Thursday, June 22, 2006

10:25pm

We made a traditional Greek meal for dinner tonight; it was a group effort and the results were delicious.  We had lemon roasted chicken, carrots, and potatoes, and corn with fresh baklava (from a bakery) for dessert. 

Our philosophy professor was 25 minutes late for class and I was getting ready to leave when he showed up (of course).  He thankfully went over the essay questions we'll have on our exam next week, so I was glad that I stayed, but that class is incredibly hard to make it through each day.  It doesn't help that it is actually warmer in our classroom than it is outside b/c there is no air conditioning and the breeze doesn't really reach inside. 

We're having a night in for a change tonight, Adrienne is going to stay the night since we have to leave at 7:30 tomorrow morning, so we're probably just going to hang around the apartment and pack. 

I'm thinking of going to Thessaloniki the weekend after our Santorini trip instead of going to Ios as we had planned; I wanted to go there last year and I don't really see the point in going to more Cycladic Islands when we could see a completely different part of the country.   Plus, Pella is only half an hour from there, which is where Alexander the Great was born and taught by Aristotle-which is just too cool to pass up.

I'll update when we get back from our excursion on Sunday.

Kalispera sas - good evening to you.

~RLM

2:37 pm

Tuesday and Wednesday were rather productive days, we stuck to our schedule and got to see the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Panathenaic Olympic Stadium, and the Cycladic Museum in the mornings before our afternoon classes.  On Tuesday night, I went with Ryan to the rooftop movie theatre to see V for Vendetta again b/c he had missed it the night before and then last night Laura and I hung out in the other Ipitou apartment with Alpin for awhile b/c they have air conditioning and we do not.

We are in the middle of an Athenian heat wave, which means the temperatures near 100 every day and it is stiflingly hot all the time.  Even with the windows open, it is barely cool enough to sleep without any blankets or sheets.  Hopefully it will be a bit cooler on the excursion this weekend, but it probably won't be.

We leave for our tour of ancient Greece tomorrow morning around 8 am; we will be seeing Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Epidavros, Nauplia, and Corinth.  I'm hoping we stay at the same places as last year because they were really nice and the food was delicious. 

We finalized our travel arrangements for next weekend; we are heading to Santorini for the fourth of July weekend again, which should be a lot of fun.  We are taking a night boat on Thursday at 10 pm and will arrive around 7:30 Friday morning.  We have a gorgeous hotel on Perissa, one of the black beaches, and will be staying until Monday when we leave at 7:30pm for another night boat that puts us in Athens around 5:15 Tuesday morning.  We have off from school on Tuesday for the holiday so we are going to spend the day at Sounio to see the Temple of Poseidon and then come back that afternoon to be American and grill out on the boy's barbecue grill. 

The following weekend we are planning another trip to the Cycladic Islands, because Maren has friends living on Ios who are going to let us stay with them for free.  We'll probably hit another island or two on the way to Ios just because they are so close-I'm hoping to go to Milos because it looks really awesome.

Thats all for now, I've got class in twenty minutes.

~RLM

GotD: parakalo - please