains were. It was a sort of overcast day, rainy at times, but ended up being gorgeous. The Autumn leaves and trees were absolutely amazing, although it did make me miss the Fall in Virginia! Athens does not have so many trees! As I tried to tell our taxi driver how beautiful the trees were, he corrected my grammar! It was cute, since I did not quite know what I was saying! I could not stop smiling looking at the trees and at the mountains. I can see why the Ancients would have seen this site as so beautiful and sacred. It is ridiculous how nature can be so stunning. We had some fun taking photos and hanging out looking at the mountains as a man walked up from Athens. He spoke pretty good English and we chatted a while. He had been to Mount Olympus many times and was here with many friends. He said that they were having coffee and he wanted to check out the mountains, not just sit inside and drink coffee, since he can do that in Athens! He told us about mythology of the area and we talked to him about our experiences studying in Athens. He took some pictures for us (so we didn't have to figure out our self timer for EVERY pic, and after his friends called, he headed back inside. We then took more fun photos and played with a precious dog following us around, until a crazy bee started buzzing around my head relentlessly. Seriously, this thing was crazy. I actually started to freak out and was sort of crying trying to remain composed! I ended up just running!!! I was so sick of that thing. It was totally like in my ear and buzzing away. I wanted it to either sting me or get away!!! We ended up coming back into the restaurant to meet our taxi driver (we had an hour there!) and we hopped back in our taxi. Feeling slightly carsick, we began our next mini adventure...
We ended up at a Monastery to St. Dionysus and checked out that amazing place! So beautiful! I'm going to post tons of photos of all of this, but it was very beautiful. We walked around and took it all in. The church was absolutely gorgeous and highly decorated. We looked all around the monastery and little pavilions and the like. After a little while in there, probably a half hour or so, we headed back to meet our taxi driver friend!
Our next stop was the center of Litochoro, where we made plans to meet up with our driver friend at 10 pm. It was about 2:30 or so by the time we got there, and it was so cute! We stopped for some amazing food for lunch. The restaurant, "Gastrodromio in Olympus" was actually Fodor's choice for dining inLitochoro in 2008. It was incredible! I had some stellar veal bolognese and spaghetti. The bread was absolutely amazing. We took tons of photos of our food and spent over two hours there just trying to finish ALL of our food and taking in the crisp air of Autumn! We had great conversation and felt ready for our next adventures of exploration. We had heard about a beautiful river area in Litochoro from our buddy we met taking photos earlier, so we were ready to find it. We asked the man at our restaurant and he said that there were two areas to see it, one with a small waterfall. This was our challenge!
We set out after eating to explore Litochoro and find this river. We walked up some beautiful path and saw the little river/stream, and ended up moseying up some crazy sketch path, only to turn around after getting the heeby jeebies! Our next effort was up and around past the main area following the sound of water and our gut instincts! We ended up walking and walking up to the top of town and around some crazy curvy roads. We wondered at one point if we should turn around, but kept going. Good thing!!! We ended up just wandering until we found the Mount Olympus National Park! We started up a random path, after joyously jumping up and down. We were crazy excited as we kept hearing water and continued on this absolutely amazing path. It was absolutely incredible. I do not have enough adjectives to describe how cool this place was. We ended up and were walking in the bottom area of the path through the Enippeas River Gorge! My jaw dropped as we were looking at the mountains and this gorge. We took SO many photos! We stumbled across this fun little water area that said the water was "dringable," so us being thirsty, filled up my water bottle and drank it! It was so clear and so tasty and clean! I haven't died yet, so I think it was okay!!! As we kept walking, it kept getting more and more beautiful, until we found the little waterfall!!! We were so excited! We found someone to take photos for us (we ran into only a handful of other people on the path). I slipped under the little fence and got a photo a bit closer up with the waterfall, then as we hopped back on the path we decided to check out the European E4 trail we went past. It was more natural (as opposed to a man-made path with a fence) and is actually the path that people hike that includes the Pyrenees and Alps!!! So we checked that out for a while and took more crazy photos. It gave us a much better view and we felt obviously cooler since we were on such a sweet path! :) When the sun started to go down a bit, we figured it was time to head in for some hot chocolate and to find our way back to the town before dark. It was a quick descent and although we passed some punk kids spraypainting some grafitti, we made it back safe and sound to the city center.
In the city center, we ran into a wedding! The main church in the middle of town was packed with people and a beautiful bride!!! Everyone was outside and taking photos and it was so beautiful! This is the third wedding I have run into since I have been here in Greece!!! We found a sweet restaurant to camp out at and do homework with hot chocolate and Fanta to wait for our driver. After a few hours there, we were heading back to our meeting place when our driver stopped by us and called us in! He was so nice. Right when we got in, he handed us each a sweet little pink rose!!! He asked us how Litochoro was and kept asking if it was beautiful, which it was. We were still kind of in shock that 1. we found such an awesome place and 2. it was so incredible! After our ride back, we headed to our room to do a bit of work and sleep!!! What a day!!
Today, we have been relaxing ALL DAY at our hotel restaurant. After a much needed full night of rest, we woke up and got ready for our day. We went down to breakfast and were so very excited, but we had no idea what to expect... It was SOOO GOOD!!! I'm going to post a photo, but we had cereal, yoghurt, fried eggs, ham, cheese, granola, peaches, orange juice, coffee, and bread with jam/nutella/irish butter. We ate like pigs, and sat there for over two hours!!! Afterwards, we wanted to go to the Dion Archaeological Museum, but found out it was closed on Sundays off-season. We were considering taking a walk, but it is rainy! So, we have been camped out here all day, loving being away from Athens and in such a sweet little town with such great people. We've been chatting, getting work done, and blogging (obviously)! A great weekend! Our train back leaves at midnight back to Athens, and we'll be arriving at 5:45 am. I've got a presentation for my Byzantine History class at 10:40 am, and tons of homework to do, so I'm looking forward to a busy day! But this weekend has been sooo worth it!
I've got tons of traveling this next few weeks, so I'll keep you updated!
Tons of love!!!
Ps, we made it back safe and sound! I have to tell you about dinner!!! It was incredible!!! Surprise surprise... haha. We had a great time chilling in our room listening to old boy bands and random music for a bit, then headed downstairs to dinner. I ordered an amazing pork steak with scrumptious fried potatoes (i call them medallions of happiness). Chanel had Zoey pick what she wanted to eat for her and she chose this amazing pork thing with meat so tender it fell off of the bone. Reminded me of barbecue from home! But dinner was just crazy and so filling and cheap! So great. After dinner, we hugged our new friend Zoey and said farewell to everyone else as we hopped into the car with her husband to go to the train. They were so amazing to let us check out 12 hours late free and to drive us back to the train so late!! :) They told us we have to try to visit every summer and hike Mount Olympus! We'll see how that goes, but I would love to go back there!!!!
Last weekend, I did a lot of studying getting ready for midterms. On Saturday, my friend and I went on a search for cheap wrist watches and did some shopping and wandering around Monastiraki and talked. We had fresh squeezed orange juice at a nice cafe that looked up at the Acropolis and did homework. It was a great morning. The rest of the weekend was pretty chill with tons of work.
The week was full of midterms and boring studying, but it was great to get them over with. We had some fun throughout the week! It was my friend's birthday, so we all went out to Yum Yum and had yummy Chinese food and took a study break. A few of us also went jogging most nights, which is so fun and gorgeous. It is so nice to jog, even late at night, to see the city and get a workout! How incredible to be jogging on the Olympic Stadium, past Hadrian's Arch, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and the Acropolis! We also had a lecture on Wednesday night about the Thessaloniki Film Festival, which was really interesting!
Thursday morning was great, despite the rain! I was supposed to have class at Kerameikos (Ancient Cemetary), but as I was on my way there with some other students, but class got cancelled due to the intense rain that made the site pretty muddy. I kept walking to the site with a friend that didn't know where it was exactly, then decided to just camp out at a cafe for a frappe and wait for the travel agency to open. I wanted to book my Fall Break ferries to Santorini and Milos with Mom! I ended up at a nice little cafe and drank an amazing frappe for over an hour, watching the shop owners and Athenians interact in Monastiraki. It was really interesting. I got a different glimpse into daily life for Athenians that I usually don't see at 8:30 in the morning. I had a really pleasant time just being solo, journaling and praying, and figuring out some things that have been on my mind. On the walk back, I went into a few Byzantine churches in Athens and checked them out. After a while, I went to the travel agent and booked my ferry tickets before meeting up with girls to buy train tickets to Litochoro!
Friday night was so crazy! We saw a bunch of stuff, something like stage, being set up in the area beside school right at the plaza area of the Marble Stadium. We had heard from someone at CYA that it was some sort of Street Theater show and was going to start at 9. So, around 8 we left school, grabbed food, and ran back to see. It was absolutely insane!!! It lasted about 45 minutes and was all in Greek! Most of the actors were running around on stilt things doing crazy flips and carrying fire around, while the ones without stilts did crazy acrobatics on the stage/scaffolding area. At one point some of the guys had fire shooting from their feet! They also did the awesome acrobatic thing where you climb up a piece of fabric and spin around and such (wow I wish I knew the word...). The simplicity and yet complexity of the show was beautifully done and really a work of art. It was a very powerful and moving performance, even though we did not know what they were saying. We took a few pictures with some of the actors after! :)
This weekend, two friends and I ran away from the crazy big city of Athens to seek after the solace and beauty of Mount Olympus. Yep! Right now, as I type, I am in Litochoro, a small town at the foot of Mount Olympus, in the restaurant of our hotel, eating amazing fried potatoes and drinking a frappe. Let me explain how we got here!
Upon an earlier whim this week, we decided to come visit Mount Olympus, so we started looking up trains and such. I kind of hopped on the boat with their plans, and I'm so glad I did! Nice and early (5:45 am) on Saturday, we hopped on a bus and metro to get on a train to end up in Litochoro! We arrived at 11 am and upon calling our hotel, we got a ride to our hotel! But on the train, there was lots of studying, eating, and snoozing. At one point, Kelsey was trying to put my backpack in the overhead storage and it cascaded down into the floor, as the guy across the aisle offered to help us. Pretty funny.
At the train station, we had a sort of rough time trying to communicate with the person from our hotel on the phone! We ended up having two people help translate what we were trying to figure out (a ride to our hotel) to the person on the hotel. It was interesting, and we shortly after hopped in a car with a really nice guy to head to our hotel! He enthusiastically welcomed us to Greece and Litochoro! I awkwardly slammed my seat forward trying to give the girls in the backseat more room! The driver and I had a great time chatting in the front seat as I tried to practice some Greek and communicate. We got to our hotel and had a lot of fun meeting the people at our hotel. They are so sweet!!! They treated us to frappes and we chatted with the lady, Zoey, for a little while using our little bit of Greek, which was really fun and good practice for sure! She also gave us this strange alcoholic drink, which her mother (yiayia) made, and it was super fruity and yummy.
Afterwards, she set us up with a taxi and we spoke some Greek/English to him as we drove up to Mount Olympus. We had a deal that he would take us up to an area to take lovely photos, then bring us to a monastery, drop us off at the center of Litochoro, then would pick us back up at 10 pm to bring us back to the hotel! It was great! We headed up this crazy mountain road up to a restaurant area and field and practically drooled over how beautiful the mountains were. It was a sort of overcast day, rainy at times, but ended up being gorgeous. The Autumn leaves and trees were absolutely amazing, although it did make me miss the Fall in Virginia! Athens does not have so many trees! As I tried to tell our taxi driver how beautiful the trees were, he corrected my grammar! It was cute, since I did not quite know what I was saying! I could not stop smiling looking at the trees and at the mountains. I can see why the Ancients would have seen this site as so beautiful and sacred. It is ridiculous how nature can be so stunning. We had some fun taking photos and hanging out looking at the mountains as a man walked up from Athens. He spoke pretty good English and we chatted a while. He had been to Mount Olympus many times and was here with many friends. He said that they were having coffee and he wanted to check out the mountains, not just sit inside and drink coffee, since he can do that in Athens! He told us about mythology of the area and we talked to him about our experiences studying in Athens. He took some pictures for us (so we didn't have to figure out our self timer for EVERY pic, and after his friends called, he headed back inside. We then took more fun photos and played with a precious dog following us around, until a crazy bee started buzzing around my head relentlessly. Seriously, this thing was crazy. I actually started to freak out and was sort of crying trying to remain composed! I ended up just running!!! I was so sick of that thing. It was totally like in my ear and buzzing away. I wanted it to either sting me or get away!!! We ended up coming back into the restaurant to meet our taxi driver (we had an hour there!) and we hopped back in our taxi. Feeling slightly carsick, we began our next mini adventure...
We ended up at a Monastery to St. Dionysus and checked out that amazing place! So beautiful! I'm going to post tons of photos of all of this, but it was very beautiful. We walked around and took it all in. The church was absolutely gorgeous and highly decorated. We looked all around the monastery and little pavilions and the like. After a little while in there, probably a half hour or so, we headed back to meet our taxi driver friend!
Our next stop was the center of Litochoro, where we made plans to meet up with our driver friend at 10 pm. It was about 2:30 or so by the time we got there, and it was so cute! We stopped for some amazing food for lunch. The restaurant, "Gastrodromio in Olympus" was actually Fodor's choice for dining inLitochoro in 2008. It was incredible! I had some stellar veal bolognese and spaghetti. The bread was absolutely amazing. We took tons of photos of our food and spent over two hours there just trying to finish ALL of our food and taking in the crisp air of Autumn! We had great conversation and felt ready for our next adventures of exploration. We had heard about a beautiful river area in Litochoro from our buddy we met taking photos earlier, so we were ready to find it. We asked the man at our restaurant and he said that there were two areas to see it, one with a small waterfall. This was our challenge!
We set out after eating to explore Litochoro and find this river. We walked up some beautiful path and saw the little river/stream, and ended up moseying up some crazy sketch path, only to turn around after getting the heeby jeebies! Our next effort was up and around past the main area following the sound of water and our gut instincts! We ended up walking and walking up to the top of town and around some crazy curvy roads. We wondered at one point if we should turn around, but kept going. Good thing!!! We ended up just wandering until we found the Mount Olympus National Park! We started up a random path, after joyously jumping up and down. We were crazy excited as we kept hearing water and continued on this absolutely amazing path. It was absolutely incredible. I do not have enough adjectives to describe how cool this place was. We ended up and were walking in the bottom area of the path through the Enippeas River Gorge! My jaw dropped as we were looking at the mountains and this gorge. We took SO many photos! We stumbled across this fun little water area that said the water was "dringable," so us being thirsty, filled up my water bottle and drank it! It was so clear and so tasty and clean! I haven't died yet, so I think it was okay!!! As we kept walking, it kept getting more and more beautiful, until we found the little waterfall!!! We were so excited! We found someone to take photos for us (we ran into only a handful of other people on the path). I slipped under the little fence and got a photo a bit closer up with the waterfall, then as we hopped back on the path we decided to check out the European E4 trail we went past. It was more natural (as opposed to a man-made path with a fence) and is actually the path that people hike that includes the Pyrenees and Alps!!! So we checked that out for a while and took more crazy photos. It gave us a much better view and we felt obviously cooler since we were on such a sweet path! :) When the sun started to go down a bit, we figured it was time to head in for some hot chocolate and to find our way back to the town before dark. It was a quick descent and although we passed some punk kids spraypainting some grafitti, we made it back safe and sound to the city center.
In the city center, we ran into a wedding! The main church in the middle of town was packed with people and a beautiful bride!!! Everyone was outside and taking photos and it was so beautiful! This is the third wedding I have run into since I have been here in Greece!!! We found a sweet restaurant to camp out at and do homework with hot chocolate and Fanta to wait for our driver. After a few hours there, we were heading back to our meeting place when our driver stopped by us and called us in! He was so nice. Right when we got in, he handed us each a sweet little pink rose!!! He asked us how Litochoro was and kept asking if it was beautiful, which it was. We were still kind of in shock that 1. we found such an awesome place and 2. it was so incredible! After our ride back, we headed to our room to do a bit of work and sleep!!! What a day!!
Today, we have been relaxing ALL DAY at our hotel restaurant. After a much needed full night of rest, we woke up and got ready for our day. We went down to breakfast and were so very excited, but we had no idea what to expect... It was SOOO GOOD!!! I'm going to post a photo, but we had cereal, yoghurt, fried eggs, ham, cheese, granola, peaches, orange juice, coffee, and bread with jam/nutella/irish butter. We ate like pigs, and sat there for over two hours!!! Afterwards, we wanted to go to the Dion Archaeological Museum, but found out it was closed on Sundays off-season. We were considering taking a walk, but it is rainy! So, we have been camped out here all day, loving being away from Athens and in such a sweet little town with such great people. We've been chatting, getting work done, and blogging (obviously)! A great weekend! Our train back leaves at midnight back to Athens, and we'll be arriving at 5:45 am. I've got a presentation for my Byzantine History class at 10:40 am, and tons of homework to do, so I'm looking forward to a busy day! But this weekend has been sooo worth it!
I've got tons of traveling this next few weeks, so I'll keep you updated!
Tons of love!!!
Ps, we made it back safe and sound! I have to tell you about dinner!!! It was incredible!!! Surprise surprise... haha. We had a great time chilling in our room listening to old boy bands and random music for a bit, then headed downstairs to dinner. I ordered an amazing pork steak with scrumptious fried potatoes (i call them medallions of happiness). Chanel had Zoey pick what she wanted to eat for her and she chose this amazing pork thing with meat so tender it fell off of the bone. Reminded me of barbecue from home! But dinner was just crazy and so filling and cheap! So great. After dinner, we hugged our new friend Zoey and said farewell to everyone else as we hopped into the car with her husband to go to the train. They were so amazing to let us check out 12 hours late free and to drive us back to the train so late!! :) They told us we have to try to visit every summer and hike Mount Olympus! We'll see how that goes, but I would love to go back there!!!!
Friday, October 9, 2009
O Athens...
A lovely Friday afternoon here in Athens! It has been a great week, but has, once again, flown by. Sleepy, I had classes Monday and had to work on a big paper, and as I was locking myself in the library, my roomie called telling me I was missing Cooking Class!!! Quickly I ran over to the kitchen! :) We made some crazy bean soup I loved, some weird eggplant dip i didn't like tooooo much, stellar roasted potatoes, and lemon chicken! Randomly, we had the same dish (not as good) for lunch the next day in our dining hall! Funny. But that was fun and afterwards I went back and kind of worked on my paper, and kind of chatted... the usual!
Tuesday was fun, beginning with a visit to the Agora for class. Embarrassingly enough, my roommate and I got lost-ish. We popped out of the National Gardens at a weird place and got turned around, so we took a 'short cut.' Anyway, I should know the Agora like whoa, seeing as though I dug there last summer, but anyway, we wandered through the maze of Plaka, which was super beautiful and fun, and were only a few minutes late to class.... After classes that day, I went back close to the Agora to the Acropolis Museum to meet up with a few people I met digging last summer! We wandered the first floor of the museum a minute and then went to the cafe, splitting some yummy dishes. We had some cheese w/ honey on it and some little melon balls, then some custard pie thing, Galactoboureko. So good!!! I got a piece from my local bakery too for my apartment when I'm craving sweets! Anyway, it was great to see them again and catch up some. I think later in the semester I'm going to go with them and visit another friend from the dig! Tuesday night was full of working on that paper! I finished the writing part, and was going to add photos in the morning. I hung out with my friend after we left the library a bit, complete with Fanta Blue and oregano potato chips. Yep, good night.
Wednesday, I got up and finished my paper. Our Byzantine class met at the Benaki Museum Photographic Archive! So cool!!!!! We saw photos from like 1870 and super old from Athens! It was so cool to see what some of the monuments and buildings looked like even 50 or 100 years ago. The city was so different!!!! We've been talking in our class lately about how Byzantine and Medieval monuments of the city were disregarded and often destroyed in the frenzy to get back to the Classical/Ancient Athens. It's kind of crazy! But the archive was really great to see. There were even pics from Meteora! That night, we also had a lecture about Crete. It was talking about some recent/ongoing excavations on East Crete. It was about the newer types of investigation and research methods on site, analyzing different types of food and purposes for rooms. It was cooler than I can explain!
Thursday rolled around and it was a pretty typical day school-wise. We met in the classroom for my Archaeology class, which was different, and we had a history lesson to begin our next section of classes. Thursday night a few of my friends and I ate Mac and Cheese (thanks to Stephanie for giving it to me!!), pigs in a blanket, pizza, and tangerine juice! So fun! They also surprised me with a super yummy piece of cake for a belated birthday gift! It was so cute and sweet! :) They're great! We also had a little ice cream cone frozen and dipped in white chocolate! yum.
This morning (Friday), we got up and went to extend our visas, since they expire before we leave Athens! So lame, but it was an interesting experience. The area was similar to the DMV. The building was insane and hectic, but we got pushed to a certain person to help us that knew our school, etc. and we got it taken care of. I had a scare when the lady was not going to take my forms since I had been to Serbia since the photocopy of my passport had been taken. But thankfully, I just had to run down the street and make a photocopy! :) After that, we explored around Syntagma and found a computer store for my friends to try to fix their computers. It had a sweet school supply store in it! It was so fun! I loved it! After that, we metro'd to Maroussi to go to the Dell store, only to find that we couldn't get help there, so we hopped over to a little pastry shop and got cookies and ice cream! We then bussed back for lunch and such.
As far as random thoughts go, I've had the urge to start playing guitar again... we'll see how my wrist holds up when I get home, but I think I'm going to play again. And I think I may want to start drawing again... just for fun. I'm no good, but I kind of enjoy it. Maybe!
Off to organize things for my midterms next week!!!
Love
Tuesday was fun, beginning with a visit to the Agora for class. Embarrassingly enough, my roommate and I got lost-ish. We popped out of the National Gardens at a weird place and got turned around, so we took a 'short cut.' Anyway, I should know the Agora like whoa, seeing as though I dug there last summer, but anyway, we wandered through the maze of Plaka, which was super beautiful and fun, and were only a few minutes late to class.... After classes that day, I went back close to the Agora to the Acropolis Museum to meet up with a few people I met digging last summer! We wandered the first floor of the museum a minute and then went to the cafe, splitting some yummy dishes. We had some cheese w/ honey on it and some little melon balls, then some custard pie thing, Galactoboureko. So good!!! I got a piece from my local bakery too for my apartment when I'm craving sweets! Anyway, it was great to see them again and catch up some. I think later in the semester I'm going to go with them and visit another friend from the dig! Tuesday night was full of working on that paper! I finished the writing part, and was going to add photos in the morning. I hung out with my friend after we left the library a bit, complete with Fanta Blue and oregano potato chips. Yep, good night.
Wednesday, I got up and finished my paper. Our Byzantine class met at the Benaki Museum Photographic Archive! So cool!!!!! We saw photos from like 1870 and super old from Athens! It was so cool to see what some of the monuments and buildings looked like even 50 or 100 years ago. The city was so different!!!! We've been talking in our class lately about how Byzantine and Medieval monuments of the city were disregarded and often destroyed in the frenzy to get back to the Classical/Ancient Athens. It's kind of crazy! But the archive was really great to see. There were even pics from Meteora! That night, we also had a lecture about Crete. It was talking about some recent/ongoing excavations on East Crete. It was about the newer types of investigation and research methods on site, analyzing different types of food and purposes for rooms. It was cooler than I can explain!
Thursday rolled around and it was a pretty typical day school-wise. We met in the classroom for my Archaeology class, which was different, and we had a history lesson to begin our next section of classes. Thursday night a few of my friends and I ate Mac and Cheese (thanks to Stephanie for giving it to me!!), pigs in a blanket, pizza, and tangerine juice! So fun! They also surprised me with a super yummy piece of cake for a belated birthday gift! It was so cute and sweet! :) They're great! We also had a little ice cream cone frozen and dipped in white chocolate! yum.
This morning (Friday), we got up and went to extend our visas, since they expire before we leave Athens! So lame, but it was an interesting experience. The area was similar to the DMV. The building was insane and hectic, but we got pushed to a certain person to help us that knew our school, etc. and we got it taken care of. I had a scare when the lady was not going to take my forms since I had been to Serbia since the photocopy of my passport had been taken. But thankfully, I just had to run down the street and make a photocopy! :) After that, we explored around Syntagma and found a computer store for my friends to try to fix their computers. It had a sweet school supply store in it! It was so fun! I loved it! After that, we metro'd to Maroussi to go to the Dell store, only to find that we couldn't get help there, so we hopped over to a little pastry shop and got cookies and ice cream! We then bussed back for lunch and such.
As far as random thoughts go, I've had the urge to start playing guitar again... we'll see how my wrist holds up when I get home, but I think I'm going to play again. And I think I may want to start drawing again... just for fun. I'm no good, but I kind of enjoy it. Maybe!
Off to organize things for my midterms next week!!!
Love
Monday, October 5, 2009
Serbia?!
I made it to Serbia, obviously!
Thursday afternoon I walked to Syntagma and hopped on the bus and headed to the airport. I got there with a perfect amount of time to get my boarding pass and get through security and wait at my gate. It worked out well since we left on time and got in to Belgrade early! Praise God! On the plane, it was not crowded and I had my 2 seat area to myself, which was stellar. And, we got a little dinner and dessert! The flight was quick and we got there in no time. Walking around in the airport, I didn’t think my friend Neal would be there yet, but he was and my dad was too! It was great to see both of them for sure! We drove back about 3 hours to their town, picking up McDonald’s on the way! It was great to have that time to chat and catch up. We got to town and we visited the rest of the family, but then headed over to Mirela’s to get ready for bed. She’s so sweet to be letting me stay there and she gave me everything I need. I even got to use the internet, which I didn’t expect, so that was great. We chatted for a while, but then headed to bed.
Friday was my birthday! 21! So I woke up and Mirela made me French toast! Yum yum! She said I may not think it is good since it is not sweet and like our French toast. But it was great. We had tons of things to put on top of it, chocolate, jam, cheese, meat, everything! And I had this yummy yogurt! It is yogurt, but it is pourable. So good! I don’t think we have it in Greece, but I’m going to look for sure! Then we walked to the police station to register me as a visitor and where I was staying. Then we walked through town and went to the house of the family I know here! It was great to see them! We saw the men (Dad, Neal, Dennis, and a few of their friend) chopping wood and helping out a neighbor. Then, we relaxed upstairs, visited with friends, and had a nice time with lunch and a cake! So good! We did a lot more relaxing and visiting as the day went on and after having friends over for some time together, we went over to where I was staying with Mirela and had another cake and more visiting! A very fun day, full of relaxing and cake and friends. I do have to say that it is so weird to hear another language than Greek now! I’m getting used to being around a foreign language and now it’s different again! So weird! Anyway, I got online and talked a bit and headed to bed.
Saturday, I woke up and had breakfast with Mirela again! She makes such good food. She made hotdogs cut up with eggs and cheese. Don’t judge, it’s super good! We also had some more yogurt and bread! Later on, I took a taxi to the family’s house and visited with them a bit, then we walked about an hour or so to visit with my new Serbian grandmother! She is the sweetest thing! It’s cool because she knows my dad, and knows my sister, and now she knows me! She fed us tons and tons of food! So sweet and yummy! So we spent time talking to her, even though she speaks no English. My friend Stephanie translated for us, which was great, and we just enjoyed some down time eating lovely food! (Seeing a trend for my trip here?...) Afterwards, we relaxed and while the men chopped more wood, finishing up what the rain had interrupted, and I relaxed at my Stephanie’s house and enjoyed some time to relax and chat, once again! Later, we had dinner at their neighbor’s house! We had great pizza with mushrooms and ham! Sooo good! That lasted late into the night as we chatted and ate! Pizza after pizza came out, and we kept eating! We also watched American Football!!! Exciting, I know! I was insanely excited about it and was super into it! We watched the Michigan State/Michigan game! It was a great game! I kept getting all worked up over it and gasped and everything! Our host was so surprised that I liked it, which was hilarious, and I told her that I recently had started to enjoy it! I guess that’s Nick’s fault! Anyway, afterwards we all went back to bed and got ready for some of our last day!
Sunday I was getting used to waking up and having Mirela make me coffee and breakfast! I’m spoiled! We had French toast again, by my choice, and it was just as yummy as the first time! We got a lot of time to talk and get to know each other better, just before my ride came to get me and bring me to their place for time together! Friends of Neal and Stephanie had friends and family to visit, so all of us got together and chatted for a while in the morning and had coffee. I could get used to this European thing of lots of chatting/coffee!!!! What a shock I’ll have when I come home! Anyway, after many of us parted ways, we hopped in the van to get some yummy Serbian burgers and head to Belgrade! We were doing some sightseeing and having some quality time together before I was set to fly out in the evening and Dad and Dennis were going to fly in the morning! So, after quite a drive, full of fun singing and goofing around, as well as laughing at the ‘old men’ falling asleep every five minutes, we made it to the city! We may or may not have gotten lost, and I may or may not have found where we were heading, but regardless, I got to see the city and enjoy even more time together with friends and family! Can’t have too much of that! …? We walked up a nice street and visited lots of little street vendors, finishing up with some wandering around what I think was called Kalemegdan. It was pretty cool and had an absolutely gorgeous view overlooking a couple of rivers. We had to rush a bit to get me to the airport in time, only for me to realize that our flight was delayed a half hour or so. Woohoo airports. It was really hard to leave my friends and family after seeing them these mere three days. I cried a little! It was so great seeing friends from home and Dad, and I’m really glad I got to visit them, and make great new friends!!! I can’t wait to see all of them again!
Getting back into Athens around midnight, I hopped on the bus to head to Syntagma, but the bus stopped at Evangelismos! I guess Syntagma was crazy for Elections!!! Anyway, I taxi'd home and slept!
Thursday afternoon I walked to Syntagma and hopped on the bus and headed to the airport. I got there with a perfect amount of time to get my boarding pass and get through security and wait at my gate. It worked out well since we left on time and got in to Belgrade early! Praise God! On the plane, it was not crowded and I had my 2 seat area to myself, which was stellar. And, we got a little dinner and dessert! The flight was quick and we got there in no time. Walking around in the airport, I didn’t think my friend Neal would be there yet, but he was and my dad was too! It was great to see both of them for sure! We drove back about 3 hours to their town, picking up McDonald’s on the way! It was great to have that time to chat and catch up. We got to town and we visited the rest of the family, but then headed over to Mirela’s to get ready for bed. She’s so sweet to be letting me stay there and she gave me everything I need. I even got to use the internet, which I didn’t expect, so that was great. We chatted for a while, but then headed to bed.
Friday was my birthday! 21! So I woke up and Mirela made me French toast! Yum yum! She said I may not think it is good since it is not sweet and like our French toast. But it was great. We had tons of things to put on top of it, chocolate, jam, cheese, meat, everything! And I had this yummy yogurt! It is yogurt, but it is pourable. So good! I don’t think we have it in Greece, but I’m going to look for sure! Then we walked to the police station to register me as a visitor and where I was staying. Then we walked through town and went to the house of the family I know here! It was great to see them! We saw the men (Dad, Neal, Dennis, and a few of their friend) chopping wood and helping out a neighbor. Then, we relaxed upstairs, visited with friends, and had a nice time with lunch and a cake! So good! We did a lot more relaxing and visiting as the day went on and after having friends over for some time together, we went over to where I was staying with Mirela and had another cake and more visiting! A very fun day, full of relaxing and cake and friends. I do have to say that it is so weird to hear another language than Greek now! I’m getting used to being around a foreign language and now it’s different again! So weird! Anyway, I got online and talked a bit and headed to bed.
Saturday, I woke up and had breakfast with Mirela again! She makes such good food. She made hotdogs cut up with eggs and cheese. Don’t judge, it’s super good! We also had some more yogurt and bread! Later on, I took a taxi to the family’s house and visited with them a bit, then we walked about an hour or so to visit with my new Serbian grandmother! She is the sweetest thing! It’s cool because she knows my dad, and knows my sister, and now she knows me! She fed us tons and tons of food! So sweet and yummy! So we spent time talking to her, even though she speaks no English. My friend Stephanie translated for us, which was great, and we just enjoyed some down time eating lovely food! (Seeing a trend for my trip here?...) Afterwards, we relaxed and while the men chopped more wood, finishing up what the rain had interrupted, and I relaxed at my Stephanie’s house and enjoyed some time to relax and chat, once again! Later, we had dinner at their neighbor’s house! We had great pizza with mushrooms and ham! Sooo good! That lasted late into the night as we chatted and ate! Pizza after pizza came out, and we kept eating! We also watched American Football!!! Exciting, I know! I was insanely excited about it and was super into it! We watched the Michigan State/Michigan game! It was a great game! I kept getting all worked up over it and gasped and everything! Our host was so surprised that I liked it, which was hilarious, and I told her that I recently had started to enjoy it! I guess that’s Nick’s fault! Anyway, afterwards we all went back to bed and got ready for some of our last day!
Sunday I was getting used to waking up and having Mirela make me coffee and breakfast! I’m spoiled! We had French toast again, by my choice, and it was just as yummy as the first time! We got a lot of time to talk and get to know each other better, just before my ride came to get me and bring me to their place for time together! Friends of Neal and Stephanie had friends and family to visit, so all of us got together and chatted for a while in the morning and had coffee. I could get used to this European thing of lots of chatting/coffee!!!! What a shock I’ll have when I come home! Anyway, after many of us parted ways, we hopped in the van to get some yummy Serbian burgers and head to Belgrade! We were doing some sightseeing and having some quality time together before I was set to fly out in the evening and Dad and Dennis were going to fly in the morning! So, after quite a drive, full of fun singing and goofing around, as well as laughing at the ‘old men’ falling asleep every five minutes, we made it to the city! We may or may not have gotten lost, and I may or may not have found where we were heading, but regardless, I got to see the city and enjoy even more time together with friends and family! Can’t have too much of that! …? We walked up a nice street and visited lots of little street vendors, finishing up with some wandering around what I think was called Kalemegdan. It was pretty cool and had an absolutely gorgeous view overlooking a couple of rivers. We had to rush a bit to get me to the airport in time, only for me to realize that our flight was delayed a half hour or so. Woohoo airports. It was really hard to leave my friends and family after seeing them these mere three days. I cried a little! It was so great seeing friends from home and Dad, and I’m really glad I got to visit them, and make great new friends!!! I can’t wait to see all of them again!
Getting back into Athens around midnight, I hopped on the bus to head to Syntagma, but the bus stopped at Evangelismos! I guess Syntagma was crazy for Elections!!! Anyway, I taxi'd home and slept!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Life post-Crete
After Crete, this week has been soooo hard to get back into the groove of classes. It is crazy that I was gone all last week and am travelling again this weekend from Thursday night to Sunday night! Anyway, the weekend after Crete was great! I got some, not enough, homework done, and met new friends! I met up with a guy my friends in Serbia met on a visit to Greece for coffee in Syntagma on Saturday afternoon. It was great! He brought a friend who had recently come into town as well. It was great to talk to new people for sure! Other than that, I did a lot of relaxing and talking on Skype! Sunday, I went to church with my new friends, which was great! Great to be in a church again, although it was in all Greek! I wore headphones transmitting an English translation, which was somewhat strange, but great! But, I did sing the hymns in Greek as I read along in the hymnal. I was pretty proud of myself! I even understood a few words! It was great to be around almost all Greeks and experience a bit of what some church looks like in Greece, although the church I visited was not Greek Orthodox, which is what the vast majority of Christians in the city practice. The message was definitely encouraging and I enjoyed it a lot. The message was good, but I was a bit confused since the translation was choppy at times. It was from Galatians 6:7-10. Overall, it was about how goodness and morality must be based in God and nothing else. In addition, he spoke on how we reap what we sow, whether that is good or bad! He was encouraging the listeners to show mercy and love to all and sow seeds of goodness since God is good and exists. He also made a point which I found it good to hear, saying that we are all fruits of another’s seed sown. I guess I don’t think of that so often! Like, I’m where I am and believe what I believe today because someone sowed goodness and the message of God’s love in me. A good thing to remember, and quite an encouragement as well! I’ll probably go back there when I am actually in Athens for a weekend! The rest of the day was relaxing and uneventful. On the way back from church, which was almost a half hour away, I stopped off at the Temple of Olympian Zeus and journaled a bit. It was just such a beautiful day and that temple is so incredible! Afterwards, I started working on a paper and did some homework! The usual these days.
Monday, I had classes and such, and had a heck of a time getting used to being back in school! Ugh! This is the first week I’ve really felt like a student here! It’s strange! I thought I was on vacation!!! The sad thing is, I’m only kind of joking…. My Byzantine class was sort of funny because my professor just went over our research papers and what he actually wanted from them. The issue most of us are finding is that we either don’t know enough about Byzantine history to write a 10 page research paper, or that all of our sources are in a different language than we understand! I’m sure we’ll figure it out. My paper is on Meteora, that beautiful monastery community I visited a few weeks ago. I also had a Modern Greek test and a pretty rough day of Ancient Greek! Such is life when you take two language classes simultaneously! Anyway, that night I did some grocery shopping and ate some dinner and did some homework.
Tuesday, I had class at the Acropolis! I still think it’s crazy that that is absolutely normal in my mind right now! We studied the remains of and evidence of the Archaic Acropolis. We discussed the various temples that would have been standing at that time and some of the archaeological difficulties trying to precisely locate such temples based on written/literature evidence but not much physical. It’s interesting because the Greeks would take down temples and buildings and re-use their building materials for the next structure. They would even re-use foundations. So we don’t even know what is underneath the now Parthenon, since we can’t take it apart and look underneath it! Only theories I guess. After that, I had lunch and met up with the man in charge of the Hellenic Foundation here in Athens. Some students and I are going to be volunteering there! I'll fill you in on details later on about what we'll be doing.
Wednesday, was pretty typical with classes and everything, except we had a pretty cool lecture at night! The lecture was by John Psaropoulos and was called, 'Can Greece Elect a Better Government Than it Deserves?' This was really interesting, especially since the elections here in Greece will be happening this weekend! He spoke about the current situation of Greece and gave us an idea of the country's place in the EU and Europe.
Thursday morning and day I tried to work out all my crazy flight plans about Serbia and go to classes. My archaeology class met at the Acropolis museum! I finally got my flight information figured out when a super helpful staff worker at school called the airline for me since I kept being put on hold! She said my flight as still on and I should go! So after lunch, enjoying a pastry with my coffee, and Modern Greek, I headed back to get ready for my flight.
I’ll write later about the Serbia trip as a whole! Love!
Monday, I had classes and such, and had a heck of a time getting used to being back in school! Ugh! This is the first week I’ve really felt like a student here! It’s strange! I thought I was on vacation!!! The sad thing is, I’m only kind of joking…. My Byzantine class was sort of funny because my professor just went over our research papers and what he actually wanted from them. The issue most of us are finding is that we either don’t know enough about Byzantine history to write a 10 page research paper, or that all of our sources are in a different language than we understand! I’m sure we’ll figure it out. My paper is on Meteora, that beautiful monastery community I visited a few weeks ago. I also had a Modern Greek test and a pretty rough day of Ancient Greek! Such is life when you take two language classes simultaneously! Anyway, that night I did some grocery shopping and ate some dinner and did some homework.
Tuesday, I had class at the Acropolis! I still think it’s crazy that that is absolutely normal in my mind right now! We studied the remains of and evidence of the Archaic Acropolis. We discussed the various temples that would have been standing at that time and some of the archaeological difficulties trying to precisely locate such temples based on written/literature evidence but not much physical. It’s interesting because the Greeks would take down temples and buildings and re-use their building materials for the next structure. They would even re-use foundations. So we don’t even know what is underneath the now Parthenon, since we can’t take it apart and look underneath it! Only theories I guess. After that, I had lunch and met up with the man in charge of the Hellenic Foundation here in Athens. Some students and I are going to be volunteering there! I'll fill you in on details later on about what we'll be doing.
Wednesday, was pretty typical with classes and everything, except we had a pretty cool lecture at night! The lecture was by John Psaropoulos and was called, 'Can Greece Elect a Better Government Than it Deserves?' This was really interesting, especially since the elections here in Greece will be happening this weekend! He spoke about the current situation of Greece and gave us an idea of the country's place in the EU and Europe.
Thursday morning and day I tried to work out all my crazy flight plans about Serbia and go to classes. My archaeology class met at the Acropolis museum! I finally got my flight information figured out when a super helpful staff worker at school called the airline for me since I kept being put on hold! She said my flight as still on and I should go! So after lunch, enjoying a pastry with my coffee, and Modern Greek, I headed back to get ready for my flight.
I’ll write later about the Serbia trip as a whole! Love!
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