It’s a Cultural thing: Relationships

The American culture is all about efficiency and productivity. We are constantly going.  Our mind is set on quantity over quality, the person with the most things is the best and it seems that genuine people are hard to find.  We all expect to be the first priority on everyone’s list, to be taken care of in the best possible way, however, we are slow to reciprocate the favor.  We stay away from relationships because we are afraid of the time and effort they require and the hurt they can bring.  Time is sacred and a highly prized commodity in the states, yet we spend hours in front of the television every night.  Some things appear to be backwards.  It is not until you from your comfort zone that you can see these things come to light. 

            The Greeks are all about forming relationships with people.  As I said in my earlier post, the neighborhoods are pretty small and are equipped with just about everything you could need on a daily basis. If any of you have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you can understand how important family is.  There is a scene in the movie where the main character and her new husband are presented with a “gift” from her parents.   The couple opens the envelope to discover that their parents bought them a house! Little did they know the house was right next-door.  Family is everything here.  In saying this, the families that make up these neighborhoods go back for generations.  The same family has always owned the bakery; the grocery store owner’s grandson is the heir to the cash register.  Everyone has his or her place, and the relationships between the locals are products of the generations before them.  When you go to pick up a pastry, you aren’t walking in to a random store, grabbing filo dough stuffed with chocolate and out the door; you are going to visit your friend Christos to find out how his kid did on the math test last week, and if you happen to eat a pastry while you are there, so be it.

  My friend Lauren and I went to the butcher yesterday to accomplish two goals: buy meat for dinner, and put our Greek to the test.  The butcher is only about three quarters of a mile from our dorm.  When we walked through the door, we noticed that a woman in her fifties was in the middle of a conversation with the butcher.  We had no idea how long she had been there or how long she would have stayed had we not interrupted, but in the time she was there, she had made herself comfortable in the chairs provided and smoked a cigarette.  Upon our arrival, the butcher started to cut the meat the women had ordered.  As he cut, the conversation still went on.  Preparing the meat looked to be second nature to him, and was almost artistic looking.  He had probably watched his dad and grandfather do this same thing for his entire life.  The lady apologized twice for how long it was taking, but Lauren and I assured her that it was fine.  We are starting to get used to the culture now and do not expect a grocery trip to take a certain amount of time.  I cannot begin to tell you how relaxing it is to not feel the rush of the American society.  In the states, sitting at the butcher for 45 minutes after walking to two different grocery stores and carrying heavy items to and fro, would have made me a little irritated.  Here, I enjoy sitting and observing the culture and watching the relationships the people here share with each other.  Two chickens, skinned and de-boned, a couple kilos of ground beef and pork, and a kilo of what looked like sausage later, it was our turn.  After a little confusion of asking for ground sausage (which is unheard of here) I got a “mesakilo Kimas Mosxapisios” or a half-kilo of ground beef.

            Friday nights are our proclaimed “family nights”, in which we make dinner for our whole room to share.  Last night, after a very helpful cooking seminar with Dr. Kaplan, we were inspired to make meat and cheese pastry.  Here are the instructions that we made up haha:

11)    Pre heat over to 200 degrees Celsius

22)    Brown hamburger meat with various spices

33)    Sautee onions and garlic with butter, add to meat

44)    Combine feta cheese and other random cheese we got because it was the cheapest king at the store, in a large bowl with one egg (that has two yokes), olive oil, and spices

55)    Add meat to cheese mixture

66)    Add half can of left over corn

77)    Melt butter and have it at the ready

88)    Roll out filo dough

99)    Butter one sheet of filo dough and quickly cover it with a second sheet

110) Cut dough into four long vertical strips

111) Place a dollop of the meat mixture in the top of the strip

112) Fold strip like a paper football starting at the end with the meat

113) Place on cooking sheet

114) Repeat steps 10-13 until you run out of material

For our first Greek dish, we did an amazing job.  Not to flatter ourselves, but it was definitely one of the best things I have ever eaten.

Its a cultural thing: 1

Happy belated Fourth of July from Greece! This is the time of year where we celebrate our freedom, our independence and our rights, a time where we can set a whole day aside and appreciate our history and country as a whole.  People set off fireworks representing the wars and battles our country has faced to get to where we are today.  Kids run around with sparklers, dripping wet from swimming in the pool with watermelon juice plastered on their innocent cheeks.  Families get together to partake in traditions set up by the generations that came before them, laughing more than they usually do, and drinking more than they probably should.  Being in another country on such an important day has given me a different perspective on what it means to truly be an American. 

            There are hundreds of cultural differences I have noticed while over seas. I could type pages upon pages analyzing the contrasting beliefs/ practices, however, I want to focus on only a couple for right now so I don’t loose your interest.  I feel that it is appropriate that I say this before I begin; I love being an American and I take great pride in the beliefs of the American culture and society.  This blog is not meant to bash America by any means, just to document some of the discrepancies between Americans and Greeks.

            As I’m sure every one of you knows, Americans have the stereotype of being fat and lazy.  In Greece, things are laid out differently.  The whole country is set up in sections, neighborhoods if you will.  Every neighborhood has a plateia which is a central square where one can find shops, grocery stores, fruit stands, parks etc.  For example, the plateia for our neighborhood has a small grocery store with a fruit stand, a bakery, a couple of restaurants/ bars, a crepe place, gelato place, and a playground for the kids to play on which is surrounded by a concrete area that the older kids hang out at and where the parents can sit and watch their kids.  The grocery store is extremely small and you cannot buy anything in bulk.  It is part of the culture that the women of the house will make daily trips to the store in order to buy fresh ingredients for the meal she is to prepare that day.  This “trip” is made by foot more often than by car being as the grocery store is less than half a mile away from any point in the neighborhood, and it would be silly to take a vehicle to go such a short distance. This proves two points; the Greek people are already walking more than the average American, and eating fresher ingredients all around. At night, families are out, either playing at the park or at the soccer fields.  I was amazed to see that some of the parents were allowing their kids (we are talking between the ages of 3 and 10) to stay out playing until 10 or 11 at night!  In America, the kids are typically stuffed with a meal, allowed to watch TV or play video games until 7 or 8, bathed and put to bed.  I think it is so awesome that the kids here are encouraged to play outside versus staying cooped up in the house.  They are exposed to an extra couple of hours of exercise than the kids back home in America.  They can spend more family time together being active and engaged in one another and less time hypnotized by flashing images on a screen that have little to no impact on our daily lives.  I understand that there are exceptions to every rule, but this is just one of the little things I have noticed while I have been living in Greece.  More to come!

YOLGOT

If any of you do not know the most phenomenal women ever, Arianne Smith, you are truly missing out.  She is an adventurous, godly, friendly, caring, always cares what you have to say, and an all around role model.  She is currently in the Peace Corps right now in Dominica, and doing the world good.  Although I miss her like crazy, I love that modern technology still allows us to stay in contact with one another.  In saying this, I wanted to address some of the questions she asked me that maybe of interest to some of you. 

            Do you enjoy the food?

            I honestly wish I liked the food ten times less than I do.  Coming on this trip I was worried that I would hate everything and had come to terms with the fact that I would be eating bread the whole time I was here.  Our professor asked us to study some menus before we came and I convinced myself that Greek people only ate fish and olives, two of my least favorite foods.  It is almost quite the opposite.  The bread here is extremely hard, one phenomenon that my roommates and I do not understand.  We have hypothesized that it may be due to the freshness of the bread, or the fact that it wont show signs of staleness as fast as soft bread would.  The only thing I have tried here that I have not liked it a dish called dolemades, which is a grape leaf, stuffed with meat and rice.  I have had them both warm and cold and have not cared for them either way.  They have a kind of bitter taste and soggy texture… not my cup of tea.  However every other dish is outstanding!  

The pita station

One of my personal favorites is the chicken or pork pita.  These are a type of greek “fast food”, if you will, that consists of a pita, the meat (which is shaved off of a hunk of meat attached to a metal rod that rotates in side of a light that cooks the outside of the meat), tzasiki sauce (a cucumber flavored yogurt combination that is flavored with garlic), optional tomatoes (I skip over these because I’m not a huge fan on tomatoes), and topped with onions and French fries.  One can purchase this masterpiece for 2 euros and 20 cents.  The chicken pita I had in Rhodes was one of the best things I have ever tasted in my entire life.  I just discovered a chicken pita stand in downtown Athens yesterday, which could be dangerous. On a side note, hummus is unheard of here… just a little fun fact.  When im cooking at home, I usually eat cereal for breakfast, a Panini for lunch (with cheese, pesto spread, and occasionally lunch meat), and pasta for dinner (because I can not understand the instructions to cook anything else).  Tonight we are having a “family dinner” so we will see what kind of delicious food that will produce.  We might attempt to make nutella cookies using a recipe from pinterest.

            Are the people friendly?

            It depends what your definition of friendly is.  Greek people are interesting.  Once you know them and earn their loyalty and trust, you are in their circle of friendship forever.  However, getting in that circle is a difficult task, one that is rare and unknown by many visitors.  They stare a lot here.  It is not meant to be creepy or mean but it can be kind of awkward at first, especially being an American.  For example, a couple of my friends and I went to a local bar/hangout for teens in our neighborhood of Athens to watch the Greece v. Germany soccer game.  Do not get too excited, I didn’t drink.  The looks we got from the locals made many of us really uncomfortable. I don’t think they realize that in our culture staring is weird and not really acceptable.  We tend to shift our gaze when someone else catches or stare, but the Greeks look at you like you have a third eye.  I just have to remind myself that it’s a cultural thing though.  Once you look past the cultural and language barrier, people are really sweet.  I went into down town Athens yesterday and as I was wondering around, I found myself in a jewelry store.  They have this really unique design here that is both a symbol of Greece and good luck/health.  Some of the rings I was looking at ranged from 16- 20 euros but didn’t seem to be made of the best material. 

My ring :)

As I was browsing in the store, I came across a beautiful ring, tried it on, and fell in love.  I looked at the price tag and saw that it was 58 euros.  The owner of the store came over, after helping a customer, looked me in the eye and said, “ You look like a nice young lady.  I was a student once myself and I understand what you are going through.  Let me make you a deal, 28 euros”.  I was so excited! Obviously I bought the ring! Its beautiful in my eyes and the hospitality of the man made it that much more special. 

            I’ve saved the most difficult question for last: “what’s the best part?”

            As you can imagine, this is a hard question to answer.  Honestly, as cheesy as it sounds, I am going to have to say it is the friendships I have made with the people on this trip.  Friendship, as a word, does not do our bond justice.  I have moved to a different country with these people, lived in close quarters with them, experienced things beyond explanation, and connected on a whole new level with them, and surprisingly, do not want to punch them in the throat.  It is hard to find a group of people so spontaneous and willing as the 20 or so people on this trip.  I never imagined learning so much from people my age, but trust me, I have.  It is crazy to see how kids my age are able to “leave cool at the door” so to speak, and have a dance party in the lobby with out a care in the world of what others think of them as they pass by.  Its hard knowing that soon this trip will just be a memory, a story I will tell my friends and family, an experience that will never be forgotten.  As elementary as it sounds, our quote for this trip has been YOLGO, a modified version of the ever-popular YOLO, meaning You Only Live in Greece Once. 

The closest thing I have to a group picture
(Sorry, I think you've already seen this one)

This acronym may seem insignificant to you all who read this in the comfort of your own home, but for us, honors students of UNF, (some) lovers of Jesus, sons and daughters of parents in different walks of life, sisters and brothers of kids back home, kids from different backgrounds, it is what keeps us going everyday.  This little phrase is what keeps us laughing, exploring, strong, experimenting, absorbing, immersing, digging deeper, loving harder, and living fuller. It is the motivation we need to wake up at 6:00 in the morning to walk around God’s creation in the blistering heat on our “weekends”.  It is what holds us together and what separates this group from any other I have been a part of.  So, if I had to put this relationship we share into a phrase it would be YOLGOT, because it explains it all, we are all living here, in Greece, a once in a life time experience that we all get to share Together. 

YOLGOT: You Only Live in Greece Once, Together.  There’s a quote that my sorority sisters put on a shirt that applies perfectly to this occasion, that I have modified a little: “You only live in Greece once, but when you live like us, once is enough.”

Getting into a routine

My days in Greece are beginning to slow down which is both a good thing and a bad thing.  I am getting into a routine:  I wake up, eat, get dressed, head to class, come home, eat, do random things for a couple of hours, homework, then bed. On one hand I am happy because I feel like I am actually living here and learning the ropes.  However, on the other hand, I promised myself I would do something spontaneous everyday, so that I didn’t pass any opportunity by.  I do not want to take my time here for granted and spend my days studying and sitting in my dorm room.  I am not a huge fan of routines; they allow the days to fly by unnoticed with no specific memory to hold on to.

            On a different note, I was curious to see what my friends and family wanted to hear more about.  From the people who responded, I was asked to talk a little bit about the weather and the “political riots” in Greece.  The weather here is awesome, today was an especially pleasant day.  Usually I cannot find one cloud in the sky and there is a constant breeze.  Summers here are not the rainy season, so we have had nothing but sunshine!  Temperature wise, it is typically in the mid to low ninety’s which can be a little warm for my taste at times, but it is truly quite pleasant (the breeze helps a lot).  As for the political uproar Greece is in with the riots in the streets and people going on killing sprees over the new political party in office, it is pretty calm here.  Honestly if I did not know about the election, I would not have been able to tell by peoples behaviors.  The riots and uproar probably won’t become too prevalent until after some of the rules and regulations of the new party are put into place.  I have not seen any type of crisis; in fact the only instance of negative behavior I have seen is between two kids fighting over a soccer ball. 

            As I have said many times before, the group of people on this trip is unbelievable.  I have laughed, danced, walked, explored, and gotten lost more here with these irreplaceable individuals more than I have in a long, long time.  

Our note card collage

My wonderful crepe

  My room mates and I thought of the ingenious idea to keep record of the hilarious things people have said by writing the quotes down on highlighter-colored note cards and taping them to one our the main walls in the kitchen area.  I took a picture of some of the things we have so far.  I do not know if you will understand the hilarity behind them but they serve as a constant reminder of our good memories together, carefully hung with a strip of off brand adhesive.  Hopefully I can try to explain some of the scenarios and stories behind any of these that strike your interest.

The menu

After classes were over today, a group of us headed to the Platia which is the "Town Square" so to speak.  We had attempted to go to a crepe place that neighbors one of the most amazing gelato places, for some time now, but every time we tried to go it was closed.  After deciphering the greek on the door, we came to understand that the restaurant did not open until six.  being the punctual people we are, out group of six showed up right on time and placed our orders.  I got the number 105 which was a "salty" crepe stuffed with ham, gouda cheese and bacon. 

 It was so delicious, as most of the food is proving to be here.  against my stomachs will, I indulged in the number 206: a dessert crepe with carmel praline spread (like nutella but a different flavor), bananas, and cinnamon.  i could not have thought of a better dinner for tonight! it was amazing and i even had a conversation with one of the workers, (in english though, don't get too excited), and assured him that we would definitely be back!

 Let me take a moment to explain to you room 304’s new found obsession with both Nutella and the off brand nutella, Fundelina (which tastes like brownie batter) and Merenda (which tastes exactly like nutella but is like .2 euros cheaper).  I do not know what it is about this phenomenal concoction of hazelnut and chocolate but, like the black-eyed peas say, I just can’t get enough.  This is the closest I have been to experiencing the symptoms of an addict; when im not eating nutella im thinking about it, when im running low I get worried that I need to buy more, when I eat anything, I crave its hazel-nutty goodness.  I admit that most of what I just said is extreme, but it gives you an idea of what I, and the inhabitants of room 304, am going through. We learned that in WW2, the chocolate supply was low in Europe.  The country found a solution in cutting the chocolate with hazelnut, making chocolate last longer as only half of the amount was being used per container.  The spread became an identifying factor for Italy, as most things do in times of starvation and war.  It is because of this that we have the nutella we know and love today.

I know this post was a little random but, it was a quick update of the random stuff in my life!  Please let me know if you are curious about anything going on in Greece and again thanks for reading my blog!  I love hearing from you guys and would love to Skype anyone! Ya sas! (That’s goodbye in Greek!)

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!

The Acropolis

The Acropolis 

Greece is known for it’s countless acropolises (or is it acropoli?), the most popular being the one that sits a top a mountain overlooking the city of Athens.  There is an acropolis in every major city and it usually consists of some type of building that sits on top of the highest mountain in the city.  These were prime places used if the city was ever under attack because it is the hardest part to seize, naturally.  As you can imagine, the view was stunning!

 It was wild to see things that I have only seen on post cards or on slides in history classes in person.  Although it was truly amazing to see these timeless pieces of history, the fun had only just begun. 

My Random Greek lady-friend

In our exhausted, over heated, overwhelmed, state of delirium a group of us decided to take on the identity of professional photo bombers, making it our mission to “enhance” any and every picture we encountered.  The positions we practiced varied from different takes on the original Sasquatch walk, to awkward faces, to a solid “two thumbs up” stance behind a couple posed holding hands as if they had just won a dance competition. 
 Also as a part of this top-secret mission, we decided to take as many pictures as we could with random people.  My friend Nicki took an amazing picture with an extremely attractive Irish man with a beautiful accent while I sat extremely close to an old Greek woman on a bench as “nonchalantly” as I possibly could. I took up my own personal goal to see how many pictures I could take for other people and got up to eight. The situation was definitely a memorable one and made all of us laugh so hard.  I am sure I have said this a million times, but I honestly could not have asked for a better group of people to share these memories with.

The amazing Greek style food

            After an hour or so of carrying on this mischief, we met or group at the bottom of the acropolis and headed back into down town Athens.  One cannot truly appreciate the height of the acropolis until you hike up and down it that is for sure. When we hit the bottom the Kaplans asked us a very difficult question, if we wanted to eat a lunch that was on them at a typical Greek restaurant, or if we wanted to continue walking in the blistering heat with growling tummies. 

As you can imagine, we took up the offer of indulging in a free meal.  We had no idea what was about to hit our taste buds.  Our table of six got to choose 14 dishes to share, do not judge us, they were appetizer sized.  This is the traditional way to share a meal with your family for Greeks.  We chose fried cheese, calamari, Greek salad (that no one touched haha), two different hummus type dips, beans, meatballs, tziki sauce, sausage, fries, dolmades, pork, mousaka, and fried zucchini.   Not going to lie, it was probably some of the most amazing tasting food I have ever eaten.  After this tasty stop we headed into the “downtown” portion of Athens to the flea market that is open on Sundays.  All I could think about was how much my little brother, Dallas, would love being in this environment.  There were so many cool pieces taking over the street, all with different personalities and stories to tell. 

After wandering around for a good hour or so, it was finally time to head home.  Unfortunately, I got lost… again.  I feel like I should have accepted the fact, by now, that I am just no good with directions and am bound to get lost anytime I stray away from the norm. A group of four of us got on the correct metro, got off on the correct stop, got on the correct bus, and got of on the completely wrong bus stop ten or fifteen blocks away from the stop we should have gotten off at.    Being the bright college students we are, we figured it would be in our best interest to walk to our dorms, not knowing the distance we had in store for us.  Long story short, we hiked up and down streets using our internal compass to direct us on our journey, finally stopped after 20 minutes and decided to wait for a bus due to the fact that we had seen three or four pass us in our time walking.  Once we found the bus stop, we waited for another twenty or thirty minutes, which felt like hours, for the bus to finally come.  I may be acting a little dramatic but just give me a couple sentences to rant.  After hiking up to the acropolis, around the Parthenon, down the acropolis (which remember is the highest point in the city of Athens), around the flea market, and through shops, the last thing I wanted to do was walk twenty blocks in the blazing hot sun to get back to my dorm.  I was running out of water and the little water I had left was warm.  I was desperate for something, tried to eat an orange out of the trees that grows in the middle of the streets (which is a whole story in itself), only to find that it was bitter and full of seeds, and on top of that a cat kept meowing from behind a bush the entire time we were waiting for the bus.  Ok, sorry but I just needed to give you the full effect of my experience.  At least I know that in the two or three times I have gotten lost, I still managed to find my way back.  I hate admitting this but that night I indulged in my roommates fundelina (knock off brand of nutella) with the biggest spoon our dorm had to offer.  After all, I figured I deserved it after walking more that ten or eleven miles that day. 

My amazing room mates

One of the best parts of this entire trip, hands down, is my roommates.  No matter what kind of day we have had, we some how always find a way to build each other up.  I cannot think of one time we have been together that I have not been in tears from laughing so hard about the memories we have shared together.  That Sunday night was no exception.  I’m not sure if it was the fifteen hour day or the fact that we had been in the sun for a good portion of that time but that was the hardest I laughed in a really long time.  We kept recalling events from earlier that day and reminding each other of the hilarious photo bombs or conversations that were shared.  This trip has really taught me spontaneity (as ironic as that sounds) and how to live life to the fullest.  We jokingly tell each other “YOLO” as a reminder that we only have one life to live so why not throw yourself a dance party or talk to complete strangers. I think John Lennon says it best: “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans”

Delphi, shmelphi

Delphi shmelphi…I have resorted to this beginning for my blog because I have literally attempted to find an adequate introduction for the past twenty minutes, and this is all I can come up with.  Creative right? 

            We kicked our Saturday morning off with a two-hour bus ride into Delphi at 7 am, and as you could probably guess, this resorted to “nap time” for our group of college students who are unaccustomed to waking up at such an ungodly time.  About half way into the trip we woke up to Mr. Dr. Kaplan informing us about a pit stop we were going to make that had bathrooms and food.    Little did we know that we were about to be submerged in as much Greek culture that one could pack into a gas station-sized store on the side of the road.  The “90 café” served a variety of pastries, coffee, and probably 20-30 different types of traditional Greek items.  Our bus was the first to arrive at this little shop and was immediately followed by four or five busses of Greek men and women.  If you do not know the stereotype of a Greek individual, let me take this time to inform you that they are loud, pushy, and have no idea what a “personal bubble” is.  Picture me having just woken up and thrown into this type of environment.  I’m sure you pictured the correct scenario in your head; I was completely overwhelmed and almost angry at the fact that I could not move or even function in this mad house!  I felt as if I could not even control my own thoughts due to the cacophony of Greek voices flowing in and out of my ears.  I finally decided to stand outside for a bit and collect my thoughts.  After some consulting with some of my peers, three of us decided to man up and buy some pastries! I felt like I was Chuck Norris walking into an ally way ready to fight, the wind was blowing my hair back and I put on my “don’t mess with me” face, walked right over to the pastry lady and I ordered my baklava, dang it! I was not even hungry, I just wanted to prove to myself, and the rest of that 90 café that I could hang with the Greeks if I wanted to.  I walked out of that place a changed individual.  I boarded the bus with my pride, dignity, and a hurt tummy after forcing down my victory baklava.  Nonetheless, I knew that I would remember that experience for years to come.

            Needless to say, we continued onward to Delphi.  As we traveled the bus filled with the unmistakable stench of fresh fertilizer, and the views from my window were unlike any other.  Farmlands, mountains and enormous windmills flashed by for the next hour or so.  Our bus climbed the winding mountain of Parnassus, which is the second highest mountain in Greece, after Mt. Olympus. 

            A little history lesson: Individuals would take a pilgrimage all the way from Athens, to Delphi seeking advise from the oracles that inhabited some of the temples.  When they finally arrived, they would go through a series of rituals, the first of which was to take a bathe in a spring in order to cleanse and purify them before seeking wisdom, from Athena.  So naturally, this was our first stop.  After a quick wash, we walked around the ruins atop the mountain.    Everything is was so beautiful and its mind boggling to think about how sacred of a place this once was, and all the history that can be told through a few beaten down columns.  I was able to act as the “stand in oracle” as my classmates and friends asked me for “advise” to solve their troubles.  

The Bellybutton

After taking some goofy pictures, we hiked up the very strenuous path to the stadium where some of the first Olympians competed in foot races.  We all joked that the first part of the competition was making it up to the stadium itself.  We also saw the “belly button” of the world.  Supposedly, Zeus wanted to find where the center of the world was so he released two eagles that flew until the met in Delphi, where the “naval” was placed.

            Next we found ourselves at the temple of Athena, which is one of the most photographed places in Greece.  It was so beautiful and again, words cannot begin to describe the scenery.  

Me playing "oracle"

The roommate picture

In the monastery

Temple of Athena

            At this point I hope you can understand that our days are jam packed of activities.  In saying this, we boarded the bus yet again and made our way to the monastery in Delphi.  Out of respect, the girls were asked to wear long skirts that covered our knees.  The original paintings on the walls were still intact and I could just feel a huge emotional wave engulf me.  It was amazing to just stand and stare and all of the originally beauty this place had to offer.  PS: sorry my pictures are awkward... ive been fighting it for a while.