Adventures In Greece

Being home has been a little strange. At first it was unreal. It was strange to be in my own house, my own room, to see my family.

The first night home I met my sisters boyfriend. It was a bit strange to be meeting someone new while still a bit confused about being home.

I saw my sister in Law who is 7 months pregnant. Last time I saw her she was skinny leanne and now she is pregnant leanne. I didn’t get to see her growing, so it was so strange to think there was a big baby in there. She’s beautiful pregnant though. Ah I’m so excited for the baby.

Saturday we had dinner at my dads. We were supposed to have lunch or maybe a late lunch but we kept snacking to the point that we weren’t very hungry and it was getting to be later and later. I ended up falling asleep on the couch for a time, trying to recover from my cold. Eventually we had some delicious salmon, asparagus and potatoes. Yum yum!! I’d been dreaming about that meal in Greece.

I gave them all their presents which they loved, atleast I think they did ;). And Leanne and Eve and I now have matching bracelets, Yay.

On Sunday my mom and sister and I went to the Zoo in Tacoma. I’d never been beofore, it was a pretty small zoo. We got to see the baby snow leopards. They were SO cute!

We ended the day at Duke’s chowder house. I had fish tacos and some cajun chicken chowder. It was delcious.

And after that exciting weekend I’ve been sitting on my butt. It’s been hard. I’ve been sleeping in and reading some, but not a lot. It’s hard when I don’t have a job or any money. I applied for a few jobs and I’ve been looking at volunteer opportunities because I am SOOOO bored. It’s hard to go from traveling Europe for 3 months to sitting at home with nothing to do.

I guess I expected to be more busy when I got home, to be more active, to constantly be around my family, but it just hasn’t been possible. Hopefully things will change here soon.

I’m beginning to get this ‘opposite of homesick’ thing.

Well it’s actually been about a week since I’ve been in New york but I’ll recap my last few days there.

Andrew and I ended up doing a lot of walking around. Luckily we got to sleep in though, which was the first time in a long time.

The first day we went to the Natural History Museum. I was a bit upset because the front of the building was covered in scaffolding and stuff which meant it didn’t look like ‘night at the Musum’. We walked  in and the T-rex was not in the entry. They  don’t make it easy to relive that museum, I’ll tell you that.They try and suggest a $16 entry fee but Andrew and I agreed on a $5 entry fee.  

Of course we saw a bunch of the stuffed animals first from Africa. It’s so strange that they stuffed all those poor animals, like, did they kill them for the museum or did they die of nature causes. I hope it’s the later. They were all pretty cool, regardless.

We went downstairs to find the poisinous frog exhibit, but it was an extra $20 each. We ended up walking through the human evolution hall. Andrew told me I had  to name two of the human ancestors. Once I’d named two, and we had proved I was right, Andrew told me he wasn’t impressed I only knew two. What a critic.

After the human evolution exhibit, we walked through the aestroid and gem exhibit. The gem exhibit was pretty cool. It’s amazing how many different colors there are, even within the same type of rock.

Then, before we starved to death, we headed up to the dinosaur  exhibit. Of course that was awesome and we ended up finding the T-Rex.

After the museum, we headed to a sandwhich place, lenny’s or something like that. They had a million sandwhich options, I ended up getting a really boring sandwhich because I couldn’t remember all the ingredients they had.

After the museum we headed to the library. They had an exhibit of a lot of their most precious or interesting items. This included the Gutenberg Bible, and my favorite, a letter between Groucho and Harpo Marx. Awesome!   

The second day we started with some delicious Dim Sum. I haven’t been in forever! I barely remember going when I was younger. Thank god Andrew was there for me because I couldn’t understand them sometimes. Their accents were very strong. The food was awesome though.

After that, we did a lot of walking and wandering. We walked past wall street and the water and the Ferries, city hall, and all over the place. The best part was, I got my ‘I <3 New York’ shirt. hahah.

That night we went out to Sushi. Andrew and I had some of the Saki because I’d never tried it before. It tasted like sombody mixed dry wine and vodka. Not my favorite. The sushi was delicious though.

After sushi we went to the delicious bakery after and I got some cheescake. YUM!!!

My last day there we went to the Met. Andrew wanted me to see the McQueen exhibit. He was a fashion designer with a very unique and dark vision. We had to wait about 15 minutes in line and then the exhibit was a bit packed. It was all very dark with strange music and all of the manequins had dominatrix masks on. The clothings was scary by it’s self. It was definitely an interesting exhibit.

We walked around the museum a bit more after the exhibit and saw some paintings and such.

We walked around Central park a bit and then headed back to the apartment. I passed out on the couch because I had caught a cold. Of course, a nice welcome back gift from the US.

That night we went to a little cafe near by. The atmoshpere was very comfortable, college, coffee shop. They had a lot of really cool decorations. I got a delicious sandwich.

After the cafe we went to a treat shop where they sell ice cream flavored like the milk from the bottom of a cereal bowl. It was so strange, it tasted exactly like that. I’m still not that sure how I feel about it.

That night Andrew and Rebecca stayed up incredibly late packing for Japan. I caught a taxi cab at 5am and headed for the airport.

Eve greeted me at the aiport driving around like a dummy in the parking lot because she couldn’t find a spot. Welcome home! hahaha

I arrived in New York on Friday evening. There was this video at customs that was showing famous sites from the US and sort of cliché beautiful elements of America, like cowboys and ranches. One of the scenes showed the fish market at Pike place where they throw the fishes, and I recognized the guys in the video. I was tearing up I was so happy to be home. I guess I’m kind of an emotional person, well I know I’m an emotional person, but man oh man, I missed the US.

I caught a cab to my brother’s, Andrew’s, apartment. I arrived, said hello to Andrew and his girlfriend Rebecca, threw some clothes in my backpack for the weekend, and shoved some delicious sushi down my throat, and then we headed out the door.

We literally ran to grab a taxi and then ran to the train to go to long Island. The train sucked, mostly because I was done with traveling, and it was crowded. It took 3 and half hours to get to long island.

We shared a van taxi with an older gentleman and 5 drunken individuals to our hotel. Thankfully we were located out of town at a quiet club and Marina, the Montauk club and marina. The room was old but the beds were good, including my lovely cot and we all passed out.

The next morning I woke up a bit early and lay there for a bit before getting up for a shower. Then we headed to our complimentary breakfast. They had fruit and cereal and yogurt and juice.  We all ate, a bit unsatisfied and then we found out they had a hot plate menu so I got a few eggs and toast. Yum!

We threw on our bathing suits and some sun screen and grabbed a cab to the beach. The beach was pretty crowded, lots of people with umbrellas and coolers, and a lot of young people playing drinking games and such. I just kept thinking of Jersey shores.

We lay around a lot and Andrew and I went for a swim and a walk. The water was frigid and Andrew kept insisting I would get used to it but I think I just became numb. Hahaha, I guess you can call that getting used to it.

Then we walked around town a bit, stopped into a few of the little shops, and then ate lunch at a small restaurant. They had a back terrace with a ping pong table. Andrew and I played for a bit until he smacked the ball over the fence. The food was great.

Then we walked around a bit before catching a cab to Gausmans dock. It was a small little area next to a larger marina with matching buildings with a few small shops and a couple restaurants. There were a lot of signs about keeping children under control. It was a bit strange.

We ended up eating at one of the resteraunts. I had some sushi and some clam chowder. We sat outside along the water and watched as people with no brains fed the seagulls from their tables. We waited around for the fireworks that night only to realize they were out of site so we payed our check and ran to see them.

Turns out the fireworks display was a private display on a yacht that some rich guy had for him and his friends. Everybody in town heard about it though and showed up on the beach to watch. It was pretty cool. There were some fancy smiley face and star fireworks which I had yet to see. Unfortunately once the fireworks were over, everyone in Montauk was looking for a taxi so we had to wait a while to get one.

The taxi we did end up getting was the Surf Taxi Company. The guy showed up in an old school van with nice big seats, the weird Christmas like lights bordering the ceiling, and a woman up front with him. Immediately his 2 cells were ringing off the hook. We soon learned one phone was the taxi services number and the other was his cell he used to talk to his other taxi drivers. He would collect a list of 25 people at a time and then call his taxi drivers to pass off passengers. It was absolutely psychotic. I was ready to throw those cells out the window. Those poor people. Such a strange system.

The second day I woke up early again and showered. We had breakfast but the weather wasn’t looking too good. We weren’t sure what to do so we decided to hang out at the club. Andrew was watching the final match of Wimbledon and Rebecca and I went over by the pool. It was still pretty hot though the sun was covered by a layer of clouds. I fell asleep for a while.

After a while Andrew left to play tennis at a local club. Rebecca and I decided to pay to join in on the club bbq they were having. It was a day early but it sounds like a lot of Fourth of July stuff happened on Sunday this year rather than on the fourth. They had a bunch of meat and salads and delicious desserts. It was a pretty expensive purchase but I think worth it. Unfortunately it started raining and Rebecca and I were happy we’d grabbed a table covered from the rain. We sat around for about an hour or so and then went back to the hotel room where Andrew showed up just a bit later.

That night we went to a Mexican restaurant and bar. It was a pretty cool place, kind of in the middle of nowhere. The space was really open and a bit psychotic but we managed to get a table and grab some drinks while we waited for the food. I had some Flautas that were pretty good and we sat for a bit just having drinks. It was a lot of fun. That and I’d been dreaming about Mexican food in Greece.

The next day we went to a beach for a couple of hours and then headed to our sail boat lesson/ride. Our captain’s name was Damian and he was a really laid back funny guy from Trinidad. He showed us how to rig the sails and told us a million names for the parts of the boat, haha, it was a lot of information. Fortunately, he knew this, and didn’t expect a lot of it to stick.

We all had our chance to steer the boat, trying to “make the boat happy” and keep it in the wind at an optimal angle. We had to mess around with the ropes some and do some crazy thing when turning the boat and I can’t remember any of the names, but it was fun, though I sucked at it.

After the boat ride we grabbed some food at the nearby restaurant. I had some bbq which was pretty good.

Then we headed to the train station with our stuff and played card games most of the way back. We looked up the rules for ‘go fish’ which I must mention are probably different than you remember playing when you were 7. It was a very fun and interesting game.

We all passed out for the night, Rebecca and Andrew in their room, and me on an air mattress. Andrew and I discussed it and between drum corp, field school, and all the other random times, I’ve spent a considerable time sleeping on air mattresses. J

A few more amazing days in New York to go and then I head home for the final trip of my adventure, ‘re-entry shock’!

Well my time in France flew by so quickly. Maybe because of the immense amount of walking, or because of the several food comas, but I miss it.

The second day I was in France we decided to go for a bike ride. It was a Saturday and we rented the bikes from a bike shop. Well not really a bike shop, it was an antique/pawn shop that happened to rent out bikes. Who would have guessed?

We decided we would take the Cezanne trail which passed through the landscapes that appear in and influenced many of Cezanne’s paintings. One of those landscape features happened to be a large limestone mountain. We knew we would bike past it … unfortunately we didn’t realize we’d bike a good ways up it.

It was definitely a test of my strength and endurance, which apparently at the moment I have none, and how much self motivation, of which I have a lot. In the end we biked most of the uphill, I think I may have stopped to walk once or twice. At the very top we stopped at a winery hahaha, granted the rode only goes up about half of the mountain so we still weren’t at the top, thank god.

The woman at the winery was older and kind of a beezy. I couldn’t speak any French, Andrew our friend spoke a decent amount, but Christy was by far the best speaker. She tried to hold a conversation with the woman though if I remember correctly she did speak some English. Christy innocently asked if the rose wine southern France is famous for was a mix of red and white wine. The woman almost had a heart attack and Andrew and I couldn’t stop laughing, not because of the question, but because of the response. She then explained it was red grapes without the skins. I didn’t know that. I think she was down with us after that. Hahaha I did find out I like dry fruity wines, rose and white most, not red!

Then we biked a bit down the mountain, which was amazing and stopped in a little town there. We stayed for lunch/dinner. It was about 3 o’clock at that point.  It took us about 3 and half hours to reach the town. I had some salmon with a glaze and rice. I ate all of it, and then we got dessert and chugged a bunch of water. I think I was dehydrated that entire day.

We talked to the waiter about the best way to go back to aix en provence. The trail had us taking a huge loop along a highway which we told was dangerous. We were also told we’d already passed most of the wineries and sites so the highway was really just so we didn’t have to backtrack but it was the better way to go. We decided to do as they suggested and back track the way we came which meant back up the bit of mountain we’d biked back …

It was a bit brutal. Christy and I were tired and Andrew was powering through. We made it to another winery and decided to stop. For me, all I really wanted was to stop, not wine, but it gave us an excuse. The woman at the winery was much nicer than the one at the first. She explained a lot of the process which Christy than translated for me. It was really interesting and my knowledge about wine went from about nothing to decent. I bought a bottle of wine that was pretty good. Then it was back to the bikes.

We stopped several times, mostly because my asthma was for once, noticeably holding me back to the point of frustration. We finally made it to the top and then the most amazing thing happened, the entire stretch back to town was downhill. We hadn’t noticed it on the way there. I mean, it had obviously been a lot of uphill and a lot of broken hope that after the bend would be downhill, but we hadn’t realized exactly how much of it had been uphill. It was an intense day of biking.

We made it back and made a big dinner with a chocolate lava cake and ice cream desert.

The next day because we are crazy, we decided to hike the mountain. We left close to noon which meant we were hiking in the heat of the day. Strange I know.

We had decided to take the intermediate trail. Unfortunately we didn’t realize how radically different the scale was in comparison to most US hiking scales. We were going steeply uphill the entire hike. Andrew later mentioned that the map said you needed a rope next to the difficult trails, which may have been a sign of how hard the intermediate trail would be. Hahaha, we stopped frequently for water, looked at the view a lot, and just kept heading up.

At the very top was an old monastery. We sat for a bit taking pictures, ate a snack, and enjoyed the shade and the rest.

The way down was a lot quicker, but because it had been a steep rocky trip to the top, the trip down was a bit hazardous. Andrew and I kept skiing down on our shoes as we slipped and Christy resorted to the sitting down tactic. It was definitely interesting.

The next couple of days I was on my own. The first day I decided to do a walking tour of the city that my guide book had. Unfortunately the map and directions were absolutely awful (that’s right I’m calling you out Michelin guide book). I did manage to figure things out, mostly from blindly stumbling around. The city had some very pretty architecture.

The second day I slept in a bit and then headed to the museum. I saw some Picasso, some Manet, and some older large paintings that belonged in a castle or some other grand building. It was pretty interesting. There was also an opera concert that night on the main boulevard. We grabbed a seat at the café and had some wine and dessert while we listened. We mostly chatted though as we couldn’t hear that well over everybody in the café, but it was still a magical experience.

My last day in Southern France Christy and I headed to Marseille. We didn’t plan much besides looking through my guide book and online for attractions. We ate as soon as we got in because it was a little after noon. It was pretty delicious. Then we walked to one of the forts along the water, but it wasn’t open to the public. Then we walked to the church nearby with some old crypts, but the crypts were closed for refurbishment. Then we headed to the boat tours and found out the water was too choppy for the boats to go out. In the end we walked around a bit and called it a day.

We ran to the butcher and cheese shop (formagerie) when we got back and ate some dinner. Then I had to pack up for an early train.

The next day I said goodbye to Christy, caught the train to Paris, then the train to the airport and then a flight to Heathrow.

I spent the night in a hotel near Heathrow, it was awesome to sleep on a nice mattress, in a room by myself, with a nice bathroom, and a tv in English. To say I was freaking out is an understatement.

The next day I caught my flight back to the good old USA. I started to tear up at customs I was so incredibly happy to be back. Europe was fun and beautiful and amazing, but I can’t help but love the USA.

The last week of school passed in a blur. It was a strange experience, everyone struggling to finish projects and finals, finding moments to try and comprehend that it was all coming to an end. The finals weren’t exceptionally difficult and I managed to finish my art project in time.

The last day, Molly and I got up early to finally hike the hill that I can never remember the name of, with the church on the top. The view was gorgeous though the heat was almost unbearable. We had to stop several times and my asthma was giving me a hard time. I can usually get by with little problems in the states, but something about the heat or humidity here make it a lot harder for me to breathe. I guess I’ll have to get it looked at. Dang!

We stopped at a jewelry store at the bottom of the hill for a little bit to look around. There were no windows open in the place and no air movement. I was literally dripping sweat. It was strange honestly, and uncomfortable. I ended up standing outside as Molly bought some stuff cause I couldn’t stand it.

We walked home and I went to school to do some finishing touches on my art book. I pretty much painted some of the pages with water color to spruce it up, hahaha. I ran home to shower off and change and then headed back for our presentations and our graduation.

The presentations were a lot of fun. They took a lot longer than any of us expected, but it was understandable as everybody worked on their projects so hard and valued them highly. Once our projects were done, we signed eachothers books and waited a little while for the director, Jon, to arrive.

When he finally did, we all sat down to receive our certificates of Graduation. I see it as a certificate of survival in another country. It wasn’t about graduating so much as surviving.  Then Chris, our professor’s wife, gave us all small portraits of ourselves that she painted. That was really cool, because I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s not often people decide to paint me. Then we had personal awards everybody had voted on handed out. Those were definitely funny. I can’t really remember what mine is and the paper is buried under my crap, but I promise it’s funny.

After our ‘graduation’ we headed to dinner. We went to the same place we’d gone our very first day in Greece. It was almost a poetic way to end the trip. We all ate, talking, signing our awards for one another, and it ended with a prom/graduation type photo shoot. It was a lot of fun but really sad too. Only a few of the girls cried, I think it just hadn’t really sunk in for me that we were leaving yet.

That night we packed up everything we owned and threw out everything we didn’t need including the stuff like salt and matches we’d bought somewhere along the way and weren’t taking home. Katee came in some time during the night to say goodbye and then molly and I got up early to catch the Ferry to Santorini.

We’d left that same apartment so many times for the weekend and group trips, it seemed strange to think we weren’t coming back.

The ferry ride was incredibly long. Molly and I had all our bags with us and they weighed a ton. The ferry was really crowded and it took us a good twenty minutes to find a place to seat. I left molly on one of the lower decks and went scouting for seats, I happened to grab a table just as a family stood up to move. I asked the Greeks next to me if they could watch my stuff and I flagged down Molly, but after returning to the table and waiting for about twenty minutes, I went to find Molly again. She was standing in the same spot, next to the stairs, unable to carry everything at once. I ran down real quick and grabbed one of her bags and we made it back to our seat.

We played card games, read our books, and I passed out a couple of times. It was an 8 hour ferry ride and the area we were in went from hot with a cool breeze to unbearably hot with no air flow. It definitely wore us down.

As we stopped at the separate islands though, people began to get off of the ferry and more and more space opened up. We eventually moved to a better table.

When we arrived we went to a travel agency with a bus and they drove us up the winding road to the top of the island and to our hotel. The harbor is down in the caldera of what was once the volcano so the one side of the island is crazy steep and the other side has a gradual slope down.

Our hotel was on the gradual slope of the island next to the black beach. Our hotel was a small place, probably about 20 rooms. The room its self had a kitchen area with a two person table, a twin bed and dresser down stairs and then a loft with a big bed. It was pretty dang awesome.

We went to the beach the very first day but it was already 5 oclock, so we only stayed for an hour or so and then headed back to the hotel. We grabbed some food from the local market and went back to the hotel to eat. It was kind of a lazy night but we were both tired.

The next day we decided to go to the red beach. We got up at about 10, ate breakfast, and decided to catch the bus. We waited about 20 min for the bus and then had to get off to catch another bus. Well there was no posted schedule for the 2^nd bus, we weren’t sure when it would come next and nobody else really knew either. We decided we would walk. Well it took us about an hour to reach the beach and my feet were blistered to a point of no return. Thankfully the red beach was gorgeous. The beach is up against a large cliff face of this brilliant red rock and it’s in a little cove. It was  really pretty and there were a lot of people but not to the point of being too crowded. We stayed most of the day swimming and laying out and eating our packed lunch. It was a nice relaxing day.

On the way back we were sure to wait for both buses as we were tuckered out from our first walk and swimming.

The next day we decided to go on a tour. It was pretty cheap for an all day tour and it took us to the volcano, to Thirasia and Oia.

The volcano was first and it was a bit of a hike. There were three different eruption points, the third still being active and if you haven’t noticed I worded that really strangely because I can’t think of the word I want. Oh well. There was one point where the tour guides had dug down ten centimeters and you could feel heat radiating from the ground. They said it wasn’t particular to that point, that it would happen anywhere you dug down ten centimeters. The geography of the island as well as the views was amazing.

Then they took us to the hot springs whose source was the volcano. It was a little bit strange jumping into the water and getting closer and closer to the source of the spring. The water was pretty murky and it was already hot that day so warm water was exactly enticing. The ground was this orange fungus type stuff so I completely avoided putting my feet down, though the few who did had very unpleasant faces. We all joked around about it quite a bit. It’s funny how awkward or uncomfortable situations can bring people to talk to complete strangers.

After the hot springs we headed to Thirasia. There wasn’t that much there honestly, though it was disconnected from the greater whole of the island. Molly and I decided we would go up to the town, so we rode donkies up! We rode up with a couple other girls from our group and we were all laughing as we rode up, but afterwards we all felt really guilty. Those poor donkies were sweating like crazy, and obviously so tired. It was potentially animal cruelty.

When we reached the top, we discovered the town was pretty much a ghost town. We saw about ten people in the town and 6 of them were tourists. We walked around and took some pretty pictures. Then we stopped at a café for some cokes and looked out at the amazing view.  We walked back down which turned out to be the worst idea ever with the sandals I was wearing but there wasn’t much of a choice.

The next stop was Oia for the sunset.  The town was absolutely gorgeous but the first step was making it up another huge set of stairs. I was almost sure I was going to die on the way up and we stopped several times to ‘admire’ the view. For whatever reason my asthma is a million times worse in Greece, probably the heat, and it’s a bit annoying how much it makes me stop. Anyways, we finally made it to the top and then …

I swear we ran right into the house from sisterhood of the traveling pants. It was the same door and the same balcony and such although a few things were slightly off, including the courtyard looking far too small, but who knows what they did with all their camera tricks to try and make it look perfect. I’ll put pictures up on my facebook and everybody will have to let me know what they think.

We walked around the town for a bit just taking pictures, looking at the houses, the view, looking in the shops. I bought my self some donkey bells which are pretty dang cool. Then we headed over to the view point for the sunset. We were warned it would get crowded early so we got there almost 2 hours early. We grabbed some delicious crepes for dinner and set up camp. Turns out it didn’t get that crowded but either way, we had the best seat in the house. The sunset was beautiful and I got some amazing photos.

We then ran to catch the bus and headed home exhausted. But before we could go to sleep we headed down to the beach to just sit in the sand and have a beer. It was our last night in Santorini, and the stars were amazing. It was one of those moments I’ll always remember and look back on.

The next day we were technically without a hotel room though they let us keep our stuff in the room until we needed to leave for our ferry that afternoon. We headed down to the beach and just lay around reading and sleeping. Neither of us swam and we lay under the protection of an umbrella all day, though somehow we both came out of it with sunburns. Oh well.

The ferry ride back was 11 hours which was insane.  We sat around, grabbed some food, and thankfully the chairs folded out to be pretty comfortable for sleeping.  Though they didn’t recline any which was a bit uncomfortable but not too bad. The ferry docked at 6am and we quickly grabbed a cab to the airport.

Molly and I both checked in and then parted ways. Her flight was taking off in about an hour and mine wasn’t taking off for another ten. I got some food  and then sat around for a good while. I fell asleep for a bit and then read my book for a few hours. Eventually, the time passed and I was boarding my plane. We took off and arrived on time to London where I had to take a bus to Gatwick airport.  Then I sat around there for a couple hours. I ate at ‘EAT’ where I remember eating way too many times with the Girl scouts on our trip to London. It was a bit strange to think I was eating there 5 years later. The sandwiches were as crappy as I remember hahah.

My flight took off from London on time and we landed in France on time. Then I ran over to the buses and caught a bust to aix en provence where I met up with Christy. How I survived that crazy day of travel, I’m not quite sure, but it definitely gave me some confidence in my traveling skills.

Christy and I stayed up pretty late talking. We haven’t seen eachother in like 12 years or more, which is crazy to think. And then I passed out!

The next day was a tour of aix in provence with Christy. We went to the clothes market and the food market. The clothes market was interesting because there was some really cute stuff and some really not cute stuff, but it was all cheap. I got a nice pair of linen pants. Then we went to the food market which was awesome. We got some cheese and a bunch of veggies and fruit. Everybody was really nice, granted Christy can speak French so I just kind of hide behind her.

Then we walked around town for the rest of the day, getting coffee, walking around the little shops. It was a lot of fun and relaxing. We came back to the apartment and sat around talking and eating dinner and watching some shows on our lap tops.

Today we had to get up early to catch a bus to Arles. We barely made it, and Christy had to flag down the bus. Thankfully they stopped for us.  The ride was about an hour and a half, but I passed out for most of it.

Once we got into Arles we went to the tourist office. They had a bunch of brochures and we bought a pass that allowed us entrance into five of the sites of our choosing. We kind of flew through all of them just because we weren’t exactly sure what anything was and there wasn’t a lot of info. Christy had to translate a lot of stuff from French but even then there wasn’t too much information.

We saw the amphitheatre and the theater; we saw the forum, a roman bath, and the crypto portico. They were all kind of just ancient stone, though they all had their interesting little nooks and crannies. But it’s amazing how meaningless a lot of that stuff is without the right info. Oops.

Then we headed to the museum where we were hoping to find some Van Gogh paintings. Unfortunately there were none, but the museum was still pretty cool. They had a lot of modern paintings as well as photography and stuff mixed in with the paintings. It was a bit strange how they had these classic paintings from a century ago mixed with decorative rugs and strange photographs that were recently made. The building its self was one of the cooler aspects as it was an old house used as an artist workshop. There were a couple of Picasso paintings, but the strangest thing by far was the sound room.

We were hesitant to go in at first but the security guard told us to go on ahead and after reading the sign we decided we might as well. It was pretty much an empty room with some really comfy cushions to lie on and speakers playing music/strange noises around the room. It was actually a pretty cool experience, though odd.

Once we were done with the museum we walked around town looking in the shops. We stopped in one shop that sold lavender. We wandered around looking at the architecture. It was a really cool, small French town.

The best part though was the history of the town as pertained to Van Gogh. Arles was a huge inspiration for Van Gogh and some of his most famous paintings were done there. We saw a park where he had painted, we saw the famous café he painted, and we also saw the asylum where he stayed for many years. I never would have thought that I would have the chance to see the inspiration to one of my favorite artists.

It was a long day of walking and after getting a guide book, finally, we hoped on the bus home. We grabbed some veggies and stuff at a nearby market and we just ate some delicious ratatouille.

Loving France, still have a few days to enjoy it.

It’s been quite a while since I wrote but thinking back, nothing much happened last week. Seems like we sat around a lot in class and doing hw. There were a TON of thunderstorms though. Molly and I were walking back from the store one of the days and the thunder literally shook the window panes in the building next to us. That officially freaked us out and we just about ran home.

Friday night was a lot of fun too. We went to an outdoors theater and saw the Hangover two. They have drinks and food at the bar their so I got a Heineken while we watched. It was pretty awesome! Just sayin! The movie was hilarious in my opinion. It paralleled the original film a lot, which was the point, but it was still really funny.

Dad came on Saturday morning. I went to meet him at the airport and thankfully his flight was a little late, haha. I caught the metro. For whatever reason, when you go to the airport, you have to jump off the metro to catch another one on the same platform to the airport. When I stepped off the first metro and looked at the time for the next metro, the reader board said 22 min. I sat at the station sitting next to a couple other passengers and watching another nervously walk up and down the platform, tweeking out.

I was freaking out when I got to the airport because I was afraid my Dad had already arrived. I kept looking at the reader board but it didn’t say anything about his flight. I walked up and down the airport like 5 or 6 times looking for him and I finally resorted to calling him. Just as I was calling him, I saw him walk out of the gate, just arrived. Just seems like that’s how it works sometimes.

We took the metro to Syntagma and jumped off to go find his hotel. I had written out directions from google. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was and it ended up being a lot further than either of us expected. We later discovered the metro stops about a block from his hotel, hahaha. The hotel is downtown but a little off the beaten path. It’s a really friendly place though, and the woman at the desk was very kind.

We decided to go to lunch and the woman at the desk recommended “ambrosia” which was down the street. I can’t say a lot for the restaurant. The food was ok, not great and it was a bit of a dump compared to a lot of the places downtown. Oh well, it served its purpose, filling my stomach.

After we had eaten we decided to walk around a bit in the Plaka. We didn’t really go into a lot of stores though the one we did go into had a bunch of “special” deals. By special, they meant that absolutely anything we liked was half off. Doesn’t seem too special if it applies to everything, and I have a feeling any day I go in to that store, there will be a similar special. That seems to be the case with all of the shops in the Plaka area. We stopped for coffee in one of the touristy cafes and just walked around.

We ended up walking back to my apartment, through the Gardens. We picked a few flowers for my art project. When we got back to our apartment I checked on my computer for ferry times and searched the web, Dad took a nap. He hadn’t slept much for the last day and a half. The international flights can be kind of rough.

That night we went out to dinner with Katee and Molly and ate a bunch of traditional foods. It was pretty dang delicious.

Sunday morning I met dad at his hotel and we took the metro to the harbor. Of course no one in Greece actually knows where they’re going, including me, so we went the wrong way on the metro a couple times and got to the harbor a little later than we planned but it was all fine.

The ferry ride was nice. We got some icy drinks and sat up on the deck. It was pretty and the breeze was nice in the hot weather.

When we got to the island we headed to a café. We had some spanikopita and I had some chocolate milk. We weren’t really sure where we were headed and we walked around a lot, headed down the road in the wrong direction, and then decided the best plan was to get a motorbike. The guy who we rented the motorbike from was a little sketchy. He showed us these nice bikes, one for 20 euro and the other for 30 euro. When dad asked to hear the 20 euro bike run, he told us that was just the demo model and took us over to some worn down looking bikes to let us hear the motor. It wasn’t very impressive. We splurged and got the 30 euro bike. It was a lot more comfortable.

When we were paying and filling out the information the guy pointed out that our last name was Polish. He then proceeded to tell us he spoke polish. Then my dad and he had a conversation in Polish. Hahaha it was a bit surreal. He had married a polish woman and she had taught him Polish. I’m impressed he learned Polish so late in life, it gives me hope.

We biked around the island past all the pretty beaches and the beautiful water. We got a little turned around a couple of times. We ended up at the Temple of Aphaia.  Um not too sure how to spell that but you get the picture. The temple was free because it was Sunday which was nice because we weren’t there for too long. We walked around for a bit and took some pictures. It was gorgeous. Then we headed down to the local town and got some water and took a little break.

We decided we didn’t want to stay at the super packed beach and headed back to one of the smaller coves we’d seen on our drive. It was pretty nice. There were a few sea urchins, easy enough to avoid, and a lot of rocks. Once we waded far enough out though it was sandy and nice. We swam for a little bit but the water was a bit chilly. We went to lie back on the beach but a lot of big flies kept landing on us. It became a game to kill them, one of those slightly fun yet scary games that you don’t really want to be a part of. We didn’t stay for an extremely long time, and the sun was covered by a huge cloud right before we left.

We biked back to the port, dropped the bike off, and had a couple beers at one of the local cafes before catching a speed ferry back to Athens.

Dad wanted to sit next to this family with a couple boys because he thought they would be entertaining. He was right. The youngest was pretending to do karate and running around. Dad immedeatly started to fight back and talk to him. The little boy knew no English but he was having fun and his dad became the translator for the two. It was definitely entertaining.

When we got back we caught the metro back to Syntagma. Deep down I knew we should have stopped a stop earlier but we didn’t. We walked right into a demonstration of 22,000 people and we were right in the middle of it all. As we tried to push our way out of the crowd we ended up on the wrong side of parliament headed in the wrong direction, but any time we tried to head toward my apartment the road seemed to be closed or packed with people. We ended up way out of the way and my shoes were cutting into my feet. I was not a happy camper. We ended up walking for quite a while and caught a taxi at the Hilton the last couple of miles home. Once we were on familiar ground we went to a restaurant to eat. I was definitely starving by the point and grateful to be done walking.

Once classes started, I didn’t see dad as much. On Monday we had lunch together. I wanted to get gyros but the place we usually go to wasn’t quite open yet so we went to the bakery instead for sandwiches. We sat in the courtyard and ate. That was nice and relaxing.

Tuesday we met up for dinner. We went to this place my teacher had recommended called Costa’s. We had some fish and some goat. The goat tasted a lot like pork. The fish was amazing though, absolutely delicious. Our waiter and the owner were very nice too. We ended up getting some free desert which was a delicious chocolate mousse with some cookie type thing in it. The waiter was a younger guy, really nice, and dad and he had a conversation about Polish cooking. It turned out the water had a polish friend and he was very interested in Polish cuisine which his friend had introduced him to.

I swear only my father finds these people. Hahaha I haven’t acquired that skill yet.

Wednesday we didn’t get the chance to meet up. I had class all day including a field trip so dad got the chance to take a day trip to Delphi. I’m glad he got to go since it was by far one of my favorite places in Greece.

The field trip was interesting. We had to take the bus to the museum but the buses weren’t running because of a protest. We had already bought our tickets and didn’t want to take taxis so we took a train to the Zappeion, walked to the metro, took the metro to Amonia square and then walked from the square to the museum. The walk was fast paced, per usual, and my sandal broke on the last stretch. Luckily it still functioned as a flip flop for the most part, but it was a bit uncomfortable.

Thursday I had my first art class in forever. It was a bit ridiculous because we all realized exactly how much we have to do before we finish our projects. It was a lot of scrambling to do stuff. My book is coming along really nicely though, I’m pretty excited about it.

Dad came over for dinner and we went to the fancy café by the Zappeion. We had milk shakes, dinner and coffee. It was awesome, a bit of a splurge, but needed. We talked for a bit and then headed back to my apartment. We played a couple Sporcle quizzes which were funny because dad was pretty into it.

Friday I didn’t have school. Thank god! We decided to go shopping around the Plaka. We walked up and down the flea market a few times looking for stuff and buying stuff. We knew it was going to be quite a day, so we took it slow, stopped for drinks a couple of times. I’d tell ya what we bought but they’re gifts and I’m not giving up the surprise.

After walking around for a long time we headed back to dad’s hotel. Of course getting a little lost on the way. Then we sat down for a bit and it was obviously siesta time. I fell asleep for a good couple of hours, it was greatly needed. The AC was a nice luxury. Once I was out of my stupor we went to dinner. It wasn’t the most amazing dinner but it was food.

We then walked back to my apartment, got a little lost, but made it in the end. We went to the grocery store and then headed back to my apartment. Molly and Katee weren’t home so when we said our goodbye’s it was a bit hard. Being alone after saying goodbye was a bit crappy but I kept reminding myself that I would be home in 3 weeks. I know it will go by fast.

Today we went to the beach by Sunion. It was a bit of a drive on the bus but it was worth it. We laid on the beach and even went swimming. We decided to swim out to the buoy which was pretty scary since I hate deep water but a lot of fun. The water was really clear. We even had a splash fight which was funny, for whatever immature reason. It was a good day. We all came back a little more tan and a lot more burned. I swear my sunscreen doesn’t work. Oh well!

The rest of my weekend will be filled with studying, so strange that it’s already finals week.

Last week was pretty uneventful. We had class a lot, worked on some essays. We also explored more of the sites within Athens that we had yet to see like the Temple of Zeus. Molly and I also hit up the 2 euro frappuchinos at Starbucks. That was fun. And then Saturday we left for the Peloponnese.

The trip definitely started off with a bang. A big bang! We took a bus out to the Peloponnese. We stopped at the canal quickly and it was crazy packed. It was really cool though. A couple of the girls told me that the canal was from ancient times, about 700bc. I was like holy cow, that’s really dang impressive, I would have thought it was modern. Well then I asked my teacher and sure enough it was modern, finished in the late 19^th century. So they really had no clue what they were talking about. Hahaha.

After the canal we went to the first site, Perakhora. It was a really cool site on a hillside, more of a mountainside, and right on the sea. There use to be a temple there and possibly an oracle. Well after about an hour of lecture, maybe not even, we got to go swimming on the site. We all were pretty excited until we saw the jelly fish and black sea urchins. The jelly fish were everywhere and Katia picked one up and said they didn’t sting. The sea urchins though were everywhere and though they aren’t poisonous, the needles break off in your skin when you step on them causing pain and irritation. We were all nervous and Julia and I were the only ones to swim out to where it was deeper. Avery and Emily N decided they were going to jump off one of the cliffs nearby. It wasn’t too high and Julia and I were watching from the water and steph was going to take pics from up top. Unfortunately things went terribly wrong. Emily and Avery were holding hands and nervous to jump both faked each other out which caused them to both lose their balance, Emily jumped off the rock into the water, avery spun around trying to cling to the rock and  things did not work out. As she spun she slid down the rocks hitting it pretty hard several times and finally plummeting into the water. Those of us who saw it happened were shocked. All we said was omg omg omg and finally that avery needed help. Thankfully Avery surfaced a bit shocked and all she said was omg, then she looked down and there was recognition on her face and this time she said omg with a very meaningful terrible look. Emily N was confused as she had missed it while jumping in and looked around confused, shocked, and unsure. I swam over to Avery and there was the largest gash in her knee. It looked like it was possibly to the bone and it wasn’t just a cut, the skin had been carved out of her knee. Avery was coherent and I held her leg as we swam back to shore.  I asked her if she felt like she was going to pass out because just lifting her leg and swimming next to her was difficult, I don’t see how anyone could support an entire person in the water. When we got close to shore I had to let her go because of the sea urchins and the really shallow water. Rianna grabbed her and then it was a whirl wind. Avery was sat down, bleeding everywhere; they bandaged her up as the rest of us grabbed our stuff. We headed up the pretty steep slope to the bus and a few people passed avery off, supporting most of her weight as she attempted to walk. In the end, Jon and Rianna ended up carrying her up the last stretch. We were all running on adrenaline. As we drove to the hospital, a few of us who had seen the fall kept tearing up. It was hard to not keep replaying it over and over in my head, seeing her hit that rock, falling helplessly. It is definitely something I will never forget.

Avery went to the hospital and while they stitched her up they took the rest of us to the beach. We ate our lunches, sat around, and Molly and I decided to go swimming. I kept freaking out whenever I touched the ground and screamed a couple of times though the beach was a lot nicer than the last, sandy, and no sea life. It was either there or at the first beach that I managed to step on a sea urchin. It was probably at the first beach because I didn’t notice it until that night, when the adrenaline high was wearing off.

We picked Avery up at the hospital, leg completely bandaged, stitches, and a few of the other larger scrapes bandaged up too. It was pretty shocking to see. We dropped her off at the hotel and continued on to another site we were supposed to have seen a bit earlier that day, Epidauros. I think most of us slept on the bus, the events of the morning had really worn everyone out. I was pretty much in a dreamlike state for most of the trip to the site.

The site had a healing temple and a HUGE theater. Ok well not extremely huge but big for an archaic theater. The acoustics in the theater were amazing. We all went to the top of the stadium while Jeff stayed at the bottom and dropped a coin in the middle of the floor. We could hear the cling of the coin clearly from the top, as well as Jeff talking. It was pretty cool.

We returned to the hotel, found a gyro place and some gelato, and then headed for bed. It was a pretty exhausting day.

The next day we woke up and headed to Mycenae. We saw the famous Lions gate. We walked around on the site, at a pretty high elevation. It was really beautiful. We also went down a covered stairway towards a well. It was pretty deep into the ground, but you can only go so far. It was definitely far enough for me though. It was really dark and Michael was the only one with a flashlight. He aimed his flashlight at the ceiling and there were a TON of bugs. It was like some Indiana Jones movie or something. After he turned off his flashlight we could feel the bugs hitting us, flying around. It was one of those moments you really had to take a breath and convince yourself it was going to be ok. I was pretty happy to get out of that hole.

After Mycenae we went to the tomb down the street. The construction of the tomb was really cool, like a honey comb. There were a million people though. Jeff tried to show us the acoustics, talking against the wall on one end so we could hear him on the other end. We tried several times and it only worked once. It was cool but I think there were too many people to really pull it off. We left there pretty quickly.

Then we headed to Argive Heraion. The site was really quiet, just us and a couple of women. The clouds had begun to cover the sun and there was thunder in the distance. It seems the thundery weather followed us everywhere. We talked a bit, mostly sat and listened. I mostly kept thinking about drum corp and summer nights at home. I was having a really hard time concentrating. I blame the fresh cut dry grass and the windy blowing in the smell of rain. We didn’t stay long as the weather was moving pretty quickly.

We headed to the hotel in Andritsena. It was an absolutely beautiful town. It was very small, in the mountains, and there was almost no one there. We couldn’t fit in the same hotel as a group, so six were put into a house they rented out and the rest of us into a hotel. The hotel was really nice, lodge like. 3 of us were in a room on the top floor and the view was amazing. We all showered and then headed to dinner. We met a couple from Texas there that was pretty fun. After dinner, a couple of us headed down to the house where most everybody was. We played a few card games, mostly spoons. It was a lot of fun. Loud! We headed up to our hotel. Katee had found a small scorpion in our room earlier that day so we were all a bit paranoid but I believe we all slept really well. We were able to sleep in about an hour longer than usual but I kept waking up to check the clock because I was scared of being late.

We left for the Temple of Apollo at Vasses. Michael had alluded to some surprise about the temple the night before and he was definitely right about there being a surprise. There was a huge tent over the temple, like a circus tent. It was really strange. The material the temple was made of was a crappy limestone and with the bad weather they have there, the tent was set up to protect the temple. It was actually pretty cool to see in the tent though it would have been beautiful to see it in its natural setting.

After the temple we headed to Olympia. We didn’t have anything to do for an hour or so before heading to the museum so we all split up to do our own thing. Jasmine and I headed out on one of the local roads and just walked. There were lot of olive trees and small houses. It was really pretty.

The museum was pretty cool but it was stifling in there. For whatever reason, they don’t believe in air conditioning in the museums, or even air movement. It’s like suffocating a lot of the time in the museums which makes it hard to concentrate. We managed though and we got to see the marbles from the Temple of Zeus which was really cool. Pretty well preserved.

After the museum we had some time to hang out. We all sat down stairs for a while checking our emails and such. Then I showered and right as I got out, I found out a few people were going out to play soccer. I joined the band wagon and we went to a concrete small court right by the hotel. At first we were just passing the ball around and then we started a game. I pretty much suck at soccer so it was interesting. I made a couple of goals though and it was a lot of fun. These two greek guys came and were watching us for a bit and eventually joined the game. Needless to say they were AMAZING. They were doing fancy tricks and doing laps around me. It was pretty embarrassing. After a while my lungs were about to pop out of my chest so I had to stop. Then we started taking goofy pictures including soccer pics with the Greek guys. It was a lot of fun, and really good exercise.

 Steph, Emily, Molly, and I went to the supermarket to grab something for dinner and ended up grabbing some Heineken. Then we headed to a restaurant and grabbed some pizza and greek salad to go. We went back to the hotel and ate our dinner and drank our beers. It was perfect. Then we were going to play some card games but we ended up talking about movies and such. It was a lot of fun. We went to bed around 11 or 12 but Jasmine and I stayed up even longer just talking, and the beds were like cardboard so I woke up pretty tired this morning.

Breakfast this morning was pretty terrible so I ended up eating my Molto way (a brand of cheap croissants you can buy at the grocery store filled with various fruit or chocolate fillings). Then we headed to the site of Olympia where the original Olympic Games were held. The site was really pretty but kind of hard to get a handle on. It’s pretty spread out and flat so there is no vantage point to gain an understanding of the layout. Our maps helped but it was a bit confusing. Avery was in a wheel chair that the site provided; it was the first site she had been able to really visit since the accident. We had a race on the track on the site. It was a lot of fun but I was a bit sorer from soccer yesterday than I thought. I can officially say I ran on the original Olympic Track though. No big! J

After the site we headed back into town to get some lunch. I had some spaghetti, an Alpha beer, and then some ice cream. We jumped on the bus and somehow the 4 hour drive turned into 5 and a half. It was a long drive and I’m definitely happy to be back in my apartment. Long weekend!

Dad gets here on Saturday!!!!!

Being back in Athens has been absolutely great. Thinking back on spring break I really think we went about it the wrong way. It was way too much in ten days. Too much traveling, too much walking, just too much! I’m glad we saw what we did and we got to go to a lot of cool places but I wouldn’t recommend the whirl wind we did to anyone. I still feel stressed just thinking about it.

This last week has been pretty eventful in a sense. We had classes which was nice. It was nice to just sit in a class room for 2 hours at a time and have someone teach me something. It was relaxing and we always have fun one way or another. The best class though was Greek class on Wednesday. There was a potluck that day and we were all at the Athens centre studying for our Greek quiz. We didn’t bring anything for the potluck so we figured we just wouldn’t participate. Well those who did bring food were all very nice and insisted we join. We had ouzo, which is a little bit too much for me, cheese pies, potato salad, salmon, veggies, and a bunch of other stuff including some yummy deserts. It sucked to leave for Greek class but then Yana surprised us and told us we were going to dance instead. We all got in a big circle holding hands and they taught us two different steps. There was a 12 step and then another one where we got to kick our legs. It was so much fun. The 12 step was a little hard but I got it down eventually.

We had a lot of field trips this week too. On Wednesday we went to the museum. We had to ride the bus there which was interesting. It was jam packed and you’re supposed to validate your ticket. I was the closest to the ticket thing so they were all handing me their tickets to validate them because you can be fined for not doing it. A few of us had nothing to hang on to so we were falling all over the place. It was an experience. The museum was a snore. The art was interesting but it was a long visit. We got there at like 10 and were there til 2 I think. Too long to stand in a museum and listen. The museum was also SO boring looking. Everything was white. The art was white, the walls were white, the floors were white, and even the windows were clouded white. We had to take a taxi back from the museum because the bus wasn’t going to be there for like another hour. Way too long.

Thursday my art class went to the Banaki. I’m not sure how you spell it but that’s what it sounds like. Anyways, it’s more of a cultural museum of Greece. It used to be the house of a rich family and they just had a huge collection of stuff that is now a museum. There were paintings and jewelry and traditional clothing from all over and old house stuff like furniture, and kitchen stuff. It was really cool to see.

Friday we went to the Pnyx and Agora. They were really cool, beautiful places. I have a feeling the agora didn’t look so green when it was originally built and in use but now it kind of looks like a nice park with ruins in it. Hahah. The pnyx had an amazing view. I’ll have to take Dad there.

Besides that it’s been a lot of class and hw and I don’t even know what. It seems the days are passing by so quickly. I guess that’s a good thing though because I cannot describe how homesick I am. It’s strange because I wasn’t really homesick yesterday. My appreciation for America had definitely been growing this entire trip but I haven’t been really homesick. I miss my family and my own room and speaking the same dang language as everyone else but I really like it here. Today though I’ve been ready to jump a plane and just go home. I know as soon as I got there though I would realize what a mistake. Basically I’m having an internal struggle of emotions. Oh well! I’m sure in a month I’ll be sitting at home thinking why am I home?! Hahaha

Busy week ahead, I bet it flashes by.

So this is a summary of the last ten days of my life. I’ll probably forget some stuff although I took some notes to remember what we did. Hopefully I survive writing this and you survive reading it.

Day 1

We left pretty early in the morning for the airport. We took the metro because anyone with a brain knows to avoid the Taxi’s here. We were on the tram on the way to the airport when we realized from the fifty signs and the announcement every 2 minutes that we were supposed to have bought a special ticket for the airport. It was 8 euros in comparison to the .70 we usually pay. Well we were a couple stops away and none of us have yet to see anyone check the metro tickets so we decided to test our luck and see if they would check. They didn’t. J

The airport was absolute chaos. It took us a few minutes to figure out where we were supposed to check in. It’s not as clear as it is as home where you check in at a ticket desk designated by the company you bought your ticket from. Instead they have a reader board that tells you which counter to go to, they’re numbered.

Once in line it was about ten minutes before they announced our flight was delayed because Italy was on strike. We knew they’d be striking that day but we were hoping to take off before they started. Fortunately the flight was only delayed about 2 hours.

When we got to the gate, we found Molly’s friend from high school. She had just finished studying in Florence, Italy and was in Greece for a few days and happens to be on the same flight. Molly and she talked for about 4 hour about who was pregnant, married, or crazy from high school. I literally don’t even know what’s going on with some of my best friends from high school. From the sounds of it we went to very different highschools.

The flight finally took off and the landing was one of the worst I’ve experienced but that’s what you get with a really cheap flight.

Once in Rome we caught a train to the city center and walked to our hostel. Our hostel was kind of in a shady neighborhood by the train station with a lot of the other hostels. The main attraction seemed to be the bar which we soon figured out was where most of the kids at the hostel spent all of their time. Sad! We grabbed our beds, of course not on the same bunk, and left to explore.

We seemed to run into everything immediately. First we ran into the Colloseum. Unfortuantely it was closed because of the stroke. Lame sauce! We took a bunch of pictures anyways and just walked around. We walked through a lot of the main squares including the museum area.

We stopped for dinner at a touristy Italian place. We split a risotto dish that was AMAZING and a pizza. It was really good though a little pricy which is the name of the game in Rome.

After dinner we walked around and ended up at the top of a lot of steps. There was a church, flowers, and a ton of people. It was the Spanish steps hahaha. I can’t say I even knew they were in Rome which is embarrassing but there we were.

We then stopped by the Trevvi Fountain which we’d seen earlier but we wanted to see it in the dark.

After a bit we headed back to the hostel. We slept fine until about 4am. That was when the unspeakable happened. The guy sharing my bunk brought a girl back with him and decided we all wanted a free show. It was absolutely disgusting to a point that I can’t describe. My soul is scarred by this experience. After a few minutes, which seemed like hours to me, I had to ask them to leave. And not to nicely either because WTF it’s called human decency. Anyways, that first night set the tone for our hostel experience in Rome and we avoided it like the plague and slept terribly the rest of the nights there.

Day 2

We woke up early and started walking for the Vatican. We stopped into a few little places to get coffee but they don’t do coffee on the go so we ended up empty handed. When we finally reached the Vatican we were tired and starving.

A tour guide company attacked up immediately which was fine because we had already decided we wanted to do a tour group. They can get you in fast and show you the main attractions since there is no way I’d know where to go.  

The tour group was of course a bunch of English speakers although quite a few people knew English as their second language. I thought it was pretty cool they knew English well enough to take the tour in English. We hit up one of the courtyard that was newly opened, the post office, and a lot of the interior rooms. My favorite room by far was the hall with the maps and tons of paintings on the ceiling that lead to the Sistine chapel. I liked it better than anything including the Sistine chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica.

We then went to the Sistine chapel where we were told we would have 15 minutes. Five minutes later Molly overheard our tour guide counting people and leaving the chapel. We’d been left and the door to the basilica is for tour groups only, meaning you need to be with your tour group. We were freaking out a little looking around confused. Last minute we decided to join a random group walking through the door that belonged to a language I could not identify. We made it past the experience and bolted to find our group. Our tour guide looked at us funny and then asked if she had counted us earlier. We told her no and that we’d had to sneak in. She told us we were very lucky. All I could think was ‘it’s your damn fault we had to sneak in anyways’.

We were left to explore the Basilica by ourselves who was nice although I didn’t know what a lot of the stuff was. I did recognize some stuff from Angels and Demons. Got to love Hollywood.

After that we went to lunch and then walked to the large park in the city of Rome. We picked a spot, laid down, and fell asleep for a couple hours. When we woke up we walked around a little. We found a pond where you could canoe and just explored. It was beautiful.

Then we decided to have dinner and split a pizza. The restaurant we went to though was less than enthusiastic about the idea and the waiter told us we needed to order more. He told us, “this is not McDonalds girls” we up and left and guess freaking what?! We went to McDonalds so take that greedy asshole Italian restaurant.

We went back to the hostel pretty defeated and both called our parents in tears. It was a hard day and probably just because we were so damn tired and walking a lot. The people in Italy just didn’t seem friendly.

Day 3

We slept better that night which gave us some renewed hope and it was our last day in Rome so we were determined for success.

We grabbed breakfast at the grocery store. Yoghurt and croissants, nice and cheap the way we like it. We then walked to the Pantheon.

The Pantheon was pretty cool and it was FREE. That’s right, a word that I wasn’t sure existed in Italian, Free. We walked around looking at the paintings and such. It was really pretty but of course the attraction is the hole in the ceiling that I can’t remember the name of right now, embarrassing. The sun was coming down in a direct beam of light. It was pretty amazing.

After the Pantheon we headed to the Coloseum. The line wasn’t too bad and we got in after about 20 minutes. We walked around and took a lot of pictures that look exactly the same. We tried to figure out the construction and purposes of specific features based on Gladiator.

We grabbed some sandwiches and sat around. Sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re supposed to enjoy traveling. We walked to the Trevvia Fountain and grabed some gelato. It was absolutely delicious and we just sat looking at the fountain and all the people. I think this is when we threw coins in but maybe it was the time before. Then we started walking towards the park.

As we were getting close to the Spanish steps we heard beautiful opera singing. I was a little confused if it was a recording or real though there was a huge crowd. When we got closer we saw a woman was singing live just in a jacket and jeans and they seemed to be setting up for an event. We grabbed a seat on the stairs only a few steps up and listened. She sang for a couple minutes and a couple others did and then they left. Through the chains of people and languages we found out they were doing a free concert that was starting in a half hour and that had just been the sound check. We of course decided to stay. Sure enough a half hour we were sitting on the stairs with hundreds of other people, political delegates sat next to the performance area, cameras were set up, an announcer in a suit was standing with a mike and in came the singers dressed up and a military band. It was absolutely amazing. They then sang the national anthem while the band played along. What a way to hear their national anthem. Then the 2 women singers and the two male singers took turns singing the most famous pieces, sometimes as duets, sometimes all together.

There Molly and I were on our last night in Rome, sitting on the Spanish steps, listening to the most famous opera pieces sung by amazing Italian opera singers.

Day 4

We got up early and practically ran out of the Hostel. I can’t explain the hate I have for that place. We got to the train station, grabbed some food, and hopped on the train to Siena.

In Siena we had to grab a taxi into town. We were supposed to meet up with our friend Anna who we were staying with but somehow it didn’t happen so we sat down at the bar we were going to meet at and had lunch.

Once we had finished lunch we decided to walk to Anna’s address although we realized we didn’t have her apartment number to buzz. So after trying every cell phone we had we found a pay phone. That pay phone was crazy tricky. We must have tried every combination of putting money in and dialing numbers and such possible. We finally got a hold of Anna and she let us into her apartment.

We walked around for a bit with Anna before her next class just looking. Siena was absolutely beautiful, a medieval town. We dropped Anna off at class and walked around a bit more. We stopped at the big church in town. We stopped in a couple of tourist stores and then ended up in the large brick square at the center of town. I grabbed some gelato and we sat down. And of course we fell asleep for about an hour or so. Well needed.

We grabbed Anna for class and headed back to the apartment for a bit. We checked a lot of stuff online and then headed out for dinner. We went to a tavern that had traditional food. Most of us got the vegetable bread stew. It was delicious. We also had a bottle of the house wine. It was a lot of fun to be with some other Americans studying abroad. We heard a lot about their experiences and compared what we’d noticed about other cultures. It was a lot of fun.

After dinner we walked around the little carnival happening in the fortress. The bumper cars were the main attraction and besides that it was a ghost town. It was nothing compared to Carnivals at home. We walked around the top of the fortress and headed home. Showered off and headed to bed.

Day 5

We got up relatively early to catch our train but we got some coffee and a pastry first. It was absolutely delicious and crazy cheap. Thank god for the Italian addiction with coffee.

We got to the train station and went to the ticket booth for them to print out or tickets. The guy behind the counter looked them over and handed them to us. We caught our first train which was just small, a commuter train. Once we got to the main station we grabbed our train to Venice. When we got on, someone else was in our seat. We were really confused. We eventually found the conductor. He immediately knew what was wrong; our tickets were for the day before. In the chaos of booking everything we’d booked the train for the wrong day. Not only did we have to buy a new ticket but we were on the train without a ticket which is a 50 euro fee so we paid 90 euro each for our dumb mistake. We can’t help but keep asking in our heads, why had the guy behind the counter not said anything when he printed them? He could have saved us 50 euro.

Once in Venice we started to head for the main square. It was a bit of a walk and we were following signs the whole time because we didn’t have a map. Only after about an hour of walking with our backpacks and finally catching a water taxi did I find out that wasn’t what the hostel had told us to do but what Anna and Molly had decided was a good Idea. If you can’t tell, yes I’m a bit bitter. Our water taxi actually passed the train station where we came in on our way to the hostel.

The hostel was nice though it was almost like an army barrack. It was also a little out of the way but the people were nice and we were in an all girl dorm. I was happy.

We headed back onto the water taxi and got off near the main square. We started to walk around and eventually stopped at a café with cheap pasta. I’m pretty sure it was microwave pasta and that was why it was cheap but whatever. After we ate we walked around a bit more and found a couple masks we liked. Mine is white and red with gold details and some musical notes on it. I love it, although I don’t know why I always end up with stuff in the same colors as my high school colors. Oh well!!

We then found some gelato and sat down by the water just watching the boats go up and down. It was a really pretty place but it almost seemed like part of the Epcot center or something, like it was set up for tourists and no one actually lived there.

We found a place set back a bit from the main canal and got some dinner. We both had pizza. It was pretty good and then we called it a night. We headed back to the hostel and hung out for a bit. We showered and then go into bed for our 4 hours of sleep.

Day 6

We woke up at 3:30am to check out and catch a boat taxi. Some of the other guests at the hostel were still awake and one girl in the bathroom was really confused why we were getting up while she was getting ready for bed.

We got to the airport and it was absolutely tiny. There was almost no one there and it looked as though it had just opened. We had to wait a half hour or so before the check in desk and baggage check were open and then we went through ‘security’. Once through Molly passed out on a chair and I waited for the coffee shop to open. I got a cappuccino and a chocolate tart. It was delicious. Then I sat and tried drawing a staircase in my notebook. I tried 3 or 4 times before it came out relatively close. The perspective was just really strange.

The flight was a couple of hours and I slept most of it.

We landed in Brussels and had to take the tram to the hostel. Once we were at the tram station though we realized the tram they told us to take only runs in the evenings so then we had to take a couple metros. Once we’d gotten there it took us a couple minutes to get a bearing because we weren’t at the stop where the tram stopped. We eventually found it though and of course the check in desk was closed so we just dropped off our stuff. They gave us a map for ‘young people’ and it became our Bible to Brussels. We found the main square which was a bunch of old, ornately decorated buildings. They were really cool and the square was huge.

We then went and found a place on the map that was supposed to have good waffles. We sat down and ordered waffles and coffee. It was really good. At this point in the trip we were starting to take our time while eating because it was really the only down time we had in our schedule with how much walking and stuff we were doing.

Then we walked into the mall area with the H&M. They had 5 euro bathing suit tops so I bought a couple. I also bought some new jeans that fit and look good on me. I was honestly a little shocked when I tried them on and saw my actually shape through my clothing for the first time in forever!

We headed back to the hostel to check in. There was a little confusion because one of the beds they’d assigned us had somebody’s stuff on it which I don’t think would have been a big deal anywhere else but it was nice for someone to actually care in those hostels. We finally figured it out and made our beds, stashed our stuff and headed out for dinner.

We had decided we wanted to see a movie at the theater. We’d figured out which ones were in English and bought a ticket to see ‘Water for Elephants’. We asked for suggestions for quick food places and they told us about a healthy café a couple doors down. We got sandwiches and a drink and a little desert for 7 euro. Pretty good deal! We ate up and got to the theater a half hour early.

The theater was a bit weird because they didn’t show any preview stuff. I guess that’s an American thing? Everyone around us was speaking French which was expected and it was fun to listen to them. The movie was absolutely amazing and my opinion of Robert Pattinson is once again positive. Twilight is just an awkward role I guess. But anyways, I highly recommend the movie, but I’d read the book first.

After the movie we headed back, showered, and passed out. It was some of the best sleep we’d gotten the whole trip.

Day 7

We slept in a bit the next morning and got up slowly. It was really nice. We went downstairs and printed off our train tickets and then headed out for breakfast.

We went to the same healthy café down by the movie theater and got coffee and a croissant.

We took the metro to the Atomium which is this oddly shaped building, in the shape of a nuclear atom, that was built for the world fair there. It’s pretty much just an attraction now and it sits in a park on the outskirts of the city. You can pay to go into it but there was no way we were paying for that. We took some pictures, ran into the park for a bit and then hopped back onto the metro.

We headed to the arc of Triumph which was in the business area of town in a really nice park. We took a bunch of photos and sat around for a bit and then headed to a smoothie place fore lunch.

The smoothie place was pretty much the equivalent of Jamba juice but with food. I had a Mediterranean rice dish that was really good and a smooth called ‘think pink’. We were a little out of place among all the business suits but it was a nice clean place.

After lunch we jumped back onto the metro to the museum district. After a bit of walking around and contemplating we decided to go to the Coudenbourg museum. The museum was the archaeological ruins of the old palace that had been built over and a small museum with a collection of artifacts they’d found on site. There was literally no one there with us so it was very quiet. It was a little spooky but overall really cool. In a sense it’s exactly the kind of project I’d want to work on in the future.

After the museum we walked down to one of the cathedrals. It was a little strange because they had art featured in the church. I’m not sure if it was still used religiously.

We walked through the main square again and to the famous peeing statues. It was SO small like maybe a foot tall. I was shocked. I knew it was supposed to be small but I was thinking like 3 feet. Hahaha. We got  some waffles around the corner and went and sat in the square.

We decided to grab dinner at the place we’d had coffee and waffles at the day before. We had the same waiter as the day before and I’m pretty sure we were just the dumb Americans to him, especially since we couldn’t read anything on the menu. After talking to him we ordered chicken and French fries with a salad and we ordered some of their famous sour beer, Gueuze. Apparently a lot of foreigners hate it saying it tastes like throwing normal beer back up. Obviously these comments made us a little nervous. The first sip was pretty tentative but OMG those people with those nasty comments were dead wrong. It was by far one of the best, if not the best beer I’ve ever had! So yummy.

Our dinner was really good too; we ended up having half a chicken each that was roasted and a yummy salad and fries.  I felt like a fatty after the meal but it was SO good.

After dinner we headed back to the hostel and relaxed for a couple hours and then went to bed.

Day 8

We all woke up to a rock and roll song from the Spaniards sleeping in the room with us. Somehow they managed to wake up the entire room except themselves. It was annoying to say the least. Luckily Molly and I had to get up anyways.

We packed up our stuff and checked out heading for the train station which would be ‘obvious’ when we ran into it. Well they were full of shit on that one and we walked right by it and didn’t realize it until after. We were also told we could catch out train from any of the stations in Brussels, that was bullshit too and we had to take the metro to the central station missing the first train to Amsterdam. Luckily our ticket wasn’t time specific so we waited an hour until the next one.

The train to Amsterdam was about 2 and a half hour. I slept for some of it but the views were pretty so I tried to stay awake for some of it.

We went to the information center to figure out the tram situation and ended up buying a 72 hour pass for the trams. We caught the number 9 to our hostel which was outside the city center and checked in to our hostel. I think it was a really a hotel but it was cheap, we had our own room, but it was a bit of a dump. We dropped our stuff and left.

We grabbed some food and then headed for the Anne Frank Museum. The line wasn’t too long of a wait and we were left to tour through at our own pace with a bunch of other people. I’d read the diary in high school so it was all a bit strange. We saw where the business was run; we saw the secret bookshelf that led to the annex where they stayed. We saw their rooms, where they stayed, the windows blacked out from the outside world. It was small, depressing. The furniture was gone but Anne’s post cards and pictures she’d used to decorate the room remained on the walls. It was depressing. They had little videos talking to people who knew Anne including her father, Otto, the only one in the family to survive. They had pictures of the rooms furnished and anne’s journal in a display case. They also had a section dedicated to Margot, Anne’s sister. It was a interesting, eye opening, strange, irreplaceable experience.

After the museum we stopped at a tavern and got some pancakes, a must try. They reminded me of the thin pancakes my mom makes. We also tried some of the local beer. It was ok. They seemed to have a lot of foods from other cultures but nothing particularly amazing of their own.

We headed downtown and walked around in the red light district. It was a little early so there weren’t a ton of people there but it was still really strange. The girls wore little to nothing, attempted to entice the men in, and everyone walked by just staring at them. I could never choose that life, but maybe if you were brought up in a society where it was ok? I honestly just don’t get it.

We hopped the tram and headed back.

Day 9

We woke up and grabbed a tram to Dam Square grabbing some cheap coffee and food. We went back to the info center to ask them about going to the tulip fields. After waiting about an hour for our number to be called we found out the fields are almost at an end and a lot of the flowers are dead or drooping. We kind of suspected but I had really wanted to go. We decided to go to Haarlem instead which is a small town outside of Amsterdam. We bought the tickets and headed out for our last day in Amsterdam.

We headed for the Van Gogh museum but got pretty lost on the way. We were waiting for tram 16 and one pulled up but we hadn’t seen the number. The old lady next to us told us it was 16 so we hopped on. After about twenty minutes and completely exiting the vicinity of Amsterdam that a tourist sees we realized we were on tram 9. Not sure if the old lady lied or was just plain wrong, but I’d like to think she was just mistaken. We rode it to the end of the line, got off, and caught it headed back. We had to make two connections to get to the museum center. Crazy!

We waited in line for like ten minutes to get in and had to go through security which was anything but tight. They had a couple floor of Van Goghs work from throughout his life. It was absolutely amazing. I took my time which left molly waiting for me for about 20 minutes at the end of some of the rooms. I really love museums so I was really excited although there were some really pushy people there. The thing that annoyed me most was those with the audio sets that would then stand in front of the single plaque with the information on it. They wouldn’t even be reading the plaque because they had an audio set, they were just conveniently blocking it for those of us who chose not to spend extra on an audio set. Some of the people also bolted through the museum, almost as if they were only there to say they’d been there. Anyways, I really enjoyed it and I even found a couple paintings of his that I really like and had never seen before.

They also had a couple floors of artists from the same time period who had either influenced or been friends with Van Gogh. There were some pretty cool pieces in those sections too.

Lastly they had a Picasso exhibit. He isn’t exactly my favorite so I wasn’t too thrilled but we walked through. We left just as the museum was closing, perfect.

After the museum we headed for the Hard Rock Café. I know it’s totally cheesy but Molly had never been and we were missing American Cuisine. We ended up sitting in the bar area and our waiter was from Prague and now lives in Amsterdam. He was telling us about where he’d been and it sounds like he’s lived all over the place. We ordered a beer that is an Amsterdam beer but it pretty much tasted like a sweeter version of Corona. That was a little weird. I ordered pulled pork with baked beans and coleslaw. It was so good. I was seriously missing bbq sauce. We ended up staying for quite a while and drinking another beer watching all the American music videos they had on. A lot of them were from the 80’s and 90’s.

We got a recommendation for a ‘Coffee shop’ and yes it’s exactly what you think, It was Amsterdam, of course we were going to get high. Unfortunately molly didn’t have her ID to prove she was 18 so we had to grab the tram to the hotel, grab her Id and head back. By the time we got back, the Coffee shop was pretty busy. We bought a brownie and coffee. After about twenty minutes a couple guys asked if we wanted to smoke with them so we went and sat with them.

We all ordered drinks because the waitress told us we couldn’t stay if we didn’t and we smoked and talked. Two of them were brothers and all three were from Chicago. 2 had just graduated college and had last minute decided to all come to Amsterdam for the week. The two brothers were Lithuanian and the other Romanian and they all spoke the language because their parents had insisted on speaking it at home. I thought that was pretty cool but I’m not sure any of them really understood what a gift it was that their parents had given them.

After a while we headed out and though they wanted to go clubbing, I wanted to go to the red light district one last time since it was later at night. We grabbed the tram and headed over.

The red light district was a lot busier than it had been the time before. There were a lot more girls out and tons of drunk and happy guys walking around. After a stroll up and down Molly and I decided to call it a night. I’m sure the guys were disappointed since they hadn’t even wanted to go to the red light district but whatever.

We headed back to the hotel, showered in the only shower in the whole place and went to bed.

Day 10

We woke up the next morning, packed up our stuff and checked out. We caught the tram to the train station and from the train station we grabbed a train and then a bus to Haarlem.

Haarlem was anything but bustling because it was Sunday and we ended up in a café most of the day. We had some coffee, played some cards, wrote up our bucket lists, had lunch and finally left to walk around. We walked around the neighborhood and the canals, we walked into a couple stores and after I grabbed a pastry we headed back to the train station.

From there we grabbed a bus to the airport. The airport was the biggest I’ve seen since New York and there were lots of stores. We had to wait for a bit before we were allowed to check in so we got some food and sat around. We finally checked in and then sat by the gate playing “cash cab” on molly’s phone.

Finally the plane was ready to go and we grabbed our seats. There were like 40 people on the plane, sad.  They served us dinner which was a surprise and I got a glass of wine with mine for no extra cost. I was pretty excited! Hahaha. Then they finally turned the lights down and we passed out.

When we arrived at the airport we grabbed a taxi since it was the only thing running at 2am. Our driver didn’t speak English and was apparently not from Athens because omg he had no idea where we were going. We told him several streets by us including a couple major roads and even asked him to drop us off at a main square and he had no clue. He ended up stopping and asking one of the kiosk owners and another taxi cab driver. I don’t know if he was trying to buy himself  time or what, but the flat rate from the airport at 2am is 50 euro anyways and that was where our total was at so whatever the deal, we didn’t lose money over it.

We walked into our room nicely made up and cleaned by Maria from the Athens centre and went to sleep. So Happy to be back!

This week has been a little psycho with Spring Break starting tomorrow. Who knew you’d get two spring breaks when you study abroad in the spring?! Way cool!

Monday we had our monuments class where we spoke about the Persian war and 300! Which turns out is a load of crap …  kind of. I still have hope for that movie because I love it. Then I had art and we walked around  … OH YA, this neighborhood that sits right by the acropolis. It’s a lot like the islands in that there are no streets, only small sidewalks and lots of stairs in between cramped houses. The houses were mostly white with splashes of color. There were tons of beautiful plants and the view was amazing. It was the Greek stereotype every tourist dreams of. The most eventful thing Monday was probably Greek class. We all showed up tired and stupid. We hadn’t really been practicing what little Greek we know and we all wanted to review. This was a suggestion our Teacher did not want to hear. She kind of yelled at us and then class really started. We started going around the room correcting our hw and things just kind of lost control. We all seemed pissed off, no one was pronouncing things right, we’d done our hw wrong, and a few of us couldn’t stop laughing at the chaos. All and all we pissed our teacher off and I think a lot of us lost hope in our ability to learn the language. Class culminated with a quiz that most of us turned in knowing we’d done poorly.

Tuesday was another crazy day. I got up early to run to the National Gardens where I’m doing my project for art class to sketch some stuff up. It was really pretty, quiet, warm with a cool breeze. I drew a few things including the children’s library, which came out pretty good.  A weird guy came and sat by me in one of the more remote parts of the park and eventually asked for the time and struck up a conversation about my “painting”. I don’t think they quite get the difference between painting and drawing here. A few of us have had someone ask what we’re painting. After the park I ran to refill minutes on my phone. I ended up a bit lost and didn’t realize exactly how far the dumb place was. I had to run to the bakery after to get a sandwich and then run to class. I ended up with about 4 or 5 blisters on my feet that will be causing discomfort for some time. After that class we had our drawing class again and only a half hour break which is why I needed the sandwich from the bakery. That class we shared our drawings with one another and talked about our final project.

Wednesday was monuments class where we had our midterm. It was all pretty good except I identified one of the main historian wrongly. Oh well. Then we walked around the acropolis with our acropolis class. We saw some of the caves and some of the monuments around the acropolis. There was not a lot left of the temples and stuff. It was really muggy that day too which made us all a bit uncomfortable but it was still a pretty cool class. After that we had our Greek class. After Monday we were all ready to ditch. The beginning of class started with an “I’m disappointed in you” dad kind of speech from our teacher. Then she encouraged us to try harder and that she was there to help. The rest of class was actually a lot of fun and we all had a renewed hope.

Today we went on a field trip all over mainland Greece. We went to Amphiareion,  Rhamnous, Marathon, and Sounion. Sounion was by far the coolest, the site of Poseidon’s temple. The rain cloud that poured on us made the pictures look a lot cooler.

After returning home we printed off our boarding passes for spring break, Stephanie cut my hair for me, I came home and packed, fixed up my essays and turned them in, and now I’m stressing out about waking up in 5 hours. Man oh man.

3 days in Rome, 1 in Siena, 1 in Venice, 1 in Brussels, and a few in Amsterdam. Hopefully I return with some amazing stories.

So Thursday and Friday we were in Delphi. If you don’t know, that is mainland Greece, north of Attica. The drive was about three hours ish. We stopped a couple hours in which I thought was a bit silly. You can tell when somebody grew up taking road trips, that’s all I’m going to say. The route the bus driver took was really weird too. I don’t think it was the normal route someone would have taken. While we were driving through Attica and getting to the suburb type areas, we drove past huge mansions. They were absolutely beautiful with large yards. It makes me miss a simple house. Apartments here are in the thousands and yard space does not exist. Anyways, after an hour or so on a large toll road, the roads began to get smaller and the landscape more and more gorgeous. The mountains began to loom overhead and everything was green. We passed through a couple towns which Maggie told me were skiing towns. They were almost what you would think a small town in the Alps would look like. There were lots of wood structures and it was small and cute and there was fur in all the shop windows.

We first stopped at one of the Monasteries and walked around. It was gorgeous. The view was beautiful and the architecture was beautiful. We walked around the little museum and then we walked around the site allowed to do so freely. Jeff ended up sharing some of his knowledge with me as we walked around a bit together. Him and Michael are teachers at heart, always ready to teach others what they know, to share. Maggie and I lit a few candles in the church and we took pictures everywhere. We took a couple jumping photos with steph and they turned out hilarious. I think my toe was touching the ground in both of them. We stared at the view for a long time and wandered around every nook and cranny. Then we sat down for a quick picnic lunch of whatever we’d brought from home and jumped back on the bus. It was about another hour or so to Delphi.

When we arrived in Delphi it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, no questions asked. There were wild flowers everywhere, huge valleys and high mt. tops and we were on top of the world. As Jeff put it, we could see two seas, the small sea in the valley and the sea of olive trees that covered the mt. slopes. I think I took a million pictures, trying to capture the beauty of that place but those pictures will never do justice. There were so many other things to take in with our senses. The smell of the wildflowers was beautiful, there was a distant clanging of bells from the herds of goats, and there was a breeze that filled your lungs with such fresh air. I realize I sound like a poet on drugs right now but the place was absolutely amazing and I can’t say it enough.

And sitting there in the midst of all this beauty were the ruins of Delphi. The first day we visited the lower site which seemed to be a strange cluster of buildings. One was a temple, one was a uniquely round building with an unknown purpose, and the others were treasuries and such. It was definitely hard to pay attention as we stared out at the landscape and as we stared out at the random cluster of tourists.

There were so many tourists there and I wasn’t sure wehre most of them were from. Luckily everybody else is more talented than I am and knew exactly what languages they were speaking. Some were German, most were French, there was a group of Canadians, and then the almost out of place Greeks here and there. We joked around a lot about the other tourists, what they were wearing, how their accents sounded. In retrospect it was rude but at the same time I know some of them were talking about us.

After the site we checked into our hotel which was just around the corner, literally, just as awkwardly perched on the side of the mountain as the site. It was adorable. It reminded me of a lodge which was fitting since they get a lot of snow in the winter. Molly and I shared a room. There were three beds though there were only two of us, a large bathroom, and a fireplace. Romantic getaway? I think so! The window looked out on the side of another building but if you looked over the roof top there was a glimpse of that amazing view.

We began to wander around town looking at the shops. After a while you start to notice all the shops have the same things. They have the same jewelry, the same recreations of pottery, the same bags, the same postcards, everything. We started to walk around the town taking pictures and began to break into smaller groups. Molly and Emily and I decided to start walking up, no goal in mind but up. There were so many stairs in that town because everything is terraced. Those people must all be in great shape.

We started to walk up stairs until we found a path. Then we started to walk up the path. The path turned into a winding trail and we kept going up and up and up. The view was breathtaking, the exercise was amazing, and we were some dumb tourists climbing a mountain on a whim. We talked a lot on our hike. We talked about home, we talked about friends, we talked about lord of the rings because molly couldn’t get it out of her head that the trail resembled the trip Frodo and Sam took. I had to agree. Although I don’t think ours was as steep. Then we started talking about how poor Sam had to climb all the way back down because Frodo thought he ate that bread. In my opinion Frodo is a bit of a dick. Anywho, we passed a couple guys on the way. They were dressed in excercise clothes, hiking boots, a backpack in which they were eating oranges out of, and they had hiking poles. We must have been a site to see. Eventually we made it to the top. We were on top of a mountain, in a little shack that had a sign with the layout of what we were looking at which felt like the entire of Greece.

We sat up there for a while taking pictures, staring out at the view, laughing that we’d just hiked up this mountain with our side slung bags and not exactly appropriate shoes. We’d survived on a couple bottles of water and it had taken a couple of hours. It was the perfect way to have spent the day.

The hike back down was a bit more dangerous as we decided to forgo the roundabout trail and just head straight down. It turns out the trail is roundabout for good reasons and at a couple points we did a small bit of rock climbing. Honestly one of us could of cracked our head open on a rock but everything was fine besides a few stabs from the thorny bushes.  We ended up back on the trail about half way down and took it from there. Somewhere we missed a turn and ended up a little ways out of town right above the upper site. There was a beautiful view of their stadium so we took a few snap shots and were on our way. We were all exhausted afterwards. We were all sweating and our feet were a bit messed up. Thankfully we had an hour or so before dinner.

We all got back to our hotel rooms, showered and changed and then met everyone in the lobby for dinner.

Dinner was at a tavern that of course was about 50 stairs away. We all shared appetizers, had some wine, and then ordered our own dishes. Steph and I were going to get Deer but they said they didn’t have it at the moment so I ended up with “Sausage in Charcoal”. It was really good, although I didn’t eat too much of it because I was stuffed from the appetizers. We had Greek salad, stuffed peppers, zucchini pie things, and spicy cheese on bread. It was all so good! Then at the end of the meal they gave us a small spread of deserts. It was honestly a dream come true. One was cheesecake which actually tasted like cheese. It was delicious. Then there was a sweet whipped kind of cream on top of the shredded sweet philo doe stuff. There were a couple other deserts and they were all delicious. I thought I was stuffed already but how could I pass that up?  I went to bed fat and worn out.

The next day we got up early, checked out, and headed for the upper site. The upper site was much bigger. There was a street that wound its way up the slope called the sacred way and all along it were buildings. A few were small temples, most were treasuries, and then about half was up was a large temple to Apollo. The temple would have been enormous and grandiose in its hay day. Now it’s a collapsing foundation with a couple towering pillars. Close to the top of the site there was a large theater. There were a couple archaeologists working on taking measurements while we were there. Then after another steep hike up for about five or ten minutes, we found our way to the stadium. Michael described in detail a lot of the events that would have happened there and it sounds like they were pretty brutal. All in all it was a pretty interesting site trip and I learned a lot. I also managed to find a random water spigot about half way up that was the fresh water from the mountain. Delicious!

After that we headed to the museum. We had a small break sitting out at the café where we got kicked out for not ordering anything even though there were a million open chairs and it was the only place to sit outside. Dumb! Then we went into the museum and pretty much covered the whole thing. It was a pretty small museum but it had a lot of cool statues and things found on the site.

After the museum we had time for lunch. A few of us, including Michael ended up at a small tavern where I got a ham and cheese omelet. And I hear you say, that’s not very Greek, and I say, Exactly! Michael helped us talk to the waiter and also let us know you have to ask for your check because they will only give it to you if they want your table. That’s something nobody told us and we’ve felt like jerks every time we have to get their attention for the check. Oh well!

Then was the bus ride home which was four hours. Or at least it was supposed to be. I literally was asleep for all but like fifteen minutes of it so it could have been an hour for all I knew.

The last couple of days have been all about hw and catching up on sleep. The nights have been about having fun. I’ve learned a lot about Greek culture in the last couple of days just sitting on a bar stool and watching. The conversations are always interesting too. They aren’t scared to talk about anything, every subject is an open subject, and they are always eager to share or answer questions.

The highlight of my day was talking to eve on Skype. I informally met Rob over a computer screen and we talked for about an hour about anything and everything. She noticed I’ve lost weight which is always nice. We talked about the baby that is soon to be part of the family and I realized a lot is changing. Going home is going to be a bumpy ride and I only have a couple of months left here.

Craving, Chicken Bonez. Shout out to my Eugene peeps.

      Friday night was the beginning of our experience with Orthodox Easter. If you don’t know, it’s a HUGE deal here. Good Friday everyone is supposed to wear black for the funeral of Christ. The service began at 9pm but we went a little early because the churches are small. We all dressed up in our black dresses and headed to the church. We bought small candles when we got there for the service, and then stood in probably the worst spot in the church. The people there are really nonchalant about church. They talk on their cell phones, walk in and out, and chatter; all in all it was a bit annoying. Molly and I stood right next to one of the areas with a large flow of people. It kept me distracted most of the service. The service it’s self was the taking down of Christ off of the cross and placing him under a shroud. The entire time they’re singing the scripture in Ancient Greek. It’s very beautiful to listen to, it’s especially amazing how the sound fills the church. They then carry the shroud with Christ in a procession around town with everyone following with candles. We were some of the nicer dressed people there though we were told to dress nicely. It was very cool. The wind kept blowing our candles out though so we were constantly worried about the wind and lighting them off one another. After the procession they had some final words in the church and then we all headed home tired.

     Saturday we sat around most of the day doing some hw and then walked around looking for a tavern to eat the traditional dinner. We finally found one that was decently close and started serving dinner at 12am til 2am. Then we went to the internet café because our damn internet hasn’t been working. I applied for a job as an On-call Junior Archaeologist. I want the job just so I can tell people that title, too funny.

      That night we went to service at 11pm. We were some of the first people there so we got a seat. Slowly more and more people showed up as the service went on. At one point they turned out the lights and started singing even louder and the only light in the church were the creepy red lamps that had candles in them hanging by the pictures of the saints. If I was a little kid I would be freaked out. Then the priest came out from the door with the picture of Christ on it with four candles in each hand that were flaming and he was singing. He held the candles out for people to light their own candles from and it was a freaking free for all. The people up front were like pushing each other and freaking out about getting their candles lit. It was a bit intense honestly. Then they began to pass the light back and everybody lit their candles. The little kids all have decorated ones with cars and barbies and things on them. The tradition is for their Godmother to buy them for them.  Then the procession went outside.

     When we were outside, I was just confused. At midnight the bells of the church began to toll and everybody started kissing their loved ones. There were fireworks at some of the churches though I only saw a couple. It was like Easter, Fourth of July, and new years combined into a moment. Then the priest reenacted Peter denying Christ three times. I don’t know the story behind that exactly but it was interesting. The priest was banging on the door of the church and speaking and then a man inside would reply, and they did this three times. I thought someone was taking over the church in the middle of the service or something. Hahaha. Well then half of the congregation went back into the church and the other half left, I guess because it was too cold. We decided to just leave for dinner.

     Dinner was a good experience though there were some moments where you question tossing your cookies. We had a dill potato soup at the beginning with some other veggies. It was delicious, reminded me of a traditional polish dish. Then they brought out salad, cheese, bread Tzatziki sauce and humus. That was all really good including the cheeses. One of them was a really strong blue cheese, one was goat cheese, and the other was a light flavored gouda probably. Then it started to get interesting. They brought out cheese sticks kind of like mozzarella sticks that also had ham in them. They were delicious. Then they brought out a bread type dish that had chives or something in it. That was good but kind of bland. Lastly they brought out the infamous lamb sausage stuff. The intestines are wrapped around the innards of the lamb. It included the liver, heart, and I don’t know what else. It didn’t taste that bad honestly; it kind of reminded me of something I’ve had before. The texture was the interesting part. Everybody tried it but Jasmine and I were the only ones to finish ours.  It was a good experience. Then they brought out lamb and potatoes. That was better but I think we’d all been a little turned off by the sausage stuff. We ended up with a lot of leftovers that we took home. Finally they brought out desert. It was like oatmeal with honey and cinnamon but it held its shape, like slices of bread. It reminded me of when Eve and I used to put sugar and cinnamon on rice. It was an interesting dinner. It was nice to sit down with everybody like that.

     Yesterday was really quiet since most everyone was with their family and about 2 million Greeks leave Athens for Easter making it a lot quieter. Molly and Katee and I went to the National Garden where I did some sketches for my art folio and then we walked around. It was really relaxing. Unfortunately I’ve been fighting a cold and a fever so I slept most of the rest of the day. Then Molly and I watched twilight til we fell asleep.

     Today we’re sitting in a coffee shop, surfing the web, and doing hw. Tomorrow classes start again and Thursday we leave for Delphi. It’s a never ending adventure here!

This weekend has been one interesting experience.

Thursday night we went out to one of the local café’s that turns into a bar at night. We’d been there before but it was a little busier than it had been the time before. We met a hotty named Elvis, he was from Albania. He was really nice though the conversation started when he accidentally hit molly in the face with his worry beads as they flew out of his hand. Not sure if that was his best pick up line or what. Anywho, a few of us continued on to a bar called B Wild while Emily New and Molly remained behind to talk to Elvis and his friends.

B Wild is another small café that turns into a bar by night. A few of the girls in our program know the owner and one of the bar tenders from former visits there. They were definitely a couple of interesting guys. One of them looks about 18 though I think he’s our age and he just seems kind of young and doofy. He was the bar tender. The owner is 27 apparently, but he looks more like he’s 40 and he sounds like Borat when he speaks. All in all though, they were fun to hang out with. We ended up meeting a group of guys who are regulars there. They were all very nice and we kept getting served Raki, which I will remind you is that terrible terrible alcohol from Crete. We all ended up getting walked home separately depending on how long we lasted. That Raki hits you harder than you’d expect. It’s only 14% alcohol. It was a fun night overall.

The next morning we woke up and headed to the beach. It was a little more polluted than I would have thought but the water was really pretty. There was tons of small colorful rocks right along the water edge so we sifted through them trying to find the prettiest ones. It was a lot of fun though the water was really cold. We lay in the sun for a little while sun bathing but it was pretty warm and we were only there for a couple of hours. Unfortunately they have vendors come along the beach and try and sell their stuff to you. Emily, Julia, and Molly had some guy throw knock off converse shoes at them and tell them they wanted them. It was a little scary honestly. Not a very good selling tactic. We also had a group of guys attempt to take a picture of us. They used the middle school tactic of taking a picture of their friend and zooming past them onto us. I pointed it out and Emily New began to wave at them. It was pretty funny.

 Once we left we headed to a place called Goody’s. It’s their number one fast food place, a chain started in Greece. On our way there we met up with two women. One was from Northern California and the other was based close to LA I think. By the end of the conversation we were fairly certain one of them was a Housewife of Orange County. Very strange.

Goody’s wasn’t amazing although Molly got a burger and really liked it so maybe I just ordered the wrong thing. It was still a nice fast food fix though.

On the way back on the tram we sat across from a Mom and her two daughters. We’re pretty used to hearing people only speak Greek or some other European language we don’t know, a lot of French. Because a lot of people don’t speak English or not fluently enough to know what we’re talking about, we tend to talk about people and not mind what we say much. A bad habit, but I have a feeling they’re doing much of the same. Well it turned out the Mom and her two daughters were from England. Thank god we didn’t say anything mean although I guess Katee mentioned she liked one of their purses to Molly not thinking she knew what we were saying. Hahaha. Well eventually it became evident they were talking about us, the older of the two daughters, probably 12, didn’t understand why we sounded different when we spoke though we were speaking the same language as her. She wanted to know why we said our H sound so harshly and who decided what the right way to say it was. Why didn’t they teach us in school how to say it properly? It was a pretty amusing thing to hear her saying. I could just have easily asked her why she didn’t say her H sound more pronounced.

This is getting long already so I’m going to write up a second blog about ORTHDOX EASTER!!!

The last couple of days have been pretty busy and I feel like I’m constantly running on little sleep.

Monday after we got off the boat at 6am, we managed to get in a couple of hours of sleep before getting up to go on a church walk. Only about 8 of us showed up to go as everybody was tired. We started to trek downtown to look at a couple of churches. The weather was pretty miserable, windy and pretty chilly. It rained for a little bit too. We only managed to see a couple of churches briefly before they all started to close up. Easter week is a big deal here and they have important services and preparation all week. So in the end, the church walk was a bit of a failure because of the switched up schedule.

After we finished the church walk we began to walk around downtown looking for dresses. They wear black on the service Friday night as it is the funeral for Jesus Christ. They take the figure down off of the cross and cover it in a shroud and walk the figure through the streets of Athens, as a funeral procession. I didn’t bring anything black that is appropriate to wear.

We ended up in a shopping area that isn’t really touristy. It reminded me of the downtown shopping in Seattle. It’s close to the tourist stuff and some tourists find their way there but it’s mostly locals. I didn’t realize it, but it’s spring break here for everybody and their mother and apparently everybody goes shopping here as a past time. It was absolutely CRAZY. It was one of those moments where I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs just so everybody would stop and shut up for two seconds. We looked around a bit, Katee bought a pair of pants and Molly found a dress but I wasn’t really in the mood.

After such exciting events such as these, not, we stayed in the rest of the day. I watched a couple of shows, rediscovered the elementary reading level of Twilight, and ate some dinner. For some reason we all seemed to gain a second wind before we went to sleep. I know for a fact Molly and I both slept terribly. I felt like i was rolling around all night and I could hear molly doing the same. No fun!

Tuesday was a busy day. We had our acropolis class and then our art class. I hadn’t had almost anything to eat for breakfast that morning and we don’t have any time between our acropolis class and art class so I was running low on energy. Our art class was really interesting and we learned about the horizon and how it changes what you see and how it often isn’t what you would expect.

Wednesday it seemed I had everyone of my classes. I had monuments in the morning, a three hour break, then my art class again, and then we had Greek. My three hour break consisted of me running to the local fruit and veggie stand as well as running to the grocery store and then booking flights for spring break. Chaos!

For our art class we walked around the National Garden and the local area. They have a small zoo their with mountain goats in it. It turned into a National Geographic film while we were there. The two adult males began fighting with eachother locking horns. The babies were runnin around like maniacs and playing with eachother. They kept trying to jump over a low wall in the enclosure but they only made it about a fourth of the time. It was pretty funny. We stood there for a good amount of time just laughing and taking pictures. Reminded me of going to the zoo at home. It was hard to pull away from the action.

Today we had our acropolis class early in the morning and then a long break. I have Greek in about half an hour. During our break we decided to go shopping as Emily and I didn’t have black dresses. Luckily it was a little less busy than the other day which was nice. Still a bit chaotic though.The trip was successful though, thank god.

We’ve really started noticing how unorganized and rude people are here. Everybody jumps in front of you or tries to sneak in front of you in line. Since we don’t know that much Greek they try and talk their way in front of us. It was getting really frustrating today. Thankfully Emily isn’t scared to say something. The post office was the worst. The lady behind the counter and this old lady seemed to be fighting about something. The lady behind the counter couldn’t find something and no freakin wonder, she opened her drawer and it was a mess. I’m talking an angsty teens room messy. She was trying to find something, shoving stuff from one side to the other. Just to make things even better, she pulled the drawer out too far and had to have one of the other employees come over to help her get it back on the runners. She never did find what she was looking for and the old lady left all pissed off. Then another old lady tried to cut in front of Emily. Emily immediately pointed out that she had been there first and bought her stamps. Basically the only thing similar between our post office and theirs is the line, beyond that ours is much more organized and controlled.

I’ve decided the best phrase to know in Greek now is “excuse me, I was here first bitch!”

Holy cow where do I even begin…

We left for Crete Thursday night? No it was Wednesday. The boat was absolutely huge and we ran around for a while looking at everything. There was a restaurant, a few cafes, a store, bars, a dance club, and a bunch of other random things. I knew it was big when there was a freakin escalator. We stayed in these tiny rooms that had no windows which honestly freaked me out a bit. There were four beds, a small desk, a small closet, and a tiny bathroom. We goofed around for a while and then I finally went to bed close to midnight I would guess. I slept pretty well regardless of the motion of the boat and out wakeup call was at seven. Too early in my opinion.

We started the trip off with a bang, driving to our hotel for breakfast and to drop our stuff off, and then off to our first site. Knossos was a Minoan site that had been reconstructed somewhat in the early 1900s. Apparently at the time, that was appropriate, now it would be blasphemy to alter a site and attempt to recreate it. It turns out some of the things he recreated have been proven to be wrong. That’s what you get for assuming things with a limited amount of information. It was honestly a bit annoying to see these recreations made of some old material, some cement, and a bit of paint. We walked around for what seemed forever and then we were let go for a little while to look around ourselves though we’d seen most of the site already. At one point during the lecture I stumbled and my foot twisted into an awkward hole next to an old column base. The ‘protective’ rope had done little to block me from the ‘protected area’ as I almost fell. I regained my balance and stepped back onto the path only to receive a death glare from one of my professors. I really doubt my rubber sole did much to damage the stone column base but he seemed to think I’d ruined the site or something. It scares me just thinking about that glare.

From the site we went to the museum that was in town. The museum was unfortunately closed at the time and they had a limited gallery set up to view. Of course most of the famous Minoan art pieces were on display and though it was such a tiny room, we were there for about 2 hours. For some reason standing in place is much harder than walking. My back was killing me by the end and I hate to complain like a two year old but there were moments where I wanted to stomp my feet and cry like a baby. I survived though along with my classmates.

We were then allowed to return to the hotel. We were planning on going to the beach but the weather was a bit windy and chilly so we all ended up passing out in our rooms for a couple hours. Then we walked around looking at the little shops and such that the town had to offer. A lot of it was very similar to Athens.

Later we met for dinner courtesy of our professor Jeff. It was in a little restaurant along the windy roads of the town. Not a place a tourist would stumble upon. The food was absolutely delicious though. We had so much too. It was a lot of appetizer type stuff but holy cow. We had stuffed peppers, Greek salad, these cheese sticks, grape leaves wrapped around rice, a mushroom cheese pastry thing, lots of wine and so much else. We were all stuffed and a few of us a bit tipsy after it all. We also had our first taste of Raki which is the alcohol or Crete. It’s 14% alcohol but it burns worse than anything I’ve ever had and tastes just as bad. Man oh man, by the end of the trip I’d had enough to last me a life time, in fact that first shot of it was enough.

That night about 6 or 7 of us went out to this little bar nearby. We were def the only tourists and we met some interesting characters. One was mike and his friend Costas whom we informed had our favorite Greek name (sisterhood of the traveling pants anybody?). We also met a guy who informed us he was a singer. He later sang for us in Greek on the Karaoke machine. We also had a bartender who was really nice. She bought us all a couple of shots. Pretty sure one of them was Raki, GROSS, but the other one was this really sweet tasting something. Kind of wish I’d sipped it instead of shooting it. Avery and I ended up walking back together from the bar a couple minutes behind everyone else. We ended up jumping on a pink scooter to take a picture and then getting stopped by some old dude and his nephew whom we finally broke away from. It was definitely interesting.

The next day we went to Gortyn which was kind of a strange little Minoan site. There was an ancient theater area there and also an old script that was the laws of the area. There was also a large bee hive that for whatever reason we stood next to for a lot of the lecture. It wasn’t too bad but a bit nerving. We also looked at an old church. The church was more like half a church and the pigeons there were insane. There were a couple three stooges moments where we’d all run into each other trying to escape from the swooping pigeons. All in all it was pretty cool and we all got some good pictures.

After that we went to Phaistos. That was my favorite site of the entire trip. It was easily likeable because of the amazing view. It looked out onto the hills from the top of one of the hills and looked out to a couple of the mountains. The site had a couple layers from different periods and there was some interesting thoughts about what some of the rooms were used for. There was a long talk about how archaeologists rarely assign a bathroom as the use of any of the rooms but that one must have existed. Also how many archaeologists have a tendency to relate everything to sacred acts or use. I can definitely see that being true. We had time to wonder around that site too and a few of us spent most of the time sitting in the theater area looking at the view. It was absolutely beautiful.

The last stop that day was Matala, the beach. It was really sunny and beautiful but a bit windy. We had two hours and we were all starving. A few went to get gyros and hang out on the beach. The rest of us followed our professor Michael out to the end of the outcrop to a pretty little restaurant. The food was amazing. I ordered a traditional dish, and for whatever reason I can’t remember the name right now. Its potatoes and eggplant with meat in it like lasagna. It was delicious. Maggie, our Athens centre advisor type, ordered a bunch of dishes and shared them with us. It was so good, and once again I was absolutely stuffed. Once again they brought out the Raki, and the old lady who worked there informed us it’s good for digestion. I find that hard to believe since every time I have it I question if I can keep it down for a couple minutes. We ran down to the caves for a few minutes before we had to run back to the bus. It was a great afternoon, my favorite part of the trip.

That night we decided to go out again to the same restaurant. We were drinking wine in the hotel before we left. At one point the power went out in the area so we were all huddled together in the hall together talking while the French and Greek boys also staying in the hotel ran around singing and screaming. It was pretty obnoxious. When the lights came back on we went back to one of our rooms and were playing kings cup. We learned a lot about each other. It’s a pretty good bonding game truthfully. Suddenly a knock on the door revealed the woman from the front desk and she said “next time you are out, do you understand?” and of course no we didn’t. We were really confused. Then she followed up with “the hotel is not just for you” and stormed off. For whatever reason, whenever I think of the incident, she has a Russian harsh accent. At that moment we decided it was time to leave.

We were at the bar for only a little while when Mike and Costas showed up from the night before. They wanted to take us to the castle and somewhere in the conversation we were told it was a club. We though why not? Well I guess it was all Greek to us and just as confusing for them because we ended up on the old pier where an old castle stood. There was no club, just an old castle with no way in. We talked with them for a bit and then ended up walking back to the hotel a little confused but laughing about it.

The next day we went to Malia. I was eaten alive by the bugs but Maggie had some miracle cream on her that stopped the itching and reduced the swelling. For whatever reason it was a lot easier to pay attention that day. It was a lot cooler, cloudy, and the mountains were beautiful. It honestly made me a bit homesick.

After that we drove in the bus about an hour to another small site Tylissos. The site had a couple villas and one more building that was thought to have been used completely for storage. It was pretty interesting. There were a ton of snails at the site. And it was also the second site to have a broken bathroom. Not cool!

After the site we jumped on the bus for a three hour drive to Xania. I slept most of the time, and the scenery was absolutely beautiful for the parts when I was awake.

We went to Mexican that night which was a bit weird but you crave what you can’t have and there is not a lot of Mexican food here. I ended up dousing mine in Tabasco after they served it to me because Greeks don’t like spicy food so there was almost no flavor to it.

The next morning we stopped by the archaeology museum. It was raining outside and the rest of the day was free time so I think we were all a little bummed. The museum was cool and the trip was winding down so there wasn’t too much lecturing.

The rest of the day was spent eating lunch, getting coffee, eating dinner and jumping on the return boat. We walked around a bit, a lot of little shops including a hippie one that reminded me of Eugene and made me homesick once again. And then later some guy tried selling us salmon. All I could think was ‘you shipped that fish from where I live; no I don’t want to pay for that’. That too made me homesick. 

All in all it was an awesome trip, Crete is absolutely beautiful, reminded me of home a lot though.  

The last couple of days were really interesting in some aspects and not in others. School and the everyday stuff have been pretty simple. To note, we had a test in Greek class and there was an obvious conflict over a translation. One section had statements and we had to label them true or false based on a dialogue we heard. One of the statements said that Maria was not well. In the conversation she said the phrase Έτσι κι έστο which we were told means ‘ok’. Most of us interpreted it as not good, but not bad so we wrote that the statement that ‘she was not well’ was false. After the test and a heated debate, our professor informed us that Έτσι κι έστο was similar to meaning not well. She considered Ok and not well to be the same, not what I would have assumed in English. Oh well!! If all I got was one question wrong, I’m happy.

We also went to the acropolis museum today. We were all more rested and fed which made everything ten times better than our last visit. We looked at some of the preclassical figurines and statues. It was pretty cool. After we were done, Molly and Katee and I walked around a bit to look at some stuff we haven’t had a chance to see.

Most dramatic thing that has happened was my Monday night. I was over at a friend’s house doing laundry that lives about ten minutes away. We’ve been told Athens is very safe and that it is safer than Eugene or Seattle. I’m suspicious of everyone though as soon as the sun goes down. Thank god for that. When I was walking home with my stuff I ran into a guy as I was crossing the street. I went around him not thinking much of it. I turned around a few seconds later just to watch my own back; he had turned around and started following me. Naturally I went into defense mode. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, got my keys out and in between my fingers and started to walk fast enough to get ahead but trying not to look like I was about to run. He sped up with me which further indicated that he was in fact following me. Thankfully I ran into a few people on the way to my apartment forcing him to slow down and not run up to me. I got over the hill on our street and ran to our apartment door making sure the door closed and locked behind me. I went up the stairs pretty shaky and walked into my room crying. It was definitely scary and I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before.

Once I got back and had calmed down a bit, the night got more exciting. I was in the bathroom and realized there was not toilet paper so I walked back out to ask Molly. She told me there should be a roll on the bathroom floor. I walked in, looked around, and started to question my sanity. I couldn’t find it anywhere though Molly insisted it was there. Soon Molly, Katee, and I were all looking for it. We asked Molly a million questions to assure there had been toilet paper and then we started scaring ourselves. We started talking about ghosts, people stealing, looking in really weird places like the refrigerator. We couldn’t find it anywhere and Molly was certain she had put it away. It was nerve racking honestly. The night was a bit sleepless for all of us, all over a stupid roll of toilet paper. The next morning Katee found it in her clothes she had picked up off the bathroom floor the night before. Hahaha So I’m glad to report our apartment is in fact not haunted.

Today we leave for κρήτη also known as crete in the English language. It’s a long boat ride there, 8 hours, we’re sleeping in cabins on the boat overnight and then we start our adventures. We’ll get back Monday morning and since I’m not bringing my laptop, see ya then.

Ανδίο

P.S. Katee just put an awesome Hair wrap in my hair :)

Holy cow, I’m laying in my bed right now after a long weekend. It’s pretty much impossible to get comfortable and I can’t decided if I want my blanket on or off, but  I guess that’s what a sunburn does!

We left Saturday morning before the sun came up for Aegina, which sounds overly dramatic since we only got up at 6. Seems strange though that it’s April and the sun isn’t up at 6am. I didn’t want to move, thank god Molly and I share a bedroom and she’s good about getting up in the morning. Although sunlight would have helped a lot. We gathered the last of our things, which wasn’t much. It was only a weekend excursion.  

Molly, Katee, and I decided to take the metro instead of a taxi because it’s a butt load cheaper. We were a bit nervous though since all they ever tell us is that we’re doomed to having our stuff taken and that the metro is really crowded. After we bought our .70 cent ticket we went down the stairs and about 200 eyes looked over to the American girls with short shorts on. It was pretty freakin awkward, but our train showed up quickly. We climbed onto the first metro. We only needed to go a stop and it wasn’t too crowded. The second tram was packed though. We were a little freaked out as we saw it pull up so we swung our backpacks around to our fronts. It was a bit awkward and people were definitely staring, but that’s what Greeks do, stare, it’s a hobby here! We all gave each other a worried glance as tons of people passed by us out the car doors. We jumped on … and … we were the only ones in our car. Hahahah. All that adrenaline for nothing. We laughed it off feeling retarded.  Katee took a pic of Molly and me pretending to freak out. Pretty good picture, I’ll have to post it on here.

When we got to the port it seemed like everything was unnecessarily chaotic. Some of the girls we were meeting were already on the boat calling us to tell us to hurry up. There was no specific ticket booth, instead it’s a bunch of random vendors with the exact same price yelling at us to come to them. We just ran into the closest one and bought our tickets. We ran to the boat only to sit there for twenty minutes before pushing off.

The ferry took about an hour and fifteen minutes. From there we caught a bus that took about half an hour to the other side of the Island where we were staying. It was an amazing, beautiful drive.

Once we got there, we threw our stuff in our room, grabbed our bathing suit and bought five dollar “ray bands” and other “designer” sunglasses, ya right. The beach was really sandy, there was almost no one there, and the sun was blazing. Atleast it was blazing by our standards, all the Greeks were wearing long shirts and pants and though we were mostly crazy. We immediately ran into our soon to be friend.

There was a black lab on the beach that was absolutely adorable. He was another random stray of Greece. He had an empty plastic bottle he was carrying around and wanted us to play fetch with. We threw it a few times for him, he ran out and got it came back and we threw it again. Naturally we only threw it for him for a little while and then called it quits. Well he didn’t want to call it quits and he let us know. He barked for about 40 minutes, randomly attacking each of us with his slobbery mouth and wet sandy body. It was quickly getting annoying. Molly sacrificed herself for a while and played with him but he was never satisfied. He kept barking and barking. Once everybody in our group had shown up, the dog got even more obnoxious. He stole Julia’s water bottle breaking it open and drinking the water from it. Smart way for him to get water but man oh man, what a little jerk. At this point I was getting really frustrated along with everybody else. I was ready to take action. Everyone else sat around annoyed but no one was doing a lot in the way of action. I kept my cool laying on my beach towel but then he went for Jasmine’s water bottle. WARNING this is about to get violent. The dog grabbed the water bottle and everybody kind of jumped but not a whole lot else. I ran over before he could bite it open and pushed him away grabbing it from him. Well, he just came back at me to get it so I just kicked him as hard as I could. I ended up getting him right in the belly. He ran away, so I though mission accomplished. I’m not normally an animal abuser but this dog was past the point of being annoying, he was taking our stuff. The dog trots back over looking sorry and did the whole submission act next to me. I just pushed him away and told him to get out. After that he hung around, bothered a few people, but mostly was pretty good. Lesson learned, don’t be nice to the stray dogs, they’ll use you!

We left the beach temporarily for water and ice cream but for the most part laid there most of the day. I think most of us fell asleep at one point or another. We also took a walk down to the end of the beach. There was a little point where a rocky beach began out to a further point. Emily and I decided to keep going while everyone else turned back but our real motive was the guy with the jet ski. We hiked along the beach a little, eyeing him, him eyeing us, and finally he came over and asked if we wanted a ride. Hahahah. Too perfect. I went first with the older of the two, his name was Dino, and he was about 24ish. He had gone to school in Athens and now he was working at his dad’s hotel. He was leaving for Spain in a couple weeks to work there. He was really nice and took me all around the island. The water was so pretty. There were cliffs and rocky shores and old houses along the coast. It was so so pretty. Plus it was a jet ski so it was a lot of fun. When we got back Dino’s younger brother Carlos took Emily out. Afterwards we impressed them with our very limited Greek and thanked them. It’s one of those moments where I’m thankful I’m an adventurous person.

Once we’d all been roasted thoroughly and definitely all burned we decided to go to dinner. That was another interesting experience. The wonder bread they served at the beginning of the meal was an indication of what was to come. Avery and I shared an appetizer of Grilled eggplants. They tasted like charred potato chips. Not too good. After that Julia and I shared “Zaros” fish special. He told us it was fish and calamari. How could we go wrong? He brought out the plate and it was octopus, calamari, fried clams, shrimp, anchovies, and some larger looking fried anchovies… So I don’t even like shell fish because it FREAKS me out. This was definitely an experiment. We ate all of it. Be proud mom and dad!!! The fish still had their heads, and so did the shrimp, and ah!!! It was all pretty good but there were a couple minutes after we finished where I was fairly certain I was going to throw up. I think it was the nerves, not the actual food. I survived though!

After dinner we went out for drinks. We all ended up getting warm drinks because it was getting chilly at night. I had kahlua, coffee, bailey’s, and something coconut in my drink. It was really good. After we’d all had our drinks everybody left except Rianna, Jasmine, and I. It was fun and we just talked a lot. I decided to order another drink. We all wanted it to be something interesting and decided on “For men Only”. It was vodka, Bacardi, gin, and whiskey with coke. Hahaha. They brought it over with a sparkler, an umbrella, and a couple other shiny things. It was a little bit obnoxious, and I kind of wonder if they serve it to “the men” that way?! It was pretty indescribable but good. It didn’t do me in which was good, but also makes me think it wasn’t an insane amount of alcohol like the menu made it sound.

After that I continued to have one of the more terrible nights of sleep I’ve ever had. The room was freezing and I had a sheet and a table cloth type thing to cover me. On top of that I was in a cot that was probably used in WWII and made horrendous noises every time I moved. I unfortunately found this out when I plopped down exhausted and proceeded to wake up both my roomies with incredibly loud and jarring noises that it produced. I could barely move for fear of waking up my roommates.

This morning we started the day with a bang climbing an incredibly steep hill up to the Temple of Aphaia. There was really no one there and everything was really accessible. They even had a little museum with reconstructions of some of the monuments on the site. The views were breathtaking because it was at the highest point on the island. We were up there for about an hour and then hiked back down. Then we returned to the beach for one last fry. The dog was there again but was bothering a different group of kids. Suckers!!!!

We hopped on the bus back to the port and that marked the turning point. The air was so stale in the bus and all of us were sweating. Half of us felt like puking and the other half like passing out. I’m sure the sun burns and probably dehydration wasn’t helping. Once we got to the port we decided to catch the ferry that was in a half hour rather than walking around the port for a few hours. We grabbed our tickets and some pistachios which grow on the island. The ferry included a lot of napping and cooling off with the breeze. We caught the metro once we were back in town and grabbed a sandwich downtown before we walked home because I was about to pass out. I wasn’t feeling too good. The Sandwich was the cure and we made it home safe.

Hopefully my burn is healed soon and hopefully my skin doesn’t peel. We leave for Crete on Wednesday, what a life!!!!!

I’m currently listening to random songs in my iTunes, and yes I’ve got a feeling is playing. Turns out I have a lot of music on here that I completely forgot about. I have to charge my ipod because we’re going to Aegina tomorrow!!!! We are taking a ferry at like 8:15 and we’re supposed to be there half an hour early which means leaving the apartment at about 7am. Holy crap that is early, especially since we had a long day today and I’m freaking tired. Oh well, that’s what café is for.

We went to the acropolis today. It was amazing. It was pretty hot even in the morning when we left. As we approached the acropolis, guess who was there? Tons of stray dogs. Most of them were sleeping in the sun. They almost had a brawl while we were waiting to get in. The acropolis was pretty crowded with tourists, but all in all it was fine. We were told that was a good day as far as the number of people, which I believe. There were also a lot of school groups. They were very interesting. The first thing you see as you are walking up is a theater that was built by one of the kings for his wife. Not exactly sure on the details, sorry, but it was pretty cool and I guess they still have performances there. Cool! Then we walked up a zig zaggy path. When we first were let through the turnstiles we started to ascend stairs. Immediately to the right was an amazing view of the city. Lots of people were taking pictures. Jeff, our teacher, seemed to be on the war path though so we were all trying to take pictures while running past tourists. I realize I say tourists like I’m not one, but I’ve lived here a couple weeks, so …  hahaha.

Anyways, the first building you run into is the Nike Temple built on top of the Basilion. Not sure if I’m spelling that right, but it’s an old tower used in defensive cities. The original tower was build during the Mycenaean period. The walls are made of Cyclopean architecture. The story is the boulders are large and irregular glued together with smaller rocks and mud. During the dark age of Athens, the history of the construction was lost and generations later it was said that the boulders were so large that only giant Cyclops could have built the wall and structure. Silly, but it’s really what they thought. Anyways, when they built over the wall and structure during the classical period, they left a couple windows into the original structure, displaying the past architecture. Most of the people standing by the windows had no freakin clue and just thought there was an awkward hole in the building. A lot of the tour today was showcasing the theme of the acropolis displaying its own history.   

After that we walked through the grand gates to the acropolis. There were huge columns and decorative elements on some of the columns and the ceiling. Suddenly it opens onto a huge plain of limestone and marble. The path continues up to the Parthenon and The Erichtheion and in between are ruins from ancient temples and statues and such. It was amazing to see. It’s hard to explain, but to think that I am amazed today at the site, though much of the original site is missing, baffles me. To have been an individual of the ancient world walking onto the acropolis must have been like a dream, completely unbelievable and inconceivable. The columns are massive by today’s standards and the decorative elements are so perfect, so symmetrical often, though each was hand carved.

We toured the area stopping several times to talk about what we were seeing. Michael and Jeff, our two teachers, were filled with information and a lot of tourists stopped to listen in. They even pointed out points on the site where the construction was never finished. Some of the columns and blocks have been waiting for thousands of years to be finished. So strange.

A few of the Greek school kids thought it would be funny to come over and say a couple of things. They talked over Jeff a couple of times to prove their knowledge of the site, mostly the teenage boys. Then they continued to tell us how Greeks are Lovers. Hahaha. It was a bit strange but entertaining and Jeff played it off perfectly.  

One of the cool things we also saw was the Olive Tree of Athena. Legend has it that Athena and Poseidon fought over who would be the patron of Athens. The two had a race to the site of the acropolis. Poseidon was their first but no one was there to prove that he had been first. I believe, at this point, he turned one of the springs into salt. Athena being the goddess of wisdom, among other things, brought with her a witness and on getting to the acropolis grew an olive tree. With both claiming they had been first a trial was held and it was decided that Athena had won the race, hence the name Athens. That Olive tree stood on the acropolis throughout history until it was destroyed during war, but was then replanted in the 1920s in the same location and grows there today. Pretty cool!

After that we walked down to the slopes of the Acropolis where the remains of temples and the theater were. We walked to the theater and sat there. The site was where ancient plays were first performed during the competitions held during festivals, particularly during the Great Parthenian Festival held once every four years.

We then rushed to the museum which was to the dismay of most of us since we were all tired and hungry. Food and pictures weren’t allowed in the museum so we were all just screwed. We saw a lot of pottery and statues and the recreations of the Friezes along the walls of the Parthenon. I don’t think we retained a lot of information though because we were all having a tough time not acting like a 5 year old and sitting down and crying. We were all exhausted. It had been a long day. Thank god we’re going back a few more times, hopefully a little more rested and energized.

Afterwards molly and I got some Gyros and some cokes and sat down for a bit. I bought a new bag to carry my books and stuff in since I didn’t really have anything suited for that. We had Greek class but only for an hour since all of us were about to pass out. When we got back from class we packed up or stuff for the trip tomorrow, showered, and now its bed time. Thank god.

Be back on Sunday, hopefully a bit tanner and with some great stories. (Too tired to proof read this, let’s hope it makes sense.)

I’m sitting here drinking some tea. Its eleven o’clock and I’ve been up for about an hour. Class starts at twelve thirty so I’ve got a little while. Molly and I found out that our window has hurricane type blinds on it. It’s a different pane that’s right next to the normal window and when you pull it shut it blacks out the room. It’s for siesta. And yes, siestas are that important here. A lot of the stores shut down, kids get out of school, and there is a law about being too loud. Anywho, molly and I have been blacking out the room at night. It makes it a lot easier to fall asleep and I don’t wake up in the middle of the night as much but it makes it hard to get up in the morning. Molly is a lot better about getting up so she opens the window every morning. My eyes burn for about two minutes because they’re blue and sensitive to the light. All in all though, I feel a lot better in the morning, a lot more rested.

Yesterday we had two classes, Greek and Monuments. Monuments seemed pretty repetitive to our Acropolis class yesterday. I hope it isn’t like that the entire term because it’s boring to me. Some of the kids were excited because that meant they had to study for one class and not two, but the point of two different classes is to learn about two different subjects. I hope the trend doesn’t continue.

In Greek we learned some more verbs. We learned how to say “to have” and “to wait”. There are so many words to remember but I think if we all practice together it will be fine. I usually joke around with some of the other students and in the end it helps us all to remember, even if all we’re saying is “I want wine” and “What do you want cat?” We had our first quiz in Greek too, I think I did pretty well. I had no trouble recognizing the letters, uppercase, and lowercase and I’m fairly positive I translated everything correctly except maybe one. Hopefully I get a good grade and I remember everything as the term moves on.

We had a 5 hour break between our classes so a few of us went into the city center. We walked around in some parts none of us had been to, but it always sucks you back into the center. We saw the acropolis museum which I’d heard was ugly but I guess I didn’t quite get it til I saw it. The building is really industrial and modern looking. Not in the good way either. Why you would put something made of metal and glass next to an ancient acropolis of limestone and marble is beyond me, bad planning in my opinion. Then we found a café to sit at and eat. Emily and I ordered the eggplant salad which I assumed was a salad but it was more of a dip so we ordered bread too. It was delicious, kind of smoky tasting, but a little too much to eat by myself because the flavor was so rich. After that we got some gelato and it was delicious. We ended up walking back to the apartment, passing through the Zappeion to get some pictures.

When we got back, I took a siesta and then we headed to  class. I think the siesta just made me tired for the rest of the day so will probably avoid doing that again.

Tomorrow we are going to the acropolis for the first time. I’m really excited. It should be a lot of fun, not just because it’s a field trip but because of all the history behind the site. Our professors will be there to give us all their knowledge and I hope to come out of it with a lot more knowledge and understanding.

This weekend we’re going to Aegina. It’s the closest Island off the coast and the weather is supposed to be nice so we will be sitting on the beach for two days, whether or not we find towels. It’s really hard to find beach towels here for whatever reason. Oh well. All I need is the beach and the sun.

BTW my tan is coming along nicely!

So at the Athens centre right now there are 3 or 4 groups. For sure, us (the AHA program), Penn state and U of Chicago. So far we’ve met quite a few of the kids from all the programs, and as of yet, I’m not impressed. It seems everyone in our group is excited to be here, excited to be part of the culture, excited to learn the history and experience the Greek life. The other programs seem excited to drink, drink and um oh ya drink. And in between drinking they sleep and maybe drag themselves to class. Where is the understanding, the appreciation, the adventure? Why in the world would a parent send their unthankful, ethnocentric children to another country? It’s expensive and though it could be an experience of a lifetime, those kids won’t ever see anything past their own selfish, extremely American, motives. It gets to me in ways I can’t even explain. They will never be the ones to explore a new restaurant, a new part of town, to hike to a cool spot, to explore an archaeology site. They will sleep, sit on the beach, and drink. Just had to get that out there.

On another note… .

Today we had our second Acropolis class. We learned more about Athena and the many festivals held in Athens that commemorated both her and other gods. Turns out that the Parthenon is NOT a temple and that the richly created Athena statue in the Parthenon was not the most important of the Athena statues and not payed homage to. The most Important Athena Statue was the Athena Polis and was created of Olive wood. She stood on the North side of the Acropolis and was terribly decayed before it was destroyed during war. We learned so much in that class in the two hours we had today, it was baffling.

After my acropolis class I crashed the art class. I was really unsure about doing it because the class sounded really interesting but it was more on top of my three classes already. After talking to Steph and Julia though I found out the class is really an ongoing fieldtrip. The class is drawing. That is all it is about. The class takes field trips to important sites and draws and takes notes on the site and the surrounding area. The hw is drawing, and each student picks a site throughout the term to draw and observe. After it all, we get to take our drawings and things home with us. It’s a way of taking a piece of Athens with you, and they’re all things you know intimately because you drew them. I’m officially joining.

We went to the First Cemetery today. It was absolutely amazing. When you first walk in you see White and green. The cemetery is all above ground in marble tombs and there are trees and plants everywhere. The tombs are all closely situated and they all have family names on them. Some of them are huge and some are smaller but they’re all large scale compared to the tomb stones back in the states. There were flowers everywhere and themes ran throughout the cemetery. Lots of crosses, angels, doves, and the ages of the tombs could be guessed by what imagery they contained. Some had statues, some had busts, and some only had iconography. We did blind sketches of some of the tombs, which look interesting. Hahaha. It’s hard to draw and not look at the paper. Then we did some rubbings of patterns and names and dates and things we found on the older graves. All of these things went in our journals. I’ll most likely choose that place as my individual site. I’ve always liked graveyards for whatever reason.

After class I went to the roof of the school to do my Greek hw. I was alone up there so I listened to my music and enjoyed some alone time. I actually did a few ballet exercises to stretch out and relax. I also did some drawing. Not exactly professional looking but it was a lot of fun.

I came home and made some spaghetti and now I’m sitting here feeling itchy. I swear the bugs around here bite, or I’m just crazy paranoid. Dang!

HW time!