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!