All Over Athens and Beyond!

After a long week of classes and the Delphi trip and the Marathon, Monday was a bit long, but a pretty good day! We found out that cooking classes had been indefinitely cancelled due to some personal stuff going on with our instructor, which is sad!

Tuesday began with an on-site visit to the South Slope of the Acropolis and the Theater of Dionysus there. That was a pretty interesting class and I had no idea so much stuff was down there! It was interesting to see more of what was found along the edges of the Acropolis, especially since everyone’s attention upon visiting Athens is the Acropolis! Before entering the site, we first visited the Lysikrates Monument, where I also happened to step in dog poop for the first time here! Ugh! Anyway, the Lysikrates Monument is a choragic monument that was set up by the choregos. The choregos was the sort of director of an ancient theater production and the one that won the competition in during the Festival of Dionysus got to set up a monument. The Lysikrates Monument is the best preserved one we can see today. It is well preserved today because for a time, it was incorporated into a nunnery. After checking that out for a few minutes, and cleaning my shoe, we went to the site. We saw the Odeon of Pericles, which is said to be shaped like the tent of Xerxes with a pyramidal roof. We saw the remains of the Sanctuary of Dionysus Eleftherios, or Dionysus Freedom-giver. Next, we came to the Theater of Dionysus, where the plays were performed during the Festival. We also saw the Stoa of Eumenes and Sanctuary of Asclepius in Athens. We also talked about and saw the Odeon of Herodeus Atticus before we left the area. I felt like we saw so much in a mere hour and a half!

I rushed from the site to the metro station to get to Syntagma for my tour of Parliament. This was pretty cool too! We got to go inside of the Parliament building that I have taken so many photos of! We got to be in and have a talk about the history of the heart of the Greek government as it is today. It was crazy to hear about the modern government of Greece, seeing as though I have learned over and over about the ancient history! After that, I went back to school to get ready for my Modern Greek test. We had our test early and then as a class went out to a café to practice our Greek and relax some! That was great to get away from school and visit with people I don’t get to hang out with much.

Wednesday was busy too! I had classes all day and after my last one I ran to Syntagma to meet some friends from the dig last year. We were going to visit another digger who had a baby! So we hopped on a bus for a while and ended up in some random place and walked to her house! It was so fun to see her and spend time with non-students! Her baby was so precious and her husband was very sweet! It was a really nice visit and a nice change of pace!

Thursday we met for class to walk up Philopappos Hill at 8 am. Sooo early! But it was a nice morning and the hike was okay! We talked about the monument on top of the hill, which is actually for a guy that wasn’t that important but was really rich! Our teacher also made us brownies (the best I’ve had in so long) to reward us for being awake and on such a crazy hill that early in the morning! After that, we walked down to the Pnyx, which is where the Assembly of Athens met! It was pretty cool to be on the area where the real source of government in ancient Athens was based. The area is actually kind of confusing as far as dating and getting all of the phases straight, but it is very interesting! That evening my roommate and I hung out with some of the girls upstairs in our apartment (fellow students).

Friday was lazy and great! I slept in and laid around until noon almost! It was incredible! I met up with some friends for lunch and ended up going to Athens’ First Cemetery with my friend Melissa. It was beautiful as far as the sculpture and adornment of the graves. The weather was also beautiful, and something about knowing I had no actual obligations to fulfill made it all the more lovely! Walking around the cemetery was great, giving me and my friend time to catch up and chat. The rest of the day was good relaxing and talking to friends from home online! I turned in early for the night because I had an early meeting with some people to go Olive Picking!!!

Saturday was AMAZING! It was one of the best days I had in Greece for sure. I went olive picking with four other girls from school at the grove (is that what you call a field of olives?!) of a family! It was so fun. We hopped on a bus with random people at 8 am and were hoping for the best! Their land was about an hour and a half away, close to the island Euboea! We arrived and they instantly made us coffee and gave us treats and breakfast and wine! They were so sweet and generous! The grandmother was so fun and sweet, always working and always joking around! We also met one of the younger girls in the family and she had a really cute two month old puppy that we absolutely loved, Sonia! After sitting around and enjoying yummy homemade wine and treats, we checked out the yard, saw chickens, and headed down the way to the olives! We got there and met a bunch of people and got to work. They laid out some nets to catch the olives and put little rakes in our hands and set us to work! It was so fun!!!! I’m sure it would get grueling after a while, but we had so much fun! We would work for a while, and then everyone would take a break and drink or eat treats. We ate some tiganites, which were fried yummies. After that, we went back to work and took a water break shortly after. After that, we worked a little while longer and stopped for lunch! Working was really fun though. It was also cool to experience a bit of Greek culture that you usually don’t see. We actually helped pick olives! It’s so cool! We stopped at a huge maple tree and ate tangerines for a while before lunch. Finally moseying back to the house we had the biggest lunch I’ve had in Greece!!! The table was set with all kinds of meat and potatoes and olives and cheese and bread and tzatziki and wine! Everyone sat around eating and laughing and relaxing after working a while. It was so relaxing. Even though I could barely understand what was being said (sometimes), I was laughing and having a great time. I love the idea of just relaxing at meals and enjoying company with family and friends. I hate how meals are always so rushed at home and something to get done, not an event in themselves, except for big holidays! Anyway, after a long and fun lunch and many hugs of goodbye, we hopped back in our bus and went to the place where they make the olive oil! I love olive oil, so I was pretty psyched! We drove up and it instantly smelled so olive-y! We looked at how the olives enter and are cleaned and smashed and are miraculously transformed into olive oil! Stepping in the building we were overwhelmed with the smell of olives! There was so much intense machinery in there! As we were looking around, our friend began filling up big bottles full of the oil for each of us! It was so sweet! He said that it was very good quality and extra virgin olive oil! Mmmmmm! I can’t wait to try it! After that, there were more hugs and goodbyes and we hopped on the bus to go back to Athens. It was an amazing day and so great to be with a family and experience a nice Greek day!

Sunday, I joined another class’ little field trip on a Wall Walk around Athens. We walked all over the city for three hours!!! It was pretty cool. We began in Kerameikos, the ancient cemetery of Athens, and made a circuit around the city of where the ancient walls would have been. We saw parts of the wall in random areas, like under parking garages and in hotels! It was pretty cool to hear about the evolution of the walls and even to hear about how the modern city came about in ways corresponding to where the walls were. It was a lot of walking, but it was a great time. The worst thing was that me and one other girl from the group had just been to two of the sites on Thursday for class and were dreading climbing Philopappos Hill again! We survived! After the wall walk, Chanel and I wandered around Syntagma area and did some window shopping and headed back to school to do homework!