feeling hellagood

My Odyssey in Athens has begun. I arrived in Athens almost 5 hours ago at about 7am US time-2pm Greece time. It took an hour to get my bag and meet the other girl arriving, and about 45 minutes to get back into the city to our student apartment in Syntagma. There will be six girls living in a three bedroom, one bathroom apartment, with funny air conditioning and a huge balcony that overlooks the street. My flights were pretty much uneventful; I saw Liberty Hall from my window seat when we landed in Philadelphia, spent two hours watching Pirates of the Caribbean on my laptop in the International terminal, waited an extra hour to leave because the flight was overbooked, and finally made it up. The meal was surprisingly good for airplane food, I had penne in red sauce w/cheese, little squares of German bread w/butter, really good English cream crackers, a rectangle of gouda cheese, and two apricot shortcakes, with ginger ale. Headsets were too expensive so I read the new Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret? until I fell asleep around 8pm. Thankfully I'd been up until 2am the previous night making our travel reservations, or I never would have been able to fall asleep that early. I woke up about 12:30 and watched the sun rise over the ocean, I got really good pictures. When it was light enough, I started reading again, and finished about 5 minutes before they let us de-plane. It was incredibly confusing trying to navigate my way through the Fiumicino airport speaking no Italian and having a very vague idea of where I was supposed to be. I finally figured out you had to take a shuttle to the next building to your connection, and things went better after that. Customs was a breeze, it took all of 30 seconds and I was through. The first thing I saw upon entering the terminal was a huge Ferragamo store, one of my favorite shoe designers ever-and the best maker of Italian leather loafers. I've been nagging mom for weeks about buying Ferragamos when I got here, which she knows I won't do, but I still think its funny that that store is the first thing I saw. We're going to have to go find some place for dinner so I will finish my update later, I put the pics from my flight on webshots, so check them out. ~RLM

the good life

Our first night in Athens got off to a smashing start. We got ready and went out to the local convenience store for snacks and water, I bought a Hellas Vogue, and then came back to the apt to drop off our stuff. We walked around for a while trying to find a restaurant Dina recommended to us, and ended up in the second place she suggested, Delphi, a small restaurant around the corner from us. Dinner was fantastic, I got grilled chicken and they served huge hard rolls and a pitcher of water. The french fries were weird and really greasy so I probably won't try those again. We walked down to the post office and used the pay phones to call home, there is an eight hour time difference so 9pm here was one in the afternoon in Indy. We walked back to the apartment and ended up getting our key stuck in the lock b/c the lock is broken. We couldn't get the key out, we couldn't get inside, and the person on the other side of the door trying to come out and walk his dog was stuck too. Finally the building manager came down and they ended up using the security lever to open the double doors and were able to eventually get the key out, the other man's key didn't work either so now they have to replace the lock and the door of our building is open. Luckily we're on the fourth floor and have security locks on our door so were still safe. We got to bed about 10pm and slept like the dead until 1:40am when the garbage collector woke us up. I don't know what they were doing but it was incredibly loud. The incredibly bright sunlight streaming through our wooden shutters woke us up bright and early at 7 this morning and we've been up since then. Sara and I got dressed and walked to the small grocer/deli next door to the UINDY admissions office and got Frosted Flakes, milk, and juice for breakfast and then walked back and ate on our balcony. The balcony was really dirty so we decided to mop the floor, which is what we did for the last half hour; I watered the mostly dead plants-we have exactly two blooms on about 10 big pots. We still have an hour and a half before Dina comes to pick us up for orientation and I have no idea what to do with the time, we're going to spend the rest of the day walking so exploring seems kind of pointless. Laura just came in and loaned me her voltage converter so I will probably end up straightening my hair and then finding something to wear for our walking tour. I'll write more later and try to upload some pictures of our apartment and neighborhood. ~Rachel

people on streets

Today has been a really long but good day. We had our orientation this morning where we went through a lot of paperwork and information about the program and living in Athens. We ate lunch at some greek restaurant in Syntagma square, we had pita sandwich type things with grilled chicken and cucumber garlic sauce-it was really good. After lunch we went back to the UINDY campus and learned how to get to the beaches and islands in the area and then started our walking tour of Athens. We went through Plaka and found the outdoor cinema-we're going to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith tonight-and then turned around and walked back through our neighborhood to the other side of the city which took us through Syntagma past the National Gardens, Hadrian's Arch and around the Acropolis and through Monastiraki-the big flea market area-and then back to campus. We rented a cell phone to share between the three of us and now we are sitting in the UINDYA computer lab in the basement of their building. We're probably going to head back to the apartment soon and then make plans to head out to dinner and a movie. I'm going to upload my pictures of the Acropolis when we get back to the apartment so they will be on webshots later today. ~Rachel

ahhhh....

Just a clarification-the only reason my mood says irritated is because I have been waiting for a phone call for an hour and they still haven't called me-it is after one in the morning here and I would like to go to bed.
Today was really good, we slept until 1 in the afternoon-the jet lag really hit us hard-and then got up and went back to the restaurant where we ate lunch yesterday and bought souflakis again. We came back to the apartment and ate and then ran errands in the neighborhood, we stopped at the pharmacy for shampoo and the fruit stand for fresh cherries and cases of water. After we dropped our stuff at the apartment we walked up to the Acropolis and spent the afternoon walking around there. We spent about half an hour sitting on the Areopagos-the hill where Paul delivered his sermon "On and unknown God" and then walked back around the base of the Acropolis to the Theatre of Dionysos where Greek tragedy was born. We spent about 4 hours walking around the area and then stopped at a pastry shop and bought food for dinner, I got a ham and cheese croissant and a cherry croissant for breakfast. We rested at the apartment for awhile and then went back to the post office in Syntagma square to call home, we walked around Ermou-shoe street-and looked at all the shops before coming back here. Our new roommates arrived at 8:45 and then left immediately to meet their group. They got back around 11:30 and we took them back to Syntagma so they could buy phone cards and call home. I bought some more chocolate filled pastries at the kiosk and called home to arrange for them to call our cell phone-we can't call out but incoming calls are free. It's been over an hour now and I'm getting really tired so I think I will call it a day. We are getting up at 7 to go to the flea market in Monastiraki and then we are going to tour the Agora and the Temple of Olympian Zeus in the afternoon. I'll write more later, my pictures from the Acropolis are up on webshots so check them out! ~Rachel

they played gwen on the radio

Today was really fun, we got up early and went to Monastiraki to the flea market. I bought several pieces of inexpensive jewelry-a really cool amber bracelet for 4E, a 2 inch long rectangular silver ring for 15E, earrings for 3E, two hematite komboloy-a cobalt blue shot glass for Caitlin, and two pieces of ceramics-one small vase with Aphrodite on it and a small teal bowl with the Panathenaic procession carved on it. We spent about 3 hours in the market and ate at McDonalds-they have something called a Greek Mac-a big mac on pita, and then stopped at Starbucks on the way back to the apartment-their menu is different, I had a mango citrus tea frapucino-it was delicious. We took a 3 hour siesta and then went to the souvlakis stand again for dinner. Later, Sarah and I met with the other group of students and went walking around another part of Athens with them and then came back and woke up Laura to get ice cream. Its almost one here so I will write more tomorrow. I have new pictures on webshots, so check those out. ~Rachel