First day of school, First day of school!

Many of you are probably wondering when we were supposed to start classes.  I have had a couple of people ask me, “you look like you’re having an amazing time but I thought this was a STUDY abroad trip, not a month long vacation.  When do you start learning things?”  As of yesterday, Monday the 25^th of June, I attended my first official class in Greece.  It would please many of you to know that I not only went to one class but three.  In fact, my entire day was spent in the classroom, from 9-4:30.  The first of which being Dr. Kaplan’s class, which our honors professor and the leader of this trip, in which we talked about the book Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Stone, and related some of our own experiences to that of the main character.  I love her class and it seems to fly by because it is more discussion based versus solely based on lecture.  I appreciate this kind of environment because it allows me to stay interested in the class, but also allows me to see things from different points of view as my classmates explain things as they see it. 

Some of my notes for the Survival Greek class

After this class finished, we walked as a big group over to the main campus of Deree for our second class, survival Greek.  

This course encourages us to learn enough of the Greek language to survive here.  We started by learning the alphabet and the sounds that the letters made, just like kindergarteners.  Next our teacher showed us the combinations of consonants and vowels that made a different sound than you would expect.  For example, the Greek letter “m” placed next to the symbol pi creates a “b” sound.  We sounded out another hour or so worth of letters, combinations, and simple words, then began the hilly trek to the last class of the day. 

Our "first day of school" posses

We all chose one of two classes for the most part, Modern Greek history or Art History.  I chose to take the Art History class because I thought it would be interesting to learn the history behind all of the amazing pieces I encountered.  I walked in the classroom, picked my seat, took out my notebook and waited for the professor to begin. 

The first words out of his mouth were “Right-o.  Let me know if any of the rubbish I say becomes confusing to any of you”.  HE WAS BRITISH! If any of you have seen the series “Lie to Me”, the main character is here, in Greece, teaching my Art History class.  After the surprise factor diminished, I realized that I still had another hour and fifty-seven minutes of jam-packed lecture to take notes on.  I was grateful for his dry sense of British humor, as it made the lesson a tad more bearable. 

Brianna buying fruit

I packed up my things once again and headed home with a fried brain.  As a tradition of the study abroad trip, every room is asked to prepare one dish to share with the group.  We decided Monday would be the best day to have the potluck because a farmers market is set up literally right outside of our dorms!  The food there is so fresh and the smells as you walk up and down the street are so wonderful!  The products range from every type of fruit you can imagine (strawberries, apples, apricots, figs, pears, bananas, pineapple, peaches, kiwi, and others that I cannot even identify), to fresh fish, veggies (potatoes, zucchini, carrots, peas, ect.), assorted nuts, honey, clothing, onions, garlic, and some other things that I am forgetting.  Our room decided that we would make a type of potato dish here that calls for potatoes (obviously) cut into thin slices, covered in olive oil and a culmination of various spices, and finally topped with cheese, and roasted for 45 minutes.  Everyone brought something different.  We had Tatziki soup, fruit salad, our potatoes, a pasta type dish called pastitsio, bread, pita burgers, and the two boys on the trip graciously cut and warmed up the fruit bread that was provided to us a couple weeks ago.  Needless to say, I left the meal satisfied. 

            A little spontaneity goes a long way on this trip.  After about fifteen minutes of allowing our food to digest, a couple of my friends decided it was the perfect time for a dance party.  I swear I have danced (if you can even call it dancing) more on this trip than I have in my whole life combined.  We jammed out to songs from Nsync, to Barbie girl, to head banging music, and everything in between.  The other students walking in and out gave us weird stares then realized that we were having more fun than they were and walked away.  We even pulled Mrs. Dr. Kaplan in for a couple minutes and one of the older students on the trip who claimed, “dancing was not her thing” but ended up dancing the night away with us.  After a full two hours of doing the cha-cha slide, the tango, and various made up dances such as the jelly fish, the grandma dance and the “typical girl dance” according to Jimmy, many of us were too tired to go on.  This was the end of yet another successful day in Athens.

I just wanted to take a second and thank all of you who are keeping up with my blog posts! It really means a lot to me to know that people are keeping up with me! I miss my friends and family at home, but this is truly the opportunity of a lifetime.  I love hearing from you all that you enjoy seeing my pictures and reading what I have to say.  I constantly check the “stats” section on my profile which tells me how many people have viewed my posts that day and I always get excited to see how many of you care enough to read about my life.  Please feel free to leave comments with feedback or let me know if there is something I have not talked about that would be interesting to you! Thanks again guys, it really means a lot!