Epidauros and Delphi and Zeus – Oh My!

This weekend was a weekend of day trips.  Friday I hopped on a class trip to Epidauros, Saturday I rounded up some friends and bused ourselves up to Delphi, and Sunday I took a leisurely stroll down to the Temple of Zeus in between writing a 5-page paper I had not begun because of all my traveling. Good weekend!

The “Ancient Greek Sanctuaries” class took a day trip to Epidauros, a place with (surprise, surprise!) lots of ancient ruins.  There is an amphitheater at Epidauros, though, which was the main reason for my wanting to go.  Legend has it that the acoustics are so perfect in this theater that no matter where you are sitting in the audience, people talking in the dead center of the stage sound like they’re talking right next to you – no matter where you are!  I was skeptical.  The professor, Jen, asked for six volunteers to read and act out some ancient drama impromptu on the stage to prove the point.  Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity (hey I’ve raced at the Olympic Stadium in Olympia… I should totally act out ancient drama at the theater of Epidauros!), and I have to say, that theater really does have good acoustics.  It was kind of mind-boggling, actually, how perfect everyone sounded even from way up high.

That night, I was lucky enough to play hostess to Lauren and her friend Patricia who were on their way back from the island of Paros, on their way to Milan and eventually back to Sienna.  I got to take them to a Greek taverna and introduce them to a friend or two of mine.  At the end of our meal, we were brought some kind of honey wine (that’s what Lauren and I are drinking in the second picture).  I asked what it was because Jessica and I had had it before and wanted to buy some.  “Moschato,” replied the waiter.  “It’s good, no? You want more?”  “No, no, no!” I replied hastily.  “It’s free!” He replied.  “I bring you more!”  “Yes, please!” shouted Lauren in his wake, and he brought us out another round of the stuff.  Later that evening, Lauren, Patricia and I chatted deep into the night and the next day I had them on a trolley down to Syntagma and the airport at 7:30am.  It was a short-lived visit, but it was certainly better than nothing!

And then came Delphi.  My roommates, Eva and Elissa, and Ryan and I all decided to catch the 10:30 bus up to Delphi.  It took an hour to get to the bus station by public transit and then three hours on the bus, but it was well worth it.  We got off the bus, looked out at the view of the Corinthian canal and nearly died.  Then we promptly went searching for coffee.  “I love traveling with you!” Eva exclaimed when I enthusastically agreed that caffeine was necessary. “If I were with anyone else and suggested coffee, they’d tell me to forget it and suck it up!”  “You’re forgetting who I am!” I told her. “I mean, honestly…’

The archeological site at Delphi was just… unreal.  I mean, I could say amazing or incredible and still be perfectly right about it, but it truly was just unreal.  It seemed almost fake.  It was beautiful, it was impressive.  I felt like it didn’t exist.  Pictures can’t do it justice, really.  I joked with my friends that I was having a spiritual awakening.  Maybe I was.  Who knows.

Below the main archeological site with the Temple of Apollo (that’s what the big columns are) was the Tholos, a circular temple built in honor of Athena.  We visited that, too, along with an ancient gymnasium where athletes would train for the Pythian Games, Olympic-like events held here every four years to celebrate Apollo’s victory over Python.

We contemplated staying a night but returned to Athens on a late bus.  I was happy to be home and have a full Sunday to get work done, but still feeling as if I needed to do something, headed down to the Temple of Zeus down by the National Gardens.  It’s a site that’s so dang close, it’s a miracle I haven’t visited it yet.  It has an interesting story behind it too, one that would take far too many words to type out here, but one that can be read about here!

Also, the Athens Marathon was this Sunday, so I got to see lots of runners coming into the finish line at our local Olympic Stadium (“at our local Olympic Stadium” is a phrase I will never again be able to use once this semester is finished).

My mom is coming in roughly a week and a half.  I booked tickets to Rhodes Monday morning, so that’s for sure happening too!  I’m excited, but I realize that once she leaves, it will be December 1st, leaving me onlyl TWO WEEKS LEFT here.  Where is the time going, huh?  Where is it all going so quickly…?

Election Night And Other Musings

I think the Greeks are more excited than we Americans are to have Obama as our next president.  That may be a lie… we were pretty psyched at Arcadia at 6:00am on Wednesday when Tuesday’s election results came in.  Jessica and I had figured out about an hour before that Obama had probably run because with the 55 electoral votes from California and the 11 in Washington (both my and Jessica’s states respectively), he would have the necessary electorals to nab the presidency.  It was a pretty emotional scene, probably because we were all sleep-deprived, having gotten up at 3am to watch the results come in real-time and partly because it was just such an emotional event.  I admit, I even started getting teary when Obama started speaking and you could see everyone in Chicago crowded around to see him.  I was Skyping with my mom at the time, too, which was kind of neat.  I felt bad for not being at CMC, but it was still a memorable experience.  It’ll be one of those things in which people will say, “Where were you the night Obama got elected president?” and everyone will remember exactly where they were and what they were doing.  Well, I was in Athens Greece, celebrating with fruit salad and victory pancakes made for us by one of the girls on the program.

The rest of the day, however, though I was on a an Obama-high, I anxiously checked over and over again for results on Proposition 8 in California, the proposition that would ban gay marriage for good.  I was distraught when it passed… I started crying.  Really.  I literally sat down and put my head between my hands and cried.  I feel kind of ridiculous, actually.  I mean, yes I was deeply invested in it not passing, but compared to others out there, it’s not like it directly affects me and my life.  Maybe I was tired?  Maybe I was thinking of friends and others who would be directly affected?  In any case, my sadness soon turned into anger and all day long Jessica and I were ranting and raving about it (Jay-Z goes to school in California, so she’s politically aware of happenings in both her home state of Washington and California).  I say Supreme Court or bust, Prop 8!

In other news, my transition to vegetarianism is on the upswing.  Seriously, I just don’t really eat meat that much anymore.  I stopped eating turkey sandwiches long ago (turkey deli meat here is truly sub-par… it’s the one food in Greece that really can’t stand up to America’s version) and have started noshing on Greek salads and sesame-seed bread rings (which I discovered the other day are known as “koulouria”) for lunch.  Dinner is often meatless, too.  Lots of vegetables, salads, cheese, rice, bread… meat, not so much.  I did have some fish at the beginning of the week and Tuesday night I had a little bit of chicken (I didn’t prepare Tuesday’s dinner, though, seeing as it was an Eftichidou 16 dinner party), but mainly I’ve been living off cheese.  And I can’t tell whether I feel better or worse because of the radical cut in protein.

I think my favorite Greek dishes so far would have to be χωριάτικη σαλάτα (Greek salad, prounounced ‘whore-ee-ah-tee-kee sal-ah-ta’), κουκκιά (mashed fava lentils with olive oil, lemon and onions), dolmades (rice-stuffed grape vine leaves), and really, nothing beats a good skewer of chicken souvlaki.  I’m not a fan of gyros, but I really enjoy the meat in kebab form.  I’m not such a big fan of Greek desserts, though I have enjoyed baklava whenever I eat it (which is rare), but we have discovered this bakery above our grocery store that makes “the chocolate cake that changes lives” as we Arcadia folk have come to call it.  I have been told about said chocolate cake since my birthday and finally had my first taste of it at the beginning of the week.  It changed my life.  As one of my roommates said, “How can you exist knowing that something like this is out there?”

I am becoming more reflective, more nostalgic for home, and becoming pre-maturely nostalgic for the end of Greece.  I know I still have a month and a week or two left, but it feels so short.  And with my mom’s 10-day visit breaking up the time, it seems really short.  I’m going to miss it here… I’m going to miss the people, the food, the 3-hour coffee sessions.  I can’t wait to come home and be back at CMC with my friends and taking classes with professors I know and love, but still… this is kind of a hard life to give up.

And I don’t know how you can possible explain to someone something like this.  I really don’t know how you can put it into words.  Pictures hardly do it justice… sure I have these awesome photographs of temples and ruins and my friends and I acting like dorks at Arcadia, but no one will ever truly be able to “get it” (if that makes sense?).  I can show my mom around Athens and share parts of my daily life with her, but it’s not like she will have been here the entire time living and feeling everything with me.  I just don’t know how I’m supposed to remember this – and on top of that, try and convey it to friends and family.  You just can’t.  You really can’t.

I think I have Greece in my skin, now.  I don’t think I will ever be able to get rid of it.  Already I’m trying to plan and see when another trip back here would be feasible.  I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those places that continually calls to you throughout your entire life, haunting you.  In a good way, though!

A Candy-less, Costume-less, Pumpkin-less Halloween

Things are all happening so fast, I can’t keep my blog posts coming fast enough!  I just posted about Crete, and that happened a week ago.  Already there are a zillion more exciting tales to relate!

Basically Halloween weekend began Thursday night for us (huzzah for three-day weekends!).  The Arcadia staff put on a Halloween party at the Center for us on the night of the 30th.  They brought in chicken and pork souvlaki, massive boxes of oregano-seasoned french fries, and the biggest Greek salad I have ever seen.  One of the professors made sesame seed brittle for dessert which was fabulous, though as he told me, “You must eat and not think of how many calories are there!”  I laughed and then proceeded to eat three huge chunks.  Not that this is a topic I want to get deeply involved in talking about here in my happy little blog, but I think my time here in Greece is basically eradicating most of the big “hurdles” I still faced concerning what was left of my high school eating disorder.  I guess, though, part of my goal in coming to Greece was to get over my last few hangups, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise!

After food, traditional Greek music was blasted through the room’s speakers, and our Greek professors commenced dancing, teaching us some dances and steps along the way (the sesame brittle professor, Takis, apparently was an awesome dancer, so he mostly led the way (he’s the guy in the hat below!).  It was most fun watching them, though, because they knew all the steps.  It was not a late night, but it was enjoyable nonetheless!

I was a little distraught over the fact that my Halloween was going to be pumpkinless (the costumes and candy I could forsake, but the pumpkins were a tough one to give up), so I decided that I was going to do something fabulous on Halloween to make up for it.  Which was how I got the crazy idea to go to a Greek island for the day.  I grabbed my friends Jessica (whom I call Jay-Z) and Joe and down to the port of Piraeus we went to catch an 11:00am Flying Dolphin (a really fast little speedboat) to the island of Aegina.  The ride only took 40 minutes, and soon enough, we found ourselves out in the middle of the ocean!

My real reason for wanting to see Aegina was not for the town, though I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was a town with some history.  Apparently from 1830 – 1833, it was the capitol of Greece (the capitol then moved to Nafplio and finally to Athens).  It’s a town considered a suburb of Athens it’s that close to the mainland and a lot of Athenians use it as a summer getaway.  In any case, I went because I wanted to see the Temple of Aphaea, which was just spectacular.

According to European folklore, this is the final temple in the “Holy Trinity of Temples.”  According to legend, if a straight line could be drawn between the Temple of Poseidon (seen that), the Parthenon (seen that… twice!) and the Temple of Aphaea, it would make a perfect equilateral triangle.  Who knows whether it’s true or not, but it’s mystical enough to please me.

We wandered down to the nearby town and had lunch at a taverna overlooking the sea.  It truly was a great experience… Greek salads, calamari, dolmades (those stuffed grape leaves), saganaki (fried cheese), kittens playing at our feet while we ate… paradise!  We hung around on the beach a little bit and then took a cab back to Aegina.  The place is famous for its pistachios, and I was determined to buy some bags when I got back to the main town, but when our cab pulled into port, we realized we only had about five minutes to catch the next Flying Dolphin out of there.  Each of us threw down 20 euro.  Jay-Z paid for our tickets, Joe ran to the boat to keep it from leaving without us, and I sprinted off to a kiosk to buy some nuts.  It was like watching a movie in slow motion… Jessica running with our tickets to the boat, she and Joe hopping in while I frantically paid for my pistachios.  I heard them screaming for me, so I ran as fast as I could across the plateia, ripping my jeans and gashing up my leg against a bench (a bench! Who cuts themselves on a bench?!) along the way.  I literally jumped from the dock to the boat as it was departing into the arms of the craft’s Greek workers who promptly asked me for my ticket, thinking that I had lept on last minute for a free ride.  Jay-Z came to my rescue, and the three of us moved to the back of the boat, where we sat and watched the waves.

Saturday I had to go to the Acropolis for a school assignment, so I spent yet another day wandering around the Plaka/Acropolis area, but since I hadn’t done that in a while, it was actually rather nice.  Nothing else particularly exciting happened that day except for the fact that I found a taverna that night that serves tabbouleh (for sure going back there!) and… oh yeah, LAUREN WAS IN ATHENS!  Even if for only just an hour, I demanded we get a picture to prove that it happened.  She and her Scripps friend were on their way to the Greek islands for Fall Break.  Next Friday they’re coming back and crashing at my place for the night on their way back to Italy.

Sunday was spent doing homework, but that night, Arcadia had organized a group outing to a football (AKA soccer) game.  It was absolutely WILD!  The Greeks had all their cheers synchronized and everything, though we couldn’t really understand what they were saying (it was all in Greek, but I could pick out some words…).  There were sparklers and gunshots and screaming and fights.  It was absolutely insane.  We ended up standing in the back the entire game, but that worked out because I managed to make some Greek friends.  When they found out I was from America (“California?! Where in California?! Southern California?!”) they gave me a bunch of Greek stickers to “put up around your town.”  Honce, the one guy who introduced himself to me, then asked whether I would be interested in a “hairy Greek boyfriend” to which I replied, “Ohi, efharisto!” (“No thanks!”).  He told me I had pretty eyes in Greek (actually understood that one!) and then tried to tell me in English that I was pretty, but he seemed to have forgotten the word for “pretty” and instead it came out as, “You are good! You are very good!”  He paused and then burst out with “Pretty!”  In my opinion, “Good” and “Pretty” are not interchngeable terms.  Especially in contexts like that.  Finally, as he was teaching me one of the cheers, the term “s’aghapo” came up, which means “I love you,” which led him to scream “I love you, baby!” at the top of his lungs at me.  Then his friends offered me a puff of their big fatty pot joint, but it had been around into one too many hairy Greek men’s mouths for my taste.  Petros, our librarian and personal paparazzi, documented our interactions from afar with his camera.

Oh yeah, we (and by ‘we’ I mean the Athens team) won!

Great game.

Chaos and Craziness in Crete

First: Thursday night cooking and dancing. Second: Crete.

Thursday night a big group of us gathered at the Arcadia Center where Joanna, our housing director, was going to teach us how to make dolmades (stuffed grape vine leaves) and spanikopita (spinach and feta cheese-filled pie).  The whole escapade took much longer than expected and we didn’t end up eating until about 10:30 at night, but it was certainly a memorable experience.  Petros was snapping pictures the entire time (and jokingly told me that he considered naming the Facebook photo album “Bri’s Portfolio” I ended up weaseling my way into so many of the shots…) and though the food didn’t come out quite as expected, it was delicious!  Most everyone left following cleanup, but a few of us stayed behind to listen to Karynna play the piano… and that led into another hour/hour-and-a-half event of piano karaoke and “pretending” to Greek dance.  It was such a fabulous beginning to Fall Break!

My roommates departed for Crete via airplane early Friday morning, so I had the entire apartment to myself that day.  I basically spent the time cleaning, packing, eating and watching many episodes of “Class of the Titans.”  I met with my traveling companions around 6:30 that evening, and by 8:30pm, we were on a ferry on our way to Crete!

The boat was huge! It has a pool, even, though of course in the off season it was drained and not functioning.  Our cozy little cabin had two bunk bed sets and its own bathroom, and we claimed our beds, sat down to plan our weekend, and promptly fell asleep somewhere around 10:00pm.  We awoke the next morning at 5:00 in the morning and by 6:00, found ourselves standing on the dark, cold, windy streets of Heraklion with all of our bags, not entirely sure where we were going.  At this moment I tried to stave off a slight panic attack… we were three 20-something American students in a foreign city unsure of where we were going.  But I just walked on with my friends, hoping that we would run into our hostel/rent room hotel soon.  We did, and thank goodness they were open.  We checked into our four-person room, toasted our adventure with some cups of Greek coffee from the place’s roof garden restaurant, and watched the sunrise over the Heraklion skyline.

We put away our things and trekked back down to the bus station where we hopped on a charter bus headed towards the city of Rethymnos, which was about 1.5 to 2 hours away from Heraklion.  We wandered by the seaside and stumbled upon a huge open-air Laiki.  A little groggy still from waking up at 5:00am that morning on a ferry boat, we stumbled up a hill to the fortress of Fortessa, a Venetian structure that claims to be the largest stronghold in Europe.  I’m not so sure I believe such a claim, but it was still amazing to see nonetheless!

From there, we meandered down to the Old Town where little shops abounded and small cobblestone pedestrian walkways were the norm.  We sought out the old Muslim mosque, which is obviously not functioning (Muslim = Turkish in the Greek imagination, and Turks are associated with the dark period of the Ottoman Occupation…. not that modern Turks and Ottomans are the same folk, of course, but nations of people will bend history and twist ideas to conform to their beliefs, it seems…) and managed to find an old arch that was once part of the old city.  I consulted my guidebook for a lunch spot and found a cute little taverna called Lemonokipos where we dined under spacious lemon trees.  I had a (surprise, surprise!) Greek salad, and I got to try saganaki for the first time, which was basically fried cheese.  Yes, I ate fried cheese.  It was some kind of local Gruyere cheese, too.  It was delicious.  We had a bit of trouble finding our bus back home, but we managed to get on the right vehicle and soon were whisked across the Cretan countryside back to Heraklion.  We had dinner, drank some tea and shared some conversation on our hostel’s roof garden and promptly crashed around 9:30pm.  It had been a long day.

We tried to get out to the Samarian Gorge the next day (a rather dangerous 11-mile long gorge, the longest in Europe.  According to pictures, it looks a lot to me like Zion National Park in Utah) but received conflicting information from travel agents that the place was closed (the Gorge closes every Winter and Spring due to dangerous conditions.  Many have died in the Samarian Gorge…), so instead we decided to have an adventure.  One of the other girls on the trip, Kaitlynn, had read about – and I’m ashamed to admit that I had not heard of it yet – the Diktean Cave.  According to Greek mythology, Kronos, Titan and king of the Gods, was eating all the children that his wife Rhea was giving birth to because a prophecy had fortold that one of his children would overthrow him.  Rhea gave birth to a son she named Zeus and she kept him hidden in the Diktean Cave where he grew up until he was strong enough to overthrow his father, free his brothers and sisters, and instill the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses.  Seeing this cave sounded like a splendid idea to me, being the Greek mythology buff that I am, and so we began asking around the bus station for instructions on how we might reach this remote location without the use of a personal car.

As it turned out, the cave was located on the Laisithi Plateau, a land formation up in the middle of the mountains that was used for a lot of Crete’s agriculture.  It is a difficult location to get to, and there was only one charter bus heading up that way at 8:30 in the morning on Sunday and one charter bus leaving there for Heraklion at 2:00pm.  We figured to go for it… and just swore that we would be back at that bus station by 2:00pm… or else we would basically be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

We boarded the bus, which took nearly two hours to get us to our destination due to the steep and windy mountain roads (I’m still not sure how these massive charter buses get up to these places… seriously, our bus bullied its entire way up, forcing other cars to move and back up to accommodate its massive size… those roads were teeny tiny, after all!).  The bus driver was super nice and obviously noticed we were foriegners, so he deliberately told us which bus stop we wanted to get off for the Diktean Cave.  Once we disembarked, we discovered we had a whole other mountain we had to hike up to get to the cave entrance.  As we began our ascent, I suddenly realized that I had left my iPod (A.K.A. my life force) on the bus.  My friends at first tried to cheer me up, but when I told them I felt so sick I wanted to die, they backed off and let me vent out my frustrations and anger at myself in my own way.  As Kaitlynn later confessed, they were all keeping a good distance away from me while we were hiking up because they were afraid if they tried talking to me, I would push them over the side of the cliff.  I told her that she was a prudent decision-maker and that they had all probably done the right thing.

The cave was pretty neat.  Pretty deep and creepy looking at first.  But it was worth the trek.  After that, we had time to kill before our 2:00 bus headed back to Heraklion, so we played some cards while sipping coffee and hot chocolate in a cliffside cafe.  We found some ceramic stores on the side of the road, had lunch at a family-owned taverna (the most authentic taverna experience yet, I’d say!) and camped out at the makeshift bus station on the side of the road.  The bus was late by 15 – 20 minutes, causing us much anxiety since we were afriad perhaps we had missed our only ticket out of there.  But the bus came, and as we climbed aboard, I realized it was the same bus driver we had coming up.  He winked at me and held out his hand.  Sitting on his palm my was iPod, the headphones perfectly coiled around it.  I gasped (very loudly according to Kaitlynn) and repeated my many thanks to him.  I collapsed in a bus seat and literally started sobbing I was so happy.  My friends thought I was insane, but they were amused enough that they pulled out their cameras to catch my tears of joy and happiness.  “I thought you were going to hug or kiss the bus driver right there on the spot,” Kaitlynn told me with a chuckle.

The next day we hit the ancient Minoan palace of Knossos, which was pretty dang incredible if I do say so myself.  The second half of the day was spent in Chania.  Well, half of that half of the day was spent on buses getting to and from Chania, actually.  Nevertheless, I’m glad we got out there… it was a pretty little port, though watching the sunset over the ocean reminded me terribly of Laguna Beach.  I blame that day for the subsequent homesickness that I have been feeling this past week.

Our last full day, Tuesday, we decided to head down to the town of Aghios Nikolaos where we took a touristy boat trip out to the island of Spinalonga, one of the last well-preserved former leper colonies in the world.  Our tour guide, Viktor Zorbas (strange little old Greek man who kept telling us to be ferrymen and ferrywomen who would eradicate hate and prejudice among peoples.  He also cracked a pretty good joke at the end: “Name one time when a politician has told the truth!  Give up?  When they look at another politician and call them a liar!”  Yeah, I didn’t think it was ravingly funny, either).  The island was really neat, though.  Like really neat.

Our ferry left that night at 8:30 and we took another overnight trip back to Athens.  We got in around 6:00am and zombie-like rode the metro home.  I got in around 7:00am to find my roommates asleep.  I put on water for coffee and started the day like any other day in Athens.

There were some things I missed on the trip, of course, but that just gives me all the more reason to return.  I will return, make no doubt about that.

Crete-ward Bound

So this final week before Fall Break actually didn’t turn out to be as horrific as I anticipated.  Yes, I still had a paper due Monday and yes, I still took my Greek language midterm on Tuesday, but my Wednesday literature paper got cancelled and my Thursday paper was easily written in 45 minutes.

Monday night, Brady Kiesling, a former U.S. diplomat, came to the Center to talk to us about the upcoming election and what’s at stake (The Nation does a great job of summarizing Kiseling’s story).  I wish I could have had, like, an hour for a one-on-one interview.  He was just so fascinating and knowledgable and skillful with speech.  He had me enchanted, hanging onto his every word.

Tuesday I took my Greek language midterm, which was hard (it’s Greek, after all!), but I’m pretty sure I didn’t fail, so that’s good.  Of course, we had another Tuesday night dinner party, and this time I was actually allowed to help cook!  While Ryan tended to his lamb stew, I made authentic Greek fava, which is basically a fava bean puree with lemon juice, olive oil, onions, salt, pepper and garlic.  The recipe didn’t call for garlic, but I threw it in there anyways.  Everything tastes better with garlic.  My dish was a hit with all, which made me proud of my mad cooking skills.  Barred from the kitchen after dinner (every time I go over to Eftihidou, I always end up washing their dishes, so by the decree of Ryan and Joe, I was not allowed to do dishes that night), I hung out in the main room to chat and share music.  I was all set to leave around 12:15am, and then Joe pulled out the balcony card.  “Fifteen minutes,” I told him, “then I’m gone.”  So Jessica, Joe, Ryan and I headed out to the balcony and, well, fifteen minutes turned into fifty and I didn’t get home until 1:15 in the morning.  But how can I turn down hanging out on that balcony with that awesome Parthenon view?  Luckily staying up so late gave me the chance to do a quick check in with Brendan, so I’m not complaining.

Wednesday was rather uneventful with classes and such, but that night Petros did show “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which meant so much more to me now after living in this culture for some time.  There were so many references and little tips to the Greek way of life that I never would have caught before.  And whenever the family would start speaking Greek, I was excited to discover that I actually understood some of it!

Today is our last day of classes before our October Break begins.  Tonight I might learn how to make dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) and spanakopeta or I might go out for Lebanese food (there’s only one restaurant in this part of Athens for that kind of cuisine).  Or I might go out to a club/bar.  Or I might do all three.  We’ll see where the evening takes me.

Tomorrow night, our boat for Crete leaves at 8:30pm.  I won’t be back until about 6:00am on Wednesday morning my time, and I’m pretty sure I’m not taking my computer, so until next week, Αντίο!

Adventures in Athens

So I stayed in Athens this weekend but nevertheless managed to have some pretty dang good adventures.  Thursday night, my friends Jessica, Cory, Ryan, Joe and I planned a cheese fondue night since a majority of the people had never had fondue and I insisted they try it.  Joe made caprese, I made a fantastic Greek salad, we heated up the Gruyere/Swiss cheese mixture and dipped broccoli, peppers, bread and potatoes into it and literally ODed on cheese.  I’m swearing it off for some time, I swear.  I had brought over my laptop since Joe and Cory proved to be fellow music snobs, and the five of us sat on their balcony, watching the Parthenon and trading music recommendations.  Jessica and I didn’t mean to stay there until 2:00 in the morning, but as I’m quickly learning, in Greece, nothing ever goes as planned.

Friday I went to a Greek pharmacy for the first time.  I have been trying to fight off a cold for some time, and though I felt like I was winning, my American medicine ran out, so Joanna, the housing director, took me down to the pharmacy for some new meds.  The woman behind the counter asked Joanna what was wrong and after telling her my symptoms, she prescribed some de-congestant pills and some wicked nasty cough syrup.  Both cost about eight euro (that’s about $12 in American dollars) and by the afternoon, I was already feeling better.

I did a little family gift shopping during the day and then that night, my friends and I finally made it to Gazi, the old gas lamp district of Athens with an awesome nightlife scene.  We went out to dinner first, which was excellent as usual.  The waiters serving us seemed to have an affinity for us and ended up giving us free shots of this kind of honey ale after dinner. I’m not sure what it was… it looked like a less viscous honey and was obviously alcoholic.  We walked to Syntagma, jumped on the metro, and took off towards Gazi.  My friend Carrie had found a little club/bar called SoHo (like in Manhattan!) and we took over the back room and danced the night away.  We didn’t actually get there until about midnight, so you can imagine we were out pretty late.  A few of us (and my family members are going to probably all kill me when I say this) ended up walking back home… at 3:00 in the morning… I didn’t actually get into bed until about 5:00 am, which comes to show you how far away from home we were.  Looking back, it probably wasn’t the safest decision, but we made it back with no problems and for that, I know I am extremely lucky.  Wandering around some sketchy parts of Athens at 4:00 in the morning is probably not an experience I should repeat.  But man, we just didn’t want to get a taxi…

I woke up at 9:00am on Saturday (yes, went to bed at five and woke up at nine. Yikes!) and did a little homework before heading back to Syntagma for some pants shopping.  Then later, I made salmon for a few friends and we went out to see “Burn After Reading” since Petros, our friendly librarian, helped me find a nearby theater where it was playing.  Seeing a movie in a Greek movie theater was certainly a new experience.  Our seats were actually assigned and a woman at the door showed us to them at the beginning.  People are way less courteous in Greece, it seems… a woman answered her cell phone twice during the movie and didn’t even bother to lower her voice.  Also, there were three of the most epic cigarette commercials before the movie began… commercials I’m sure I’d never ever see in the United States.  Oh yes, and the movie had Greek subtitles, which was super fun because I kept trying to figure out what words meant what.

After the movie, we went out for gelato and somewhere walking down Immitou Street (the main drag of Pagrati), we heard some girly voices screaming our name.  We looked down one of the streets and saw a bunch of our Arcadia friends standing on the balconies of one of their apartments.  They were playing 90s rap and dancing and screaming “Yassas!” at all the cars going by.  After getting gelato, we went back where I proceeded to join them in being the crazy Americans spreading love to the endless line of cars passing through the area.

Today I had a literature make-up class, which basically meant going to the Museum of Modern Art, seeing an exhibit, almost buying a pair of 45-euro earrings (they were really cool and really unique… if I don’t find my special piece of jewelry by the end of my stay at Athens, I am so going back to get them) and going out for lunch.  I left my peers who were going out for coffee and came back home to do some homework – but not before buying a piece of chocolate baklava!  Apparently, there is this couple in Athens, and they have actually patented chocolate baklava and there are only two stores in all of Athens that sell them… one of them is right next to the Eftihidou apartment where we are having our Tuesday night dinner parties.  I had to run back there because I accidentally left my garlic press there the night before, and the baklava was there calling to me…

For about 45 minutes this afternoon today it rained raindrops the size of hail.  It was so hot all morning and now it’s getting very cold.  The weather is schizophrenic.

I have a paper due every day this week save Tuesday in which I have a Greek language midterm.  It’s going to be a tough week… but I have Crete at the end to spur me on!

Puttering Around The Peloponnese

It seems like eons ago that my wallet went missing even though it was only last week. And it seems like ages since I took a shot of ouzo at midnight in a village high in the Peloponnese mountains to commemorate my 20th birthday, but that was only Thursday/Friday night.  It’s been an incredible weekend.  Allow me to begin.

We left early on Thursday morning at about 9:00am.  After purchasing two bread rings for the road (one of the huge food/snack items in Greece are these rings of bread covered in sesame and sometimes sunflower seeds. They are the most delicious things after feta cheese!), we boarded two charter buses and began our long trek across the Greek countryside.  To my joy and delight, we took a 15-minute pit stop at Corinth to view the canal.  The canal connects the Gulf of Corinth to the Saronic Gulf and was just amazing!  People were afraid to venture out to the bridge’s center because it was so high and vertigo-inducing, but after egging everyone on with promises of how amazing the view was, my Arcadia peers slowly inched their ways out to join me…

Next we stopped at a cheese factory… a small private family-owned place that was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere.  They weren’t making cheese at the time because all of the animals were pregnant and there was no milk available for cheese-making, but the owner did pull out a wheel of Mizithra cheese for us to try.  It was so delicious, I went back for a second piece.  Then I found out that it was a cheese made with goat’s milk. Mhm. In any case, the surrounding area afforded some pictures of epic proportions to say the least!

Into the Peloponnese mountains we climbed, the buses ascending steep switchbacks and hairpin turns that I’m sure I would have struggled to clear even in my own little Toyota Corolla from back home.  Those bus chauffers really are a whole new breed of driver.  We arrived in the mountain village of Kalavrita, a town with a tragic past in regards to World War II and occupation.  We had the evening off, so a small group of us went exploring and actually wound up hiking our way up to the Kalavrita monument (which we later found out we would visit the next day).  We watched the sun go down and then went to grab dinner at a local taverna.  Then the countdown began to midnight… my birthday!

I was all set to head to bed, but my roommates found me wandering with some pals in Kalavrita in the dead of night, so they dragged me to the one happening bar in the little village and hooked me up with some ouzo and vodka tonic.  I didn’t stay up that late, though, and woke up the morning with a slight headache… ouzo is strong stuff.  I think my subsequent sickness on the bus might have been a result of not enough sleep paired with the shots from the night before.  It wasn’t that I was hungover or anything… just exhausted, and the bus ride was rather claustrophobic and nauseating due to the windy mountain roads.  But it all worked out.  We got to see some other small villages along the way to New Olympia as well as a Water Power Museum, which was, believe or not, was one of the prettiest little places I’ve been to yet! From there, we snaked through the mountains again and found ourselves in New Olympia.  Most people slept on the bus, but I was wide awake, and I watched the sun go down to some amazing music.  I kept thinking, “I’m in Heaven.”  It was a great birthday gift to be sure.

We stayed at a pretty fancy hotel.  That night, a big group of my friends took me out to dinner.  We went out for dessert later where I faced one of the biggest dilemmas of my time here… baklava or kataifi? My friend Ted informed me that the Arcadia staff would be buying me a big piece of baklava for me back in Athens (they did!), so I settled for the nest-looking kataifi.  I also stumbled upon this awesome bookstore in the village center run by a really nice man who tried to help me with some of my Greek skills.  What else could I do but purchase a book from him?!

The next day we went to the ancient archeological site in Ancient Olympia where ruins abounded and the very first Olympic track and stadium are.  My friends Jessica, Allison, Ryan, Joe and I had a footrace across the stadium when we got there.  How many people can say they raced their friends at the original Olympic Stadium, hmm?  Not too many, I am guessing…

We jumped on a bus again and headed for the Frankish castle of Klemoutsi.  As we approached from afar, all I could think of was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which prompted me to make a joke to my friend Jessica, which fostered many great impersonations and movie quotes as we trekked up the hill to get to the ancient thing. After my history professor, Stavros, who had tagged along on the weekend trip, finished his speech about the Frankish origins of the place and the importance of its location in the Peloponnese, I took off on my own and climbed up a ladder, which afforded amazing views.  I have to say, I scaled some pretty gnarly walls that day… and I probably climbed up to places that I wasn’t allowed to.  My arms are still a little sore from all of the hoisting and climbing, I must admit.

We stopped at the Agia Sophia on the way home (ancient sanctuary almost completely gone by now) and then returned to New Olympia.  That night consisted of another dinner out (I ate a Greek salad every day of this trip – no lie!) and more dessert to follow.  We tried to hit up a dance club called “Calypso,” but unfortunately dance clubs don’t open until around 11:30pm, and we were beat by then.  So I went to bed with no regrets.

The next day we left early and began our voyage home.  We stopped in a little mountain village called Lagadia, where I bought (surprise surprise!) a Greek salad for lunch and then made friends with some old Greek man selling fruit on the side of the road.  He gave me a big bag of green grapes, which I happily stowed away on the bus with me.  Literally, all I ate on Sunday was bread (these delicious little ciabatta rolls from the hotel), cheese (mainly feta) and tomatoes.  Plus some grapes and an apple.  How European of me, right?

Last stop! An organic vineyard and winery called Spiropoulos vineyard.  They opened up the place especially for us and set up a beautiful little wine-tasting event with red wine, white wine, cheese, and bread.  After consuming about two or three glasses of wine (one white, two red), I was feeling pretty good and proceeded to nosh down about half a loaf of bread and about the equal amount of cheese.  The best part about the whole thing?  We actually got to purchase the wine we tasted afterwards.  I am now the proud owner of both a red and white bottle of this delicious organic wine.

The interesting thing about the winery, though, was the economic ideology and business model that the owner of the vineyard followed.  He kept talking to us about how businesses should not exist to maximize profits; they should exist to provide excellent products and offer good services to its people.  A business, he further explained, should exist for the betterment of all humanity – not just for the gains of a few individuals.  It sounded so different from the way America runs.  I swear, if some CMC economics professors had heard this man speak, they would have keeled over in pain with his words.  But after listening to this man, I seriously began taking into consideration studying abroad a second semester.  I love the Greek attitude towards life.  It’s so less stressful than in the United States.  I feel like I could eventually come to live here… maybe when I’m old and unable to really do much else, I’d come back to Greece to teach English or something.  I don’t know.  The options are endless.

Finally, we stopped at the Agia Foteine, a church made to look like it was built in ancient times.  It looked like a funhouse to me.  I accidentally walked into the “holy place” inside the church, which Jan informed me was blasphemous, but since no one who would really care was there, it was okay for now… I just hope the hand of God doesn’t strike me down now for my insolence.

All in all, it was an amazing trip, though I could have done with less charter bus travel.  My birthday was pretty awesome, and now that I am back, the homework has stacked up like no other.  This weekend will be spent in Athens, hopefully seeing and doing things (dance club as a belated birthday celebration, perhaps!).  Next weekend I go to Crete for our October break.  In November, a trip to Thessolaniki may occur with my history class, and I am trying to put together a Delphi/Meteora jaunt.  Mount Olympus may or may not happen.  There’s a movement on the table to do the last weekend in December in Santorini because no one in their right mind would go to Santorini in December except for people who just want to hike… it’d be a way to avoid the tourists.  We shall see… we shall see…

An Exciting Update On Not So Exciting Things

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…

A Month of Attica Dwelling

I basically lost everything this weekend. Every credit card, form of identification and about 275 euro were taken along with my pick-pocketed three-euro Laiki wallet.

But I’m telling the story out of chronology. Let me begin from the beginning. Or at least the beginning of the weekend. Which was Thursday.

So Thursday night a small group of us went over to Theissio, a cool little place near the Acropolis, because MTV was putting on free concerts there. All week long MTV has been celebrating its debut in Greece with free musc performances. We didn’t really know who the bands were, and some of them were singing in Greek, but it was outside and it was live music, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The culmination of this MTV week is tonight with a free R.E.M. and Kaiser Chiefs concert and I plan on being there at least 3 hours before it begins.  I figure I should show up early because all of the Greeks will be late. Hehe… look at me stereotyping and everything!

Friday morning was nice, though the Laiki was somewhat of a disappointment. Sub par fruits and vegetables this week. That should have been a warning sign. I met the group heading to the island of Syros at the downtown metro station in Syndagma Square at 2:30pm since we had to catch a 4:00pm boat out from the port, Piraeus.  I had a backpack and a side bag, and I guess I forgot to zip up all my bags because when we got to Piraeus, right as we’re getting to the dock, I reached into my bag and realize that I couldn’t feel my wallet. I fell to the ground on the spot, forcing people to go around me, and I began tearing through my bag, throwing things everywhere.  I nearly fainted when I realized my wallet was gone. I had all three credit cards, all my forms of identification and about 275 euro in there.  Part of me wanted to jump back on the metro and go home, but all my friends would have none of it.  They picked up my stuff, helped me to my feet and walked me down to the port.  When I got on the boat, I dumped everything out again, but to no avail. I called my mom to tell her to cancel my cards, pulled out my iPod, tuned out the world, and stared off the side of the boat at the ocean for literally half of the three-and-a-half hour boat ride, absolutely numb.

We got off the ship at 7:30, checked into our hotel, and went on a small walking tour of the town.  Syros houses the capitol of the Cyclades Island chain in Greece, and the architecture of the main city is quite interesting. I was tagging along the Greek architecture class, so it was kind of fun to have the professor explain all of the different styles of buildings we were seeing.  We all went to dinner at a little taverna where I ordered a Greek salad and drank two glasses of the communal white wine.  Between the alcohol and the delicious food, I was feeling pretty good, and not even my lost wallet could ruin the night.  My friends spotted me money for dinner and my pal Allison loaned me 50 euros until I could get access into my bank accounts again.  The professor, Dimitria, bought each table different appetizers to try (we got cheese and tomato stuffed eggplants) and went around to ask us how the food was.  She looked at me and must have seen the pink glow in my face because she said, “You have drank just enough! Bravo!” in a cute little Greek accent. It made my night.

We were up early the next day to visit a shipyard, which was pretty cool. We had to wear hard hats and our tour guide actually ended up living a street away from me here in Athens, so we had a little discussion (part Greek, part English, though mostly English) about our common living area in the city.  I started laughing to myself at one point and my friend Mari asked me what was up.  “I feel like I’m in a place in a video game,” I replied.  I’m a dork, I know, but I really felt like I was at Juno in Final Fantasy 7.  These dang video games are ingrained in my soul, I tell you.

Syros has a lot of history, and to save a long history lesson, I will say that there are two hills in the main city… one of them has a huge Catholic church on top while the other has a huge Greek Orthodox church.  From afar, you can immediately tell the differences in architecture.  In any case, we hiked up to the top of the hill with the Catholic church and, much to my joy, found an awesome view of the city.

We visited an opera house next that was built to look like the famous opera house (I can’t remember its name now for the life of me) in Milan.  We weren’t allowed to use flash photography so my photos came out really blurry, but there were so many private boxes in the place, I sat down in one of the ones at the very top and imagined for a moment that I was in Paris watching The Phantom of the Opera or something.

Lunch was at another taverna where I had the most amazing salad (that wasn’t a Greek salad) since coming here. It was full of sundried tomatoes and had some cheese made in Syros and was apparently a specialty of the island.  The whole thing was tossed in balsalmic vinagrette, and the bread was hearty and wheaty and heavenly.  I know, I know… I talk a lot about food here, but it’s really hard not to when it’s such a central part of the culture.  I can’t believe how much cheese I am eating… and how okay with it I am.  As Brendan mentioned last during our Skype conversation, feta is certainly a gateway cheese…

We had to leave at 4:00pm again, so there wasn’t much time to wander. BUT – I did find a gelato place… WITH A FROZEN YOGURT MACHINE! My pal Mari got a little cup, which seemed far too small for me, so I ordered a medium and consequently made myself royally ill from all of the sugary goodness.  Back on the boat we staked out some spots outside and I, again, spent most of the trip sticking my head off the side of the boat, feeling the wind in my hair and enjoying the moment.  It seemed like ages ago since I lost my poor wallet.  I still have some things I need to do in that regard, but I’m trying not to stress out too much about it.  Greece kicked my butt this weekend for sure.  Well, it may have won the battle, but it shan’t win the war…

This morning I had to go to a cemetery to do a sociology field work assignment, so a few of us went off to the first cemetary in Athens.  I felt like a creeper, watching people and writing about them.  But it was still an interesting experience, I guess. There was a Greek Orthodox, a Jewish and a Protestant section and each part was radically different from the others.  The Greek section was the most interesting because people have literally built mini-mausoleums to house their entire families. I witnessed at least three funeral processions and actually exchanged some words with some Orthodox priests dressed in all black who looked a little intimidating, I’m not going to lie.

I still feel really tired today… I didn’t sleep much this weekend. I think I am going to try and finish up some sociology reading before I go camp out for the free R.E.M. concert tonight!  How exciting!  Nothing is better than a free concert in an Olympic Stadium!  I love study abroad!  Even despite the losing every important ID I own.

Oh yeah! I wrote my first “essay” in Greek! I think it looks neat because it’s in another alphabet!

Today/Tomorrow marks the one-month mark of being here. I have learned so much already. I have changed so much already (Hello! can we say cheese addict again?!).  I have seen so much, experienced so much, felt so much, tasted so much… I need to start buying gifts and souvenirs for everyone! There are only two-and-a-half months left!  This is all going too quickly…

Thoughts on the Greeks

First, an update on activities. Then, my thoughts and commentary on this bizarare new culture that never ceases to amaze me.

Monday was a rather uneventful day, save my sociology class, which is quickly growing on me and has prompted me to think much deeper about the place and people around me (more on that later).  Tuesday, however, was a day to remember. That morning my friend Carrie and I decided to hunt out the Tuesday morning Laiki (open-air market) that was supposed to be even better than Friday’s.  We found it, and was it amazing! It took up two streets and crossed in the middle.  One street had fruits, vegetables, flowers, breads, fish, meat… and the other was full of clothes, jewelry, household supplies, shoes.  It was amazing. I now know where I’m going to do all of my clothes shopping.  Granted the clothes aren’t the best, I am assuming, but what do you expect for a 3 euro shirt?  I had my first Greek language quiz later that day, and then last night, the Eftihidou apartment (meaning, the apartment of five people living on Eftihidou street) threw a dinner party.  My friend Ryan had cooked a whole octopus and my friend Jesse made a balsalmic vinagrette salad.  We had bread, steamed vegetables, an entire tub of feta cheese, and cheap red wine, and nine of us dined like Greek dieties (sort of…).  I couldn’t eat the suckers… they kept sticking to my plate and were making me ill.  But I ate the tentacle meat.  With a little olive oil and garlic, I tell you, it wasn’t that bad.  You just couldn’t think about what you were eating and it was okay.  Everyone started drinking, so Ryan, Mari, Cory and I all migrated to their balcony… which had an amazing unobstructed view of the Parthenon.  Mari and I expressed our seething jealousy at having such a view, and then we talked and joked and laughed late into the night.  So much for classes.

Wednesday again, was somewhat uneventful… my literature class has been canceled this week, so I really only have had sociology on Monday and Wednesday.  But again, it was an interesting discussion.  Yesterday, one of our program directors, Joanna, introduced me to her friend Nikitas, who is a Greek journalist at one of the biggest Greek newspapers here in Athens.  I had been trying to get a quasi-internship at the English-speaking Athens News, but I received an email two days ago from that newspaper explaining that their publisher was dropping them and the paper was going under!  Naturally, the Center is extremely anxious about this as the Athens News is not only the biggest English-speaking newspaper in Greece, but it is the only community-focused paper out there, meaning that it is the only one that posts volunteer positions in its pages.  In any case, Nikitas told me to contact him with questions about anything and maybe wants to set up a tour of his newspaper.  I should probably explain here: we have this semester-long project called the “Greek Key” project. It is self-designed, and we have to present our findings and research at the end of the semester. I chose to do something on journalism or media, so that’s what all this is about.  Last night, our librarian Petros downloaded Michael Moore’s new movie, “Slacker Uprising,” and showed it for free last night to anyone who was interested.  It was great. Hilarious. These past couple of days, I have been getting back into the swing of American politics. It helps because there’s a small clique of the guys who keep up to date on everything, so talking with them has kept me informed and in the loop.  And now my roommates expect me to have a U.S. economy and politics update whenever I see them in the evening, so that’s motivation, too.

Okay. Now onto some deeper thoughts rolling around in my head. And keep in mind that these are all generalizations… stereotypes.  I don’t think all of this holds true for all of Greece, but they are certainly things popping out to me.

Transportation
It amazes me how many cars are on the road here and how they all manage to squeeze down the most narrow of streets.  Heck, cars drive on pedestrian walkways. You’ll be walking down a pedestrian street in Plaka (the touristy neighborhood under the Acropolis) and all of a sudden a moped or a car will come charging through. Road rules do not apply. I have seen maybe two or three police cars on the road since being here.  People will park every which way any way that they can. I have seen cars parked on sidewalks, parked in the opposite direction of the one-way street’s direction, double-parked next to other cars so that sometimes you have three layers of parked cars on the side of the street. How do they get out? I know not.  According to my sociology professor, Greeks use cars most out of all Europeans. Greeks like to drive. “Why walk if you can drive,” is the unofficial motto, apparently.  One of my pals wanted to hike up in this mountain nearby us and when he asked a Greek how to get to the hiking trails, the Greek replied, “Why would you want to hike up the mountain?  There are roads.”

Parking jobs in Greece

Social Interactions
Even though Greeks are very group-oriented and consider their social time with friends a necessary part of everyday life, they are also very individualistic.  Greeks will share their lives with people, but they also struggle to keep their family and household affairs a secret.  Greeks can apparently try to outdo each other in hospitality and apparently remain skeptical of their neighbors and their neighbors’ wishes to outdo one another.  I asked my professor in confusion how Greeks, who cultivate such deep, meaningful social relationships can really develop something profound like that if they are constantly worried about their friends backstabbing them or gossiping about them to someone else (this culture has a strange preoccupation with gossiping).  My professor explained to me that that’s all part of the game… the intricate, convoluted social game that Greeks play.  I would liken it to when you’re attracted to someone and the two of you flirt back and forth and almost spar like in a fencing match.  Imagine doing that all the time with EVERYONE around you.  That’s the Greek way of life, it seems.

Tradition Versus Modernity
This is a phenomenon that I actually knew a bit about before coming here since I wrote my little study-abroad research paper on this very issue.  But when we began reading about the role of the Church in Greek life, it became even more apparent.  Greece is a country stuck at the crossroads, between East and West, between old and new.  It tries so hard to remember its past, yet at the same time it is trying to move into the modernized world and become more Westernized. There is a theory that two “culture camps” exist in Greece, those who favor tradition and those who favor Westernization. But in reality, any Greek on any given day can favor tradition over modernity or modernity over tradition depending on the issue.  The Church is also another interesting thing. To be Greek Orthodox means to be “Greek.”  You don’t have to necessarily be pious to consider yourself Orthodox, either.  It’s just a part of Greek identity.  When Greece was trying to build itself up as a modern nation-state after its War of Independence in the mid-1800s, the Church was used as a rallying point to define “Greekness” since it was the Greek Orthodox Church that survived through all of the Ottoman Turkish occupation.  Nowadays, there are some people who are moving away from the Church as an all-powerful force, and the Church is crying, “But we are Greece! We are your identity”  But really, the Greek Orthodox Church didn’t exist back in ancient Greece… how can it truly be considered the all-defining aspect of what it means to be Greek?

I recognize that my paragraphs and sentences are all convoluted (guess I’m writing Greek-style), but it’s really hard to straighten all this out in my head.  This is going to sound bizarre, but I see a lot of similarities between Greek and Irish cultures.  Now granted, I only took one semester of Irish drama, so I don’t claim to be an expert on Irish history and culture, but really, the similarities I see are actually quite shocking.  It makes sense to me now why my Greek literature professor had us watch a movie about Irish immigrants to America to relate to what we were reading in class.

I write Odyssey-length posts, I apologize. The last thing I will say is, I think I’m changing… I don’t know to what degree, though. It’s hard since I’m surrounded by a bunch of people who haven’t really known me, so it’s not like I can use them as a gauge for how different I seem.  I’m really not that different, I guess. I’m still me. But I have more confidence… I feel really out of control all of the time, and I’m learning to be okay with that.  I feel sometimes like I’m being torn in two, but I’m trying to make peace with that, too.  Does this make sense? This doesn’t make sense.  In a creative writing exercise, I’m sure I could get this all out and have it make some sense, but trying to put it on a public tablet that everyone is going to read makes it more difficult. I feel different. But not really. And man, I’m turning 20 in eight days.

The weather is bizarre today. It’s dark and cloudy and raining, but it’s 75 degrees outside. It looks like Mordor.

This place has magic in the air. I’ll leave it at that.