Ιστορία της Αθήνας

I'm not dead!

So... yeah. The daily blog thing sort of crashed after my three day excursion to Nafplio. I have drafts written for most of the days in between then and now, but I just haven't had time or motivation to work on them. I will post them, eventually, as I get caught up, but that may not be for a while yet. In the morning, I am leaving for Meteora, a neat site in Thessaly full of awesome geological features, and a bunch of monasteries, which I am very much looking forward to. I will take lots of pictures, and write up the experience Monday night, when I get back. Then I'm in town for all of a day, before heading off to Olympia and Delphi on the next class trip. Also very exciting, but once again, I'm going to be without Internet, which means I won't blog, which means I'll have another three days of stuff to get caught up on. On top of the two weeks I've neglected thus far. So.... I'll get to that all eventually, but it could take a while.

Anyway, in the meantime, I can summarize what has happened in the past week. The way my program is divided up, there is the equivalent of a three quarter class crammed into one quarter, which means that each "quarter" lasts about 3 weeks. Thus, at the start of this week, we started the second quarter, and got a new professor. She's quite nice, and I like her, but the teaching style is much more self-directed and discussion-based. She doesn't explain sites to us, or tell us what is happening at the time period we're learning about; instead, we explore the site, do the readings, ask questions, and discover for ourselves. I will get used to it soon, but it's a big change from the way our last professor taught.

As for sites this week, we didn't do anything really groundbreaking. Tuesday we went on top of the Acropolis, finally visiting the Parthenon. Wednesday was an excursion to Boiotia and Thebes, which would have been really cool, except that it rained the entire bloody time. Thursday was a free morning, and Friday (today) was a visit to the ancient agora. All the sites were cool, but nothing so spectacular that I want to elaborate right now.

Anyway, I promise a more detailed update when I return, but for now it is midnight, and I am off to bed so I can wake up to finish packing and get on a train. So, καλή νύχτα!

Sorry for the recent post drought. After being gone for three days, I've had a lot to catch up on, and so haven't been blogging. I'm currently sorting through all of my photographs and notes from the trip to the Argolid, so hopefully the posts from those three days will be up shortly. In the meantime, though, I wanted to talk about some events that took place over the weekend.

On Thursday, while I was in the Argolid, a man named Dmitris Christoulas, a 77 year old retired pharmacist, committed suicide in Syntagma Square, as a protest to the austerity measures. In his suicide note, he wrote, "I cannot find any other form of struggle except a dignified end before I have to start scrounging for food from the rubbish" (source). Following this, Greek citizens reacted violently. There were riots on Thursday, following the event, and again on Saturday, after his funeral procession. I don't know how this event has rippled outside of Greece, but within the country, it seems to be making quite an impact. There's more information on the funeral, and the reactions of the Greek people, here.

Yesterday afternoon, after checking that everything was all calm, my roommate and I went to Syntagma to see the reaction. In the center of the square is a giant tree, covered with lights and paper notes and signs, surrounded by rings of candles and flowers. There were many people there, adding their own notes, placing flowers, or just reading the outpouring of anger and sadness already presented. It was a really powerful memorial, and one of the first really clear signs I've seen that all is not right in this country. On the surface, everyone is happy and peaceful, and things are going well. But economically and politically, things are far from nice and settled. Sometimes, that tension boils up to the surface, like it did this weekend.

For the past two weeks, I've been wandering around in ancient history, looking at artifacts and sites from 2000+ years ago. But that's not the only history present in this country. Right now, if I stop to look, there's history happening all around me. Greece is at a tipping point, and the future is uncertain, for both the country and its people.

I am not a huge fan of modern or abstract art, in the States. Most of it just makes no sense to me, or seems like a waste of space and material. Now, that's not to say that I hate all of it: I can find individual pieces that I like in any style or genre, be it in visual art, music, theatre, literature, what have you. However, a few pieces here and there are far from the whole, and American contemporary art does nothing for me.

On the tour of Greek galleries tonight, however, I found that that attitude applies much more strongly to American modern art than to Greek modern art. We took a tour of 5 different galleries in the Kolonaki area, each with very different pieces on display. The first we went to featured the art of Manolis Charos, made within the last four years. These pieces were primarily surrealist-like paintings, with one found object sculpture. I really liked most of them, particularly these couple:



The next gallery was also really interesting, this time featuring a paper sculpture artist, Tsakirakakis. His works combine color, dimensionality, and language to create some really powerful images. Some of his works are simply beautiful, like his piece "Smell", which is a paper construction depicting flowers with the word smell entwined in the leaves. Others were more political, such as one showing a ton of cars tangled up in traffic, emitting CO₂, or one with the word "Democracy worked into it. My favorite one, simply because it's a bit funny, is the Politics one:


The last few galleries did not impress me quite as much as the first two, but they were still interesting in their own right. The third featured the work of Aikaterini Gegisian, in an exhibit titled "Who Doesn't Like a Good Old Story?" She is an Armenian artist, and so her photography focuses on Armenian subjects. There was a lot of contrast between the old and the new, and nature versus the man-made in her work, which was quite interesting. The fourth included the works of Alexis Korbis, in "Third Heaven". These painting were very realistic, with dark backgrounds and human figures, presented as they look in life. These figures all seemed to be contemplating themselves, and usually a reflection or faded image of the subject was included in each work. Finally, the last gallery displayed the work of Maria Blanth, who does abstract clay sculpture. This was probably the least favorite of the shows we visited, simply because it is this kind of "find your own meaning" abstraction that is overwhelming in American modern art, that I tend to find somewhat useless. Still, it was interesting listening to the artist talk about her work, so that improved it somewhat.

For the past two weeks, I've seen a lot of art and architecture, but most of the focus has been on pre-Classical works. While that is something that interests me more than modern art, in general, in general, here in Athens, those pieces are remnants of a long-gone era. Visiting these galleries, and seeing and hearing how Greeks today view their world and interpret it through visual media, has given me much more of a sense of what this country, today, is going through. Despite outward appearances at the moment, it isn't a settled, peaceful, "first-world" sort of place... it is a people and a culture going through a time of unsettlement, of change, of coming to a new identity. That theme ran through all the art I saw tonight, and has given me a new perspective on this place I call home for the next few months.

As much as this first week has been fun, there's only so much of the same 24 other people I can tolerate, and after some incidents last night, I needed to escape from everyone and just get away. Fortunately, unlike in Chicago, that's very easy to do here in Athens. Exactly a week ago, when Katja took us on the walking tour of Central Athens, she'd suggested that we climb the Hill of the Muses, which is one of her favorite places in the whole of Athens. It's also right near the Acropolis, which I've been to around four times now, and it's always busy there, since it's a major tourist trap, so I packed a lunch and hiked off by myself to climb the hill.

It's a really nice hike there. Once I got to the fork in the path, where one way leads up the Hill of the Muses and the other leads around the base of the Acropolis, there were almost no other people around, and the hike was at a nice shallow incline, forested most of the way up, before opening up into an amazing view of Athens and the Acropolis.


I hung out up there for a while, eating my lunch and just thinking about my week, and my life in general. I don't know yet, how much different I will be after this trip than I was before it. I feel like I am becoming more confident on my own, but then, I've only been here for a short period of time, and I'm around strangers, who I'm always more confident around. I certainly will be healthier: despite all the second-hand smoke, the air is much cleaner here, and the weather and elevation changes are much more to my liking. The food is also better: I can cook for myself, or go to a taverna or restaurant and get large portions of tasty food on the cheap. As to what else will change, physically or mentally, I don't yet know. We'll have to wait and see. I think after this, though, I will be more prepared to take on the future ahead of me. Preparing for graduate school and making decisions about my life is something that scared me immensely. It's exciting, but also a major life change, and especially being as young as I am, it's rather terrifying. I like having a rhythm, a place I know with people I like, a plan. Moving to grad school will break me out of that, make me have to start all over again. Yet, this program is like that as well, with the added challenge of being surrounded by people who don't speak the same language as I do. Being here makes me feel much more prepared for the next year, and the adventures that will come afterwards.

Before I get to that, though, I need to complete my adventures here. So, after thinking and eating, I moved on, exploring the area, including finding a children's festival in progress, and the little observatory I'd noticed from the Acropolis hill. Then it was time to return home, before people started worrying about me, since I'd been away for 4 hours at this point. But having time to relax and reflect has helped me to deal with socializing again, and prepared me more mentally for the second week here in Athens.

By my school's way of counting, today was the end of first week. But, because I'm on study abroad and every one week is like 3-4, in order to cram three quarters into one... I have no idea where I'm at, school-calendar-wise. However, I know for sure that I've finished my first week of classes, and gotten into a rhythm here in Athens... which will promptly be ruined by the fact that I have next Monday off entirely, next Tuesday morning off, and then leave on Wednesday for a three-day trip to the Argolid. Also, as a head's up, I have no clue what my Internet capabilities, or my time to blog, will be like during that trip, so you may not hear from me between Tuesday and Friday. I promise I won't be dead... but if you don't see a huge post from me by Sunday after the trip, start making inquiries into my livelihood.

Anyway, today was the first of two trips to the Acropolis Museum, which has to be one of the most gorgeous museums I've ever been to (and I have been to a lot of museums; I'd list them for you, but then you'll get bored and leave). There was no photography inside the museum, so I can't show you much, but the outside looked like this:


The top level of the building is at an angle to the rest for more than just architecturally looking cool. It's actually set up so that the artifacts inside perfectly line up with their orientation in situ on the Parthenon, which the top level is aligned with. On the lower levels, they're set up to line up with their respective other buildings on the Acropolis. It's really very, very well thought out.
And, even cooler, is this:


This museum is actually built over an neighborhood of ancient Athens, which is really, really neat. There are glass panels in the floor so that you can look down and see the site below you, as you explore the artifacts found around the Acropolis. The range of ages, too, is amazing. Even after just a week, I started to get into a mindset of "There's super old stuff (ruins), then there's sort of old stuff (old churches), then there's new stuff (anything modern)". But it isn't that simple: there's a good 3000 years or so of history on the Acropolis, which can be divided up into couple hundred year or less chunks of time. Intellectually, I know that's true: I mean, that's what we talk about in lecture, is each of these bits of time and their significance individually and in a larger whole, but that doesn't tend to stick with me very well. I'm used to thinking of time on a much larger scale, millions and billions of years rather than hundreds and thousands, so without anything concrete, it just blurs together. Seeing it concrete like this, however, and being able to see the distinctions that allow historians and archaeologists to break up the time, just like geologists break up time by changes in the climate or landscape or fossil record, makes it so much more real. Seeing these sites and artifacts in the round allows me break out of the mindset of "new, old, and ancient."

It's been a very long day. We left from the apartments at 8 am, meaning I was up much earlier than I normally like to be. I also, unfortunately, seem to have a carsickness problem if I wake up too early and don't eat and ride in a bus. So, that wasn't fun. And my camera batteries decided to be dead, so I apologize for the poor quality of these photos; I had to take them all on my cell phone. But, prefaces aside, my day ended up being quite awesome.

An excited professor in front of the alter

Our first site of the day was the site of the Amphiareion at Oropos, on the border between Attica and Boreas. It was the sanctuary of Amphiaros, a Greek hero. He was one of the sons of Oedipus, who squabbled over the territory after his father blinded himself and exiled himself to atone for his sins. If you don't know the story of Oedipus, go look it up... it's the most dysfunctional family in all of Greek tragedy. Anyway, at one point, Zeus zapped the ground with his lightning bolt, and Amphiaros fell into the resulting chasm. Somehow, some time later, he emerged from the ground again, at the site where the sanctuary was built. Additionally, he was reputed to be a seer. Thus, visitors to the temple came for visions of the future... for a fee. They would pay the cost of 9 okos (about twice the daily wage), sacrifice a few animals, and then sleep on the skin of their sacrificed ram (women in one building, men in another), hoping for a vision of Amphiaros telling them their future or what they needed to do to solve some health or economic trouble. The architecture reflects this reconstruction of the sanctuary. It is an interesting one, as it continues right through the Dark Ages, which is not true of many other sanctuaries. It also has an unusual construction. Instead of being at the end of the temple, the central statue of the hero-god was in the center, with a secret room in the back that was likely a treasury. The alter, too, is unusual, as instead of being lengthwise along the end of the temple, where the statue could watch the sacrifices, it runs in the same direction as the temple. This may have been due to the landscape: the sanctuary sits into a steep hill, and so the terracing costs would have been high, both monetarily and labor-wise. Additionally, this long alter setup would have allowed more people to watch the sacrifices, a spectacle popular at the time. It was a neat site, and provides a lot of information about the way one of these remote sanctuaries would have operated in the 4th century BCE.

After spending an hour and a half at this site, we moved on to catch a ferry to the island of Euboia, which was quite pretty. We then went to the museum of Eretria and Lefkandi. These two sites are the outliers of the "Dark Ages", a period of time where Mycenean civilization declined out of existance, and the land area of Greece seems to lose much of it's population. Connections and trade routes to the outside world seem to fail, and the whole quality of life seems to drop dramatically, from the year 1200 to around 800 BCE. However, in Lefkandi and Euboia, while it is not Mycenean culture, there do still seem to be far-flung connections to as far as Cyprus and Egypt, and there are elaborate burials, of several different varieties. There are cremations in urns, children burials in pots, and all sorts of artifacts put into the graves. It was really a neat museum, but even cooler was the House of the Mosaics, a wealthy house preserved, with Greek mosaics in the dining rooms.

Greek Mosaics

After that, we did a group project on houses in Eretria, a site that was built up several times, with only the foundations remaining. This exercise made it very clear just how challenging archaeology can be in these areas, as one has to sort of what buildings existed contemporaneously, what those buildings look like, and how did they function. From there, we went to the site of Lefkandi, specifically a building that we have no idea the purpose of. In the center of the structure was a set of two pits, one with four sacrificed horses, and the other with a double burial, with a cremated man and an inhumed woman. Both appear to have been very wealthy, but their relationship to each other, and, in particular, the fate of the woman, are quite mysterious. He is thought to have been a warrior-chieftan; she may have been his wife. She was buried in elaborate dress, including a gold breast-plate and gold hair pins and a glass necklace. She also had a knife next to her head. Was she a ritual suicide? Was she a sacrifice? At this point, it is impossible to tell. The house, too, is enigmatic. It is by far the largest building of the period, squarely in the middle of the Dark Ages. However, the floor seems to have not been packed, suggesting it was gently to not at all used. It was purposely buried, by the people, yet the pottery shards in the mound and on the floor of the building, suggest that it was built and buried at the same time. It's quite odd, and two theories exist. One is that the warrior built this house, but died shortly after it's completion, and he and the woman were buried in it after their funeral. Another is that the house was built afterwards, after the deaths. Yet, both situations pose issues, and this site remains a unique site, with nothing even kind of analogous yet found.

After finishing up at that site, it was time for lunch and to return to Athens. It was a day full of history and archaeology, which has resulted in quite a long blog post. Tomorrow is another museum visit, this time to the Acropolis Museum. Hopefully, I'll be able to find camera batteries before then, so will have better photos then. Regardless, I'm quite looking forward to it. I've been in Athens for a week now, and so only have 9 more to go. If this pace keeps up, I'll be leaving well before I'm ready to. Still, very excited for what other places I will see and learn during the rest of my time here.


καλή νύχτα!

Γειά σου!

For the second day in a row, I really haven't got much to say. Today was a free morning, and there was a transit strike here in Athens, so instead of going out to do anything, I just slept till 9, did homework, cleaned stuff, went grocery shopping, and generally did all the sorts of things I do at home. Not every day in Greece is going to be an exciting adventure to exotic and historical places. In some ways, life in Greece is exactly the same as life in the U.S. Chores still need doing, class is still class, and life, while a bit different, is still basically life.

In other news, I cooked dinner today! I made lemon pepper chicken and potatoes. It was not the most flavorful or ground-breaking food I've ever eaten, but considering I've never really cooked chicken before, it was a quite successful adventure. The chicken was moist, but fully cooked, and the potatoes had absorbed a lot of the lemon juice, and so were a tasty compliment. I was fairly pleased with myself. But, that's pretty much the most exciting thing that's happened. It's nice, in some respects, to have a slow, normal day. I feel much more functional now than I did at the end of yesterday, when I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, despite the early call time, because we will be going on our first excursion out of Athens! I will have pictures and much, much more to talk about them.

Until then, καλή νύχτα!

The Temple of Olympian Zeus. The Agora. The Areopagus. The Hill of the Muses. These were some of the highlights of Ancient Athens, and the places that we explored today on our walking tour. It was a very interesting walk, and I will share some of the stories I learned, about the history and mythology associated with the area, in one of my short posts. The areas we went to weren't really new, though; I'd passed them all before, on the walking tour last Saturday. So, not as many photographs to take. But here's one, to keep this update from being too boring:

Hadrian's Gate, outside the Temple of Olympian Zeus. There's a funny story about this...

I'm also into my second day of classes, which is nice. I've missed having a schedule, even if just for one week. Greek class, in particular, is going to be a lot of fun. We've only covered the alphabet so far, but I think that's a major first step in understanding this language. For instance, when I set up this blog a few months ago, I transliterated "Ιστορία" as "Iotopia", as you can see in my URL. Unfortunately, though, that's totally wrong. I should have written it, in English, as "Istoria". If you can't tell what it means from that pronounciation, Ιστορία is the Greek word for History. Thus, Ιστορία της Αθήνας is Istoria tis Athinas, or History of Athens. Things you learn when you actually study the language. I've also learned a lot of the greetings: καλή νύχτα, or "kalinichta", is goodnight, and Γειά σου is the singular informal "Hello" or "Health to you". It's very helpful, being able to say and write and understand these words, rather than just using Google Translate all the time. I doubt I'll become fluent in Greek by the time I leave, but I hope to be able to maintain at least a simple conversation at the end of these ten weeks. We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow is a free morning, so I'll have some time to write up the short posts I've been meaning to get to, which will hopefully serve as a better insight into some of the details of my experiences here. Some will be my own stories; others will be things from class. All are things I've found interesting or funny during my week here so far. I'm sure there will be more as the time goes on.

 καλή νύχτα!

While out and about over the past through days, one of the most prominent features of the landscape has been this:

Facing North

Facing South

Today was Greek Independence Day, and a completely free day on my program's schedule. Thus, there wasn't a whole lot to do, besides continuing to explore the city and completing the readings for class tomorrow. I spent most of the morning sleeping and reading, before going with some of the other students to a cafe for breakfast, and then wandering back to the National Gardens to find a place to continue reading. Once I got bored of that, I wandered around looking for ruins and taking photographs. Here is a collection of my favorites:




As always, the rest will be up on my photograph page. I will have more to talk about tomorrow, as classes get started. I may also being posting more short tales, of cool or interesting or just fun things that have happened to me while here, that don't really fit in the narrative of a long post. I'll continue trying to get these up as well, but as classes start, I may have less time to write out a whole big post. Still, I continue to share my adventures in this city.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

Γειά σου!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Athens Centre took my whole group out to dinner last night. It was a very pretty restaurant, with pretty good food. I liked it all, though I wasn't as impressed with it as the one the night before. Additionally, so much stuff has happened just today that I don't want to ramble on about food again. Suffice it to say, it was tasty, I had very good conversations with the students I was sitting with, and came to realize why sitting next to both of the photography enthusiasts on the trip was probably a bad idea.

I don't even know what this face is, or why I'm sharing this photo, because it's ridiculous.

Today, we took a walking tour of central Athens, including the National Gardens and the Acropolis. Both are easily within walking distance of the place we are living, which is excellent. We walked past the Temple of Olympian Zeus, though the Gardens, to the Zappeion, which has a neat history. It was commissioned by Evangelis Zappas, and designed by Danish architect Theophil Hansen. It was to be part of the Olympic Games infrastructure, and construction on it started in 1874. It wasn't finished until 1988, by which time Zappas had passed away. His cousin, Konstantinos Zappas, was asked to finish the building. Today, it is mainly used as a conference and exhibition hall, but was used for the Olympics every time they have happened in Greece. It's a cool building.

See? (It isn't actually curved like that... that's just me and my software being bad at panoramas)

After that, we meandered our way towards the Acropolis, passing a hoard of police officers on the way. Tomorrow is Greek Independence Day, and so there was a small parade today, and there will be another one tomorrow. There will also be a lot of things closed for the holiday, but the Acropolis museum will be free, so I may go there. I walked past it today, on our tour of the Acropolis area. It is a bit of a tourist trap, but still a very cool area. There's lots of places to hike, and there's literally another monument or amazing artifact everywhere you look in that area. It's also a fascinating blend of the old and the new, of civilization and of nature. There are street performers and little cafes on one side, and this meadow- and ruin-covered hill leading up to the Parthenon on the other. It's really fantastic. I was able to hike up the hill and little bit, and get an amazing view of the city of Athens and the surrounding towns.

The view from here was really amazing. This picture does not do it justice, by a long shot.

A bit past the Acropolis, the businesses start. There's a whole bunch of little stands where Athenians sell their handmade goods in this little square. Then, past that is Monastiraki, where the Athens flea market is located. This is still a bit of a tourist area, but there were many more Greeks there as well, which was neat. You could buy nearly anything in that area, which was full of small shops, a bit like an open-air outlet store. I didn't end up getting anything, because I don't need much and will wait to get souvenirs for my family and friends, but it was still fun to people watch and window shop in that area. There was also an open square at the end of the flea market, which an amazing example of the layers of history present in this city.

Left to Right: Old Greek Orthodox Church, the Parthenon, and a modern shop

Today was our last day of orientation.Tomorrow is a Sunday, and also a national holiday, so there's nothing scheduled in particular. On Monday, at 9 am, classes start for me, with a walk to (and up) Lycabettus Hill. I'm looking forward to it, and am so glad to be spending the next 10 weeks in this laid-back, historical, eclectic, wonderful city.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

(P.S. There are more photos of the places I went and saw today. Click on the Photo Gallery link to find them. Cheers!)

Γειά σου!

First, a bit from last night: the tarverna we went to for dinner was AMAZING. Definitely a great way to start out the trip. About 2/3 of our group went to this little place, that I have forgotten the name of, that Katja took us to. She also explained to us the Greek restaurant custom of "sharing", which is exactly what is sounds like: about 4 people split appetizers and main courses, sharing the food. It ends up giving you more that you would have gotten ordering a main course for yourself, but costing less. I shared with five or six other students, splitting a spinach pie (Σπανακόπιτα [spanakopita]), a rabbit in white wine sauce, and a chicken in lemon sauce. All three were amazing. The rabbit, especially, was really good: I've never eaten rabbit, before. It looks like, and bears a lot of similarity to, chicken, but it is a chewier meat and has a bit of a stronger flavor. I was quite impressed. It was really really good, and split the way we did, only cost me like 4€. Then, I came home and crashed, because it was late and I was very tired from my 24 or so hours of traveling. 


Today continued to be wonderful. The day started at 10, when we went to the Athens Centre for Day 1 of orientation. We first had a lecture by Yannis Zervos, the director of the centre, who told us a bit about modern history and the cultural context for Athens today. Then, we had a brief talk by Rosemary Donnelly, the codirector, about the Athens Centre itself. Then we wandered about the centre a bit, going up to the roof. Where we saw this:

First View of the Parthenon!

Yep. The view from the roof of the Athens Centre is kind of amazing. You can also see a large part of the city, and the mountains behind it.

Overlook of Athens

Once we all made it off the roof, down a slightly scary narrow metal spiral staircase, we left on our tour of the Mets/Pangrati, which is the area of Athens where we live. Katja showed us around the residential areas, to the supermarket, post office, pharmacy, and the best cafes and tavernas, as well as taking us briefly through the weekly Farmer's Market, which occurs every Friday. She then left us to explore, and we split apart as a group. My two roommates and I walked back through the Farmer's Market, then shared lunch with part of the group. We then went back and bought oranges, potatoes, and artichokes at the market. Apparently, unlike in the U.S., when a sign says "6/5€" here, it means 6 kilo, not 6 items. So... yeah. We got 10 potatoes for 2.5€. It was awesome.


Anyway, after that, we returned home, I played with the photographs I've taken through the day (check out my photograph page for slideshows of all my photos), and have just been finishing all my unpacking and writing up my day. It's been really, really lovely so far...Athens is an amazingly pretty and eclectic city. I'm looking forward to getting to know it and its residents better over the next few months. 


Tonight, I have a (free!) dinner hosted by the Athens Centre, and tomorrow we have a walking tour of central Athens all day. I am looking forward to it, and expect to have lots more photos tomorrow. For now, though, I will leave you with one last view of the Parthenon.


Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

At 3 pm, CST, I arrived at the O'Hare Airport in Chicago. By 6:00, I was on the plane. I have been on the plane until approximately 2 hours ago. How many hours that was in transit, I have NO IDEA. I just know that right now, it is 7pm in Athens, but 12:00 pm in Chicago. So, I'm a bit tired and time confused, but that will go away shortly.

The process of flying to Greece wasn't too painful. My first flight, from Chicago to London, went swimmingly, and I have no complaints. I watched Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for free, which was fantastic, ate food that didn't make me ill, and dozed through much of the flight. The second part was more troublesome. The flight into London landed, at predicted, at 6:40 am London time. Boarding for my connecting flight ended at 7:40 am, London time. And then it took 10 minutes to get off the plane, more to get through security and into the correct gate at the airport, but I made it just on time, and successfully boarded the plane. Half an hour later, I disembarked from the plane. Apparently, some gasket or connector in the nose of the plane was loose or broken, and maintenance said they couldn't fix it in a reasonable amount of time. So, instead of taking of at 8 am, we took off at 10, putting us into Athens two hours later than I'd initially expected. Once we got in the air, though, everything went smoothly for that flight as well. I didn't want to sleep, so as to get on Greek time, and so watched The Adventures of Tintin, which was a very cute and well-executed movie, and a great way to pass the time couped up on another airplane. I was also fortunate enough to get in the baby seat row on that flight, but there were no babies, so I had lots of leg-room, which was quite nice.

Once arriving in Athens, I met up with the other two students in my program that I knew were on my flight, as well as two others who I hadn't realized were on the flight. We took two cabs to get to our apartments near the Athens Centre. And that's where I am now, relaxing and decompressing and unpacking my bags. The apartments are nice, with air conditioning, large windows, and a balcony. I'll be sharing my room, kitchenette, and bathroom with two other girls, which will be an interesting experience. But I am looking forward to it. Now that I've arrived, much of my nervousness has fallen away, and I'm just excited to explore this new place.

As for program things, we have a dinner trip tonight, which should be fun, and then a few orientation things tomorrow. Stuff really gets going next Monday, when classes start. And that's the point where I'll start being busy, and actually having something to talk about.

So for now, I will leave you to get ready to eat and to finish unpacking. In parting, here is a picture of the view outside my bedroom window.

Αντίο για τώρα! Τα λέμε σύντομα!

Tomorrow afternoon, I get on an airplane in Chicago. Thursday afternoon, I land in Athens, and my program begins. My finals are finished, I'm moved out of the dorm, my suitcase and carry-on are all packed, and I'm finishing up the last minute preparations before leaving the U.S. for three months. Mostly, I'm excited: I've never left the country before, with the exception of a trip to Canada when I was 3. I've also never flown fully across an ocean; I've flown 6 hours to Hawaii, but that was only halfway across the Pacific. And I've definitely never spent 13 hours in an airplane, which is what I'll be doing over the next few days. It will be an... interesting experience. But then I will be in a new culture, full of new sights and sounds and tastes, well outside anything I've ever experienced while traveling inside of America.

I'm nervous as well, though, for pretty much all the same reasons I'm excited. I don't know much Greek, I've never been outside of the U.S, and I'm really not at all sure what to expect. I have no idea what these new experiences will do to change my perspective on the world and my ability to understand and communicate with different people. It's well out of my comfort zone, and that's scary. But, overall, I think it will be good for me. I enjoy challenges: they push me to new levels, stretch the limits of what I can do. The next three months will be no exception.

Wish me luck, and I'll see you again when I'm on the other side of the world!

Αντίο για τώρα!

My departure date to Athens is a little over two months away, yet it feels like I'm already making the preparations necessary for the trip there. My first informational meeting took place a few days ago, and I've already picked the people I'll be sharing an apartment with for three months. I'm starting to learn some Greek, although I'm still fairly hopeful that there will be people there will also know at least a little English, so I won't be too hopelessly lost. Still, I've found that the most successful way for me to learn a language is to be immersed in it, so I expect I'll pick it up quickly once I get to Greece.

I haven't got much to say yet. At this point, it's all paperwork, info meetings, buying necessary supplies, and figuring what I'm going to do with all my belongings at college while I'm away. I'm also busy with this quarter's classes and workload, so not too much time to think about it. But time passes quickly while I'm caught up in my day-to-day life, and March 21st will be here before I realize it. I cannot wait.

But, for now, I continue my studies in the States, prepare for my journey, and dream about the adventures to come.

Αντίο για τώρα.