Showing posts with label Day 4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Day 4. Show all posts

Technical Difficulties

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.

3/27/2012 Comments PERMALINK

3/26/12: Overviews

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


This morning, we climbed that hill, which is around 900 feet tall. That being said, though, it wasn't a terrible climb. It was steep, but paved, and switch-backed such that I could walk fairly normally the whole way up. And once I made it to the top, I entirely forgot my weariness, between walking up a small mountain and waking up at 7:30 in the morning, because of this view:
Facing North
Facing South
It was hazy, so the view wasn't as good as it could have been, but that being said, it was still amazing how much of the Attika plane was visible. We could see the three tallest mountains in the area: Mount Parnitha, Mount Penteli, and Mount Egaleo. Mouth Penteli was particularly interesting to me, as that is the mountain from which much of the marble used in Athens came from. I would love to go there to hike, and see the marble outcrops myself. In the past, the tallest two of these mountains had giant statues of the gods at the summit, of Athena and Zeus, if I remember correctly. We could also see nearly all of the Attika plane, including Athens and the surrounding towns and municipalities. Nearly all the temples were visible: the temple of Olympian Zeus, the Parthenon, the Temple of Hephaestus, the Monument of the Muses, and Panathinaiko Stadium. It was very cool to be able to see these all in relation to one another, and it certainly makes the myths about Athens make much more sense. Having this sort of context makes much more sense than just looking at a map and trying to understand the relations of these places from that. The photographs, mental and digital, that I took while standing on top of Lakavitos will be a major resource I will use during the duration of the course, as we explore historical sites from prehistory through today.


Courses also began today, with an introduction to the Greek alphabet in Modern Greek 1, and a historical overview in my Civilization class. For me, who hasn't really had a formal course on Greece history itself, and hasn't had world history at all in 5 years, this overview was really interesting, and gave me a good framework, which will be filled out much more thoroughly over the next few weeks. The information in the textbooks, too, while a bit dense, gave me a good understanding of what has happened on this peninsula in the Mediterranean in its 400,000 year human history. I look forward to fleshing out the visual and informational overviews I got today over the rest of my time here.

καλή νύχτα!

3/26/2012 Comments PERMALINK