These past few days have been busy… nauseatingly busy and terribly exhausting.  The concert on Sunday night pretty much rocked… I mean, the ambiance was enough, but both the Kaiser Chiefs and R.E.M. rocked that stage.  All my friends and I danced like crazy during the second half of R.E.M.’s set since they played every famous old song of theirs… we were the one bunch of crazy Americans who stood out among our less enthusiastic Greek neighbors, but for once I didn’t care.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… class, class, class.  I spent Tuesday night kind of hanging with friends, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the smartest decision since I had a literature paper and presentation the next day and would have no time at all during the day to work on it.  I know I got a B on my oral presentation, which doesn’t necessarily kill me, but I know I could have done better.  For the first time, I’m really feeling the feeling of “Don’t want to do work” and it’s kind of scary.  I know academics isn’t everything (and really, that’s not the primary reason I came abroad), but I do want to maintain my GPA. I do want to show my teachers that I’m a smart cookie. But I also want to hang out on my friends’ balcony and gaze at the Parthenon from afar while discussling life, the universe, and everything in an urban Athens setting.

I turn 20 tomorrow. We’re going to the Peloponnese for the weekend… New Olympia, Old Olympia. Today we go to a dairy farm somewhere out there… we get to stop in Corinth for 15 minutes (hardly enough time if you ask me).  It’ll be a long bus ride, too, but I guess I’ll have my iPod (with three new “This American Life” episodes on it) and some reading to do for classes.  I’ll be back Sunday afternoon/evening, and if I’m not too tired, you can be sure I’ll be blogging about it.

The epic story of my lost wallet continues.  I now have an American Express card and my Arcadia student IDs as well as bus tickets.  Slowly I’ll put it all back together.  I even bought the same exact 3-euro wallet at the Tuesday Laiki as a replacement.

Crete is for sure happening over our October break.  My two good friends Mary, Kaitlynn and I are booking a private room at a famous Cretean hostel this morning and going to a travel agent on Monday to find us the cheapeast air deals… or if cheap air deals cannot be found, then we’ll be taking a 13-hour overnight ferry ride to the place. Yikes! Our friend Ryan is trying to weasel his way into our girl’s trip, but seeing as he was one of the people whom Kaitlynn originally invited, it appears as if it’ll be the four of us romping around the Island of Crete at the end of October.  A Mount Olympus trip is tenatively on the horizon, too, for the Halloween weekend.  And I think I’m going to volunteer at the Democrats Abroad in Greece’s election party at the Hilton Hotel on election night.  I can only imagine what kind of story that’ll be…