Ιστορία της Αθήνας

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!

Photo Credit: My roommate T.

Every Friday, an open air Farmer's Market takes place a few blocks away from where I live. It's a very neat market, with vendors yelling out (in Greek) what they're selling, and for how much. On the very first full day here in Athens, I went to it with my two roommates, to pick up some food for the apartment, and just to see what was available. We were just looking, when S. decided she wanted an orange. We stopped at a vendor, and in English and hand gestures, she asked the vendor how much one orange cost. The vendor looked confused for a moment, before waving her hand and saying "Dorean, dorean!" She was giving S. the orange for free. S. thanked her, and the three of us went on our way.

A few moments later, an older man I'd noticed standing near the vendor tapped me and T. on the shoulders. We turned, and he handed us each an orange, with a smile. We thanked him, and he waved us off, the universal sign for "Don't mention it". Without a word, he went one direction, and we continued in a different one. It was the first real interaction we had had with Greeks since we'd arrived, and I won't soon forget it. As the people at the Athens Centre keep telling us, the people here are laid back and friendly, not like the city-folk back in the States at all. I'm highly inclined to believe it, and look forward to getting to know the people here better.

One of the nice things about this program is that we get a rental phone, with a Greek phone number. I had gotten a global phone in the US over Christmas, because at the time I didn't know I would have a phone to use. However, the rates to call from a US phone in a different country are absurd, so there was no complaint when I found out. Still, my family activated my personal cell phone for use here in Greece, just in case.

Of course, technology being what it is, I turned on my phone when I landed in Athens... no signal. To this point, I still haven't gotten it to work. Apparently, despite following all the instructions, Verizon failed at activating my SIM card, meaning I have a very expensive calculator and alarm clock. But, hey, I've still at least got a phone for calling within Greece, right?

For the first day, yes. Turned on the phone, used it, programmed in all the phone numbers, everything was fine. The battery got low, so I charged it. Turned it on the next morning, and entered the PIN for my SIM card. "SIM Card Locked. SOS Only". Now, I'd only entered the password once. It was supposed to give me three attempts before it locked the card. So, I shut it down and tried again. "SIM Card Locked. SOS Only." So, knowing what I do about mobile phones, I shut it down, took out the battery and the SIM card, blew on the contact points, put it back together, and tried a third time. "SIM Card Locked. SOS only."

By this point, I decided that phones hate me. So, I went to talk to my TA, to let him know that my phone was out of commission, and see if he knew who I should talk to. He referred me to Isabel, of the Athens Centre staff. She played with it for a bit, and came to the same conclusion: she had no idea what its issue was. The PIN number I was using was correct. All I'd done was charge the phone. There was no good reason why it was acting up. It was time to ask an expert. She send me down to Germanos, the cell phone dealership nearest to the Athens Centre, and I met a nice employee there who a) spoke decent English and b) had the resources to experiment and figure out what the problem was. It turned out that my SIM card was perfectly fine: put it in a phone, and it worked, no issue at all. When you put any SIM card into my phone, however, it came up with the same dialogue: "SIM Card Locked. SOS only." After determining this, the man in the store gave it back, saying that the phone body was a piece of junk. There was a software issue, and they couldn't fix it. I thanked him, and said I'd talk to my program about buying a new phone. I reported back to Rosemary and Isabel, and they agreed that they would have to buy a new phone body; after all, I'd already been walking around for 2 days with no means of communication. If I were to get lost on an excursion or get hurt or something, I couldn't get a hold of anyone, and they couldn't get a hold of me.

Finally, on the afternoon of Wednesday of the first week, after having two useless phones since Saturday, I got a new phone body, one of the same style but much nicer than my initial one. I've got it all charged up and re-entered the phone numbers of my professors, TA, and classmates. Now I just need to add some more money to my SIM card, and the technical difficulties will be over. For now.

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!