Thursday, 7.29: Where the anarchists hang out

My days this week have consisted of rushing to finish my project, and...rushing to finish my project. Whereas I once had a lot of leeway on what to do in the afternoons, I have recently been spending eight hours a day glued to a computer screen, exhausted at the end and tired of looking at this video that I am not even sure I like anymore. But on Thursday, at last, I completed my final render and finished. And it was a great feeling. Actually, it was quite bittersweet, because the end of this project marks the beginning of the end my time here in Athens. Would it be a lie to say I wasn't looking forward to going home? Not entirely. I do miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss sleeping. I miss not feeling out of place when walking on the street. And I miss having lots of fruit in the house all the time. I have found that I'm not cut out for a job that'll put me behind a screen for 8 hours a day (exhausts my brain) and that I can't keep up with the Greek party system of "relaxing" until 2 AM every night. But I will miss Athens. I will miss walking down Eratothenous St. and seeing the Stadium right there. I'll miss the random ruins and the Acropolis on the skyline. And I'll miss the people from work, who were really great people. The islands were great and seeing all this culture really opened my eyes to why some people want to be history majors or Classics majors. But after two months of tanning and burning and sleep deprivation, I'm ready to get back to school and life and home.

Because we all leave at different times and the first people left on Friday, Dionysis took us all out to dinner on Thursday, as a goodbye dinner. It was very disappointing that the archaeology people decided to go hang out with their archaeology friends instead of joining us for our last group dinner in Athens, but I suppose they had gotten closer to those people than they did to us. Regardless, with or without them, I had a great time.

The night began with a trip around Omonia where Dionysis showed us his hang outs, "where the anarchists and the artists hang out." And where most of the city is in the ancient columnal style or pretty modern buildings with random graffiti on them, this was nothing I had seen before in Greece. Some examples of the art that covered the walls of this area of town:

We also saw this car:

What's so special about this car? Well, it's an original Greek car, made in Greece and everything. It's orange, which is awesome. And oh yeah, it only has 3 wheels.

WHAT?

So we walk to have dinner and dinner and conversations are awesome. We talk about inane things like "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" or some show like that, and about our trips and our classes and going home. And we ate and ate and ate. And I know that when I get home, there's going to be nothing close to the Greek food I've had here. Sigh.

We walked back to our apartments together, under a waning moon. And though my legs hurt and my stomach was overstuffed, as I felt the breeze cool on my skin and saw the lights light up the Stadium, I took a breath. It was a good feeling.

Sat/Sun 7.24-7.25 Part III: Make Your Own Luck

We awoke at 9:00 AM and had what turned out to be quite a good breakfast at the hostel. Eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, and juice, and in the heat, we walked back to the ferry to go to Santorini. Once on the ferry [both this and the last had very comfortable seats by the way], we noticed that they were playing an episode of Doug!! *childhood memories ensue*

And then, of course, I immediately fell asleep afterwards and woke up in the port in Santorini. We made our way to Fira with some shady dealings with the people who were picking Nick and Sam up to go to their hostel (we weren't actually supposed to be on the van with them, but the woman was super nice). And I thought to myself, "I need to get one of those stuffed donkeys to remind myself of the awesomeness of this trip." And after much walking up and down the hills of Fira, I found one. And I found myself wanting to name him. At the same time, I realized what a pain it's been trying to find a guy named Kostos here in Greece. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard, but the number of guys I actually asked the name of dwindled after the skeezy ones tried to "ni hao" me. I mean, I had found a Kosta and a Kostis, but...no Kostos. So, instead of relying on luck to find me one, I decided to make my own luck and thus, this cutie here is named Giannis  Kostos Leonidas IV, Giannis because all the men  Marj has met here are named John, Kostos for me, Leonidas for Shivani's chocolate obsession, and IV for the fourth John Marj has met here. So his name is pretty intimidating, but we call him Yanni (after my coworker who's as adorable).

1. Meet someone named Kostos.

After getting Yanni, we headed to one of Santorini's famous black beaches. The beaches are black due to the volcanic rock on the island, and all the beaches in Santorini are black except the Red Beach and the White Beach which are red and white respectively. The thing with the black beach is that as expected, the sand is very hot during the day so that if you don't wear shoes in the sand, you will likely experience pain of some sort on the soles of your feet. Because it was the last beach experience of the summer, we decided to splurge for an umbrella and because we hadn't slept all weekend, a nap. But before we napped, Marj decided she wanted to fly a kite and produced from her backpack, two kites! I tried to help launch them but the wind wasn't having it.

And thus, we relaxed at the beautiful beach. I contemplated getting my henna there on the beach (lots of other people were doing it!) but ultimately felt too gross to do anything of that sort. I still had smoke residue, sulfur residue, and Eos sand residue on me and was sticky from sweat and ocean spray. So I slept. And it was wonderful.

We finally decided to call a cab to take us to the airport and got there around 7:00 for our 8:15 flight. So a little background on the next part of the story: On Friday, there had been a little scare that the air traffic controllers in Athens were going to strike that Sunday, but when the courts deemed it illegal, we thought we were in the clear to come back to Athens all safe and sound that Sunday. And the air traffic controllers are law abiding people so they did not strike that Sunday. They did, however, all call in sick. The message we got at the airport was that "All flights scheduled today will be leaving at midnight. But if the air traffic controllers feel better, maybe we'll go a little earlier."

And so, with four full flights waiting to get out of Santorini, we squatted in that tiny airport with overpriced food and the same sticky air as the ocean with no breeze. But it wasn't that miserable an experience, and definitely not enough to bring down the whole weekend. I finished a book I started around 3 weeks before, David Sedaris's When You are Engulfed in Flames. I highly recommend it, especially for those who share a sense of humor for the daily absurdities of life. It's a good beach read because it's a compilation of short stories so you can read one, take a nap, go swimming, and come back to read another. However, even in the comedy there is a sort of a darkness that...well...you'll just have to read it for yourself.

We didn't make it until midnight. At around 11 PM, our plane took off for Athens and we finally made it back to the apartment, exhausted but pleased with the way the weekend turned out. We went big and now, we get to go home accomplished.

Sat/Sun 7.24-7.25 Part II: The Night is Young

The next leg of our trip involved getting to Eos, a nearby island. By nearby, I mean 2 hours away by ferry and 45 minutes away by hydrofoil (a faster kind of ferry). Unfortunately, the ferries leave from a more modern port than Old Port, and to get there, we had to either get a cab or take the bus [no donkeys or cable cars here!]. The problem was, by the time we got to the bus station, the last bus before our ferry had left and we were forced to get a cab. Problem being, not many cabs were receptive to taking us to the port, for some reason. It took nearly an hour to get a cab, and when there are 6 people, it's especially difficult. After much frustration, running around, and literally chasing after taxis, we got to the port, got on the boat, and [for me], after eating a cheese pie, immediately fell asleep.

I awoke as we were docking in Eos and a driver from the Princess Sissy Hostel came to pick us up. Yup. Princess Sissy. The hostel was (surprise) on a hill, just like most of the island is, about halfway between the beach and the town, which was a pretty good compromise. After depositing our stuff in the rooms, we decided to head down to the beach and swim off the mineral residue from earlier in the hot springs. Eos is famous for its white sand beaches and the one near our hostel did not disappoint. The sand was much finer than anything I had seen before in Greece, even finer, I would dare say, than the sand on the California beaches. It felt super nice to walk in [no sharp rocks], but the problem with fine sand is that it gets everywhere and does not leave. Luckily, after a short nap, it was swim time.

Now you might be wondering (as I was) that I lasted for 2 months without going for a swim in the ocean. Well aside from my obvious lack of swimming chops, there were many things that I won't dwell on that contributed to me taking my first swim in the Aegean two months after I got to Greece. "But what about you leaping into the caldera, Angela?" Well, technically, it's not part of the Aegean; it's a caldera. Oh technicalities. Pictures are on Marj's camera so as of now, I don't have any of me "bobbing" in the ocean ["bobbing" because the water was only 3 feet deep] but after a day of stinky sulfur and stinky donkeys, the water of the Aegean felt so good. Also, reading Cosmo out loud on the beach is a great way to bond and share some laughs with the ladies.

13. Take a dip in the Aegean.

Then, we watched the sun set. It disappeared behind some mountains very quickly and before we knew it, we were bathed in the dusk of twilight. As we turned to go back to the hostel, we saw something that you don't see very often: moonrise. One of my favorite books is A Wrinkle in Time and in this book, the protagonists are forced to turn away from the moonrise to watch a dark shadow fall over them. Since then, I've wanted to see a true moonrise, but it's hard because in many places the moon rises before the sun sets. But here, oh what a sight.

~~

A bit of background on the island of Eos. Eos, also spelled Ios, is one of the youngest [touristwise] of the Cycladic islands. It's known for its white beaches, which served as campgrounds for the young, penniless traveler during the 1970s, and subsequently, for its nightlife. Fortunately for us, who hadn't slept much, nightlife doesn't really start in Eos until 2 AM, so we had time to take naps and get our strength back up before heading out.

We start getting ready at around midnight, busy ourselves until around 1:30 AM and head out for the town. It's dark, but the hill leading up to the town doesn't feel dangerous. In fact, there is a sense of anticipation in the air. Where do we go? How do we get there? We end up going to a couple of clubs, which did not charge covers for the ladies [Rehab and Disco 69] and danced the night away with sparklers in our hands. All the stresses of the summer - of my project, of finding food and water on the islands, making our flight, dealing with unsavory characters - all that slipped away as I moved to the beat, and I remembered why I love dancing and why I love watching others dance. There's a euphoria as they let themselves go, a light in their eyes when they hear their song come on. Personally, I'm not a big dance whilst intoxicated gal because I want to feel everything - my feet on the ground, the beat thrumming through me, the heat of the bodies around me. And I want to remember it.

Shivani's mantra is "go big or go home." And I'd certainly say that we went big that night. Finally, with drooping eyes and tired limbs we decided to head back to the hostel. At 5:00 AM, on our way back we stumbled upon what else but a Nutelleria.

The line was too long so we decided to skip and go to sleep, but still, an epic end to an epic night.

Next, back to Santorini. Stay tuned.

Sat/Sun 7.24-7.25 Part I: Leap Headfirst into a Volcano

Before I start, a note about the next couple of posts:
Our last weekend trip in Greece was a Santorini/Eos island hopping adventure. I hit Santorini early Saturday morning, left at 5 PM to go to Eos, stayed the night in Eos, and went back to Santorini at 10:30 AM the next morning. Thus, this trip will be broken up into 3 parts: Santorini-Eos-Santorini. Enjoy. :)

When people mention island hopping in Greece, there are two islands that they always recommend: Mykonos and Santorini. We went to Mykonos pretty early in the trip but I've been waiting two months to get to Santorini. The problem is, although "island hopping" sounds like it should be a breeze, as if you were simply jumping from stone to stone across a babbling brook, unless you want to carry around all your stuff all day and sleep in dubious places (like mosquito-infested beaches) at night, it's important to plan ahead. That, and the fact that islands are farther away from each other than you might think. For instance, Santorini is about 10 hours away by ferry that usually either runs super early in the morning, or around midnight and the ferry tickets cost around 80 Euro round trip. Thus, we thought it would be easier and cheaper to fly, given our friends at Aegean Airlines. Because of scheduling (people's families were in town) and availabilities of flights, however, the trip kept getting pushed back and back and back. At the time, even when the change in schedule freed up other weekends for me to do things like go to Rome or Rhodes or see Lysistrata at Epidaurus, it was still incredibly frustrating because I would get all excited to go to Santorini (to the squeal while jumping up and down point) only to be let down. Over and over and over again. That being said, going to Santorini this weekend was an epic last trip in Greece, a great way to end a summer abroad and get ready to go back home and back to school. Super. Epic. Awesome.

I had it in my mind for the longest time that Santorini would be a lot like Mykonos, same blue and white houses, same kind of beaches, same nightlife, etc, probably because everyone groups them together as Must-See-Greek-Islands. I should know by now that every island has its own personality and own flair. And here's what I learned about Santorini:

The islands in the Santorini island group were once one big round island that contained a huge volcano. But one huge eruption caused the volcano to collapse in on itself and form the famous Santorini caldera. I had once thought that the caldera was on Santorini itself and that if you wanted to see the sunset from it, you would have go somewhere in Santorini and climb the caldera and watch the sun set. But actually, all of the island of Santorini [the big island] is part of the caldera, as you can see from the map to the right. Water rushed in when the volcano collapsed and flooded the caldera, forming the island chain we know today. In the middle is what's left of the volcano, part of which is still active and last erupted in the 1950s. And along the whole island are cliffs which give great views of the sunset, making Santorini one of the most romantic of the Greek islands. Thus, to party, go to Mykonos. To get married, go to Santorini.

So! How was my trip? Well, Liz and I took one of those 5:30 AM flights again on Saturday morning to get to Santorini and were able to see the sun rise, again. By the time, we met up with Marj, Shivani, and Ray, who had gotten in the day before, it was breakfast time and we stopped by a little convenience store to pick up some goods where I found...

Yummm. I ate them on the beach later in the weekend and they were delicious. Nothing was too overpowering and everything blended together wonderfully and really, munching while watching the ocean is the best way to eat them. Nom.

5. Buy honey-roasted peanuts coated in sesame seeds in Santorini.

 -> The Volcano

We decided a little while before we left for the island that we would love to go see this volcano, located in the middle of the caldera. It's a short boat ride away and we opted to do a combination volcano/hot springs tour [you can only do it via tour boat, as far as I can tell] for 20 Euro. The boats sail from the Old Port and there are three ways to get there: by cable car, by donkey, or by walking [through donkey poop]. Now, I admit that I had not done the most thorough research about Santorini, but I did hear that one of the great things to do was to take the cable car down and the donkey up, unless you really wanted to slug through poop either way. What I had not anticipated was how far down we had to go to get there. Well, really, how far up, then down we had to go. Because Santorini is basically a lot of cliffs, to get to the cable car, we had to walk up a hill. But it was so worth it.

Loading up:

Going down!

The view was absolutely stunning, especially to my sleep-deprived brain, and since we were running short on time, it was a great way to get to the Old Port quickly. At Old Port, we got on a pirate ship...

and headed off toward this here volcano.

Don't be fooled by the seemingly flatness of this island. The thing actually rises 1200 meters up and yeah, I walked all the way up. The ground is volcanic rock worn down by the winds to a gravel-like consistency so walking up the volcano was like walking up a sturdy pebbly mountain, if that makes any sense. The island was very solid, but the paths were pretty steep, so in each step, I would sink my feet into the gravel and use that to hold my feet in, preventing me from sliding back down. Finally, I got to the top to the King George crater (or some crater named after him), the active part of the volcano and the view from the top was so worth the hour climb it because with a 360 turn, you get to see the entire caldera.

After a quick romp back down the volcano, our tour took off for the hot springs on a nearby island. Little did I know that the boat would drop us off a little ways away from the island and we would have to swim to the hot springs!

This was the helm of our boat. See that brown murkiness with people's heads poking out? That's the hot springs, full of minerals like sulfur, copper, and iron, and a mud that is super exfoliating and therapeutic for the skin. The problem? I'm a terrible swimmer, especially in the ocean. I have no upper body strength, no endurance, and can't tread water all that well. Now, if I swam under water for most of the journey, I could probably make it to the hot springs, but I also have sensitive eyes which don't like water in them, especially salty water, and without goggles, I mostly have to keep my head above water and paddle my way there. Did I mention I have no abdominal muscular definition either?

Regardless, I was "peer pressured" (in quotes because I didn't need much convincing to get out of the heat and jump into the cool caldera waters). Still, with all that's said above, I struggled to make it to the hot springs. Liz was a life saver (literally) and walked me through it. But yeah, we all made it there, bathed in the decently warm, but not too warm springs, covered ourselves in mud (Ray grew his first mustache), and came out better for it. There aren't any pictures of us covered in mud because 1) we had to swim there and 2) the mud all washed off by the time we got back to the boat. The remnants of the iron/copper/sulfur stayed on us and got most of our clothes red (luckily, I was wearing black), but the experience was one of the most worthwhile things I've done in Greece. Two thumbs up and a recommendation for anyone visiting the Greek islands.

We make it back to port, a little sadly, and it's time to make it back to Fira. Now, Ray, Liz, and I took the cable car down, so we felt it was only prudent that we took donkeys up. It was a great trip. Ray's donkey kept stalling and letting people pass him and although mine liked to hug the edge a bit too much, I had a lot of fun, alternating watching other people's donkeys be obstinate  with them and seeing the view get better and better as we got higher. Let me say that it's very hard to get a good picture when you're on a donkey so although we switched cameras, there weren't very many great pictures of me. But I like this one because my sunglasses are glinting and it looks like I'm wearing a tiara.

8. Donkey Trail in Santorini

*feels a little bit like a princess*

Next entry: Eos. Stay tuned.

A Day Through My Eyes

Things that I've contemplated but can't justfiy making a whole post about

1. Pigtails are great.

In some circles, I am known for having super long, thick hair. I started growing my hair out in elementary school and by the time I hit middle school, I had hair down to the middle of my back, near my waist. My hair is also thick and heavy (even more so back then, before I got it layered), and consequently, it always fell flat and tangled when I tried to wear it down. So I never did. Most of the time, I braided my hair to keep it out of my eyes and whipped people with the Pigtails of Pain. This lasted until high school when, too eager to grow up and seem cool, I stopped braiding my hair. I started using hair clips (the huuuuuge ones) and pony tailed it a lot of the time. And then right before I went to college, I chopped it all off. Well...not all off. But it was shorter than I had ever had it, and ever since, it's been in some kind of layered, banged state about 4 inches past my shoulders. It's long enough to put up but also not a hassle when I leave it down.

Except.

When I want to wear a hat in the heat. Because my hair covers the back of my neck and there's too much of it to put inside my floppy hat. The solution? Low pigtails. Not appropriate for work, but I don't wear a hat to work anyways.

2. Don't bother me; it's coffee time!

I drink coffee occasionally, though at school I usually try to rely on sleep (HAH!) and fruit to get me awake in the mornings. Since getting here however, I have indulged quite a bit more just so that I can open my eyes in the morning, especially on Monday mornings and days when we hung out with Dionysis. There's a coffee shop right across the street from work (it's a tiny street), and I went so often that I had a "regular". And when I took the bus instead of the trolleys in the morning, I would more often than not stop by McDonalds which has 1 Euro any-kind-of-coffee-you-like. The Greeks take their coffee very seriously; there's a special Greek coffee where the grounds are actually left in your cup, resulting in a very strong cup of very concentrated coffee. Also, their iced cappuccinos have the cream on top so you have to mix it in yourself, which is quite enjoyable. :D And, Greek sugar is much sweeter than sugar in the US. Watch out for it.

All that being said, I have finally broken the vicious cycle of delicious frappes and cappuccinos that have been keeping me awake at work because I finally got a nice block of sleep since we stayed in Athens this weekend.

3. Greece is like China

There's a similar energy here, which you might not expect because you'd think all Chinese people were very intense due to the number of intense Chinese high school students trying to get into the Ivy League, but the day to day life is remarkably similar. Besides the fact that the non-marble sidewalks are paved the same way as those in China, people also hang their laundry on their balconies unconcerned that others are seeing their undies, they smoke everywhere (although Greeks tend to chain smoke more, I think), and they sell fried goods on the sidewalks. Man, I could really use a 油条 right now.

4. Greece is like LA

The coloring is similar to downtown; a lot of gray dotted with green and the chaparral around the city remind me of the hills of Sylmar. The climate is also very similar, dry with the sun beating down on you like an overbearing football coach. And the Metro system is also very similar. Although there are the addition of trams and the train system is much cleaner, I feel like I am living in LA sometimes, especially with the number of sunglasses going around.

5. The taxi system

To get a taxi, one must wave it down. Sounds simple enough, right? Except when not all taxi drivers know where you're going. So they roll down the window, ask you, and yay or nay you. This could get quite annoying if you were trying to get somewhere fast (like I was, to the long-distance bus terminal). Also, they charge extra fees for taking you to the airport or the bus terminal. However, if you saw a taxi with someone in it, you could also try to wave them down, because if they're going the same direction, they might just take you along for the ride. How to split the cost then? They don't. Two passengers, two meters.

6. The bus system

The bus and metro system work like this. You buy a little ticket (it's actually little, just a stub of paper), validate it when you get on the bus, and 90% of the time, no one checks. You can just get on any door on the bus and ride the bus or metro anywhere. The only time you get screwed is when they catch you without a ticket. Then you pay 60x the amount a ticket usually costs (1E). Although this is not the most profitable system, they do catch everyone when they do because they stand on the train and when you try to exit, they ask for your ticket. Much better than walking through the train checking everyone's ticket.

Luckily for me, I have a monthly pass so I don't have to worry about it.

7. Stuffed peppers

A food I had never eaten before coming to Greece. Is it a Grecian specialty, you ask? I don't know but our apartment makes some delicious stuffed peppers. Take some ground turkey. Add chopped veggies of your choice (usually bell peppers and spinach for us), lots of spices (salt, pepper, chili flakes, cumin, curry powder, and whatever else is tasty), and some rice. Stir it all together. Bake a pepper, stuff it with the stuffing and bake it some more. Our first batch definitely came out better than the second. Yay suite bonding. Nom.

8. Smoothies

We ordered smoothies the other day at work and maaaaan were they good. The first time I got one from there (it started with a Z...) I got the "Slim Down" smoothie that had a lot of mango goodness in it. I sucked it down in about 5 minutes. This time, I got a "Stress Relief" smoothie that had banana and mango it in, amongst other things (like an antioxidant boost) and again, down within 5 minutes. I know I should savor them but they're just so delicious, and live up to their name, smooth as satin. I would venture to say that they're better than Jamba Juice smoothies and I'm on the Jamba Juice email list.

Speaking of smoothies...

9. Fruit

One of the things I miss terribly here is fruit. It's not that there is no fruit but that it's very hard to stock up when all the fruit is just ripe and you don't know if you're going to be here on weekends and you can't carry it all back. Also, I'm not sure about the prices because they sell by the kilo here so I can't convert prices very well and I'm never quite sure if I'm being ripped off so I tend not to buy fruit as much. I really miss having a house full of fruit and not having to worry about having any one fruit to eat. Which is why I was so happy about getting the smoothie I guess. Nom...fruit.

10. Make the best of what you've got. And by this I mean, stick with your crappy computer when it keeps crashing because you ain't got nothing else. [I'm talking to you, PC.] 

Today was a great day at work. I don't talk about work a lot because there's really not a lot to talk about. I'm usually banging my head at the fact that though it does many amazing things, iMovie can't do a lot of the things I need to do to make a "fun and fresh" organization profile. The footage I have is not that great, qualitywise, as a lot of it was taken in the mid-90s with a handheld camera. Even the footage I took was that not that great because there were no lighting considerations and some of it I was trying to get rather surreptitiously. Also, a lot of the music I'm using comes from Garageband because I have nothing to record with so I'm trying to make it sound less Garageband-like, yet...

That all being said, I finally finished enough to get what I've got into After Effects, and after I relearned how to use it, made me extremely happy. Making paths and making things look pretty I like. It's really like Photoshop for video and I love playing around with Photoshop. Still, along with everything else, the computers at the office are not that great and keep crashing [kinda like the ones at Montecito...hmmm...] so I've also relearned to save every time I do something. I got spoiled because iMovie doesn't need to save, but PCs....Then, when I moved to another computer, the computer stayed on, but the program kept crashing, so again, save with every action. But I got a lot done which means a lot of endorphins flowing through my veins tonight. 

~~

I'll end with a joke that was told to me today at work while my computer was constantly crashing.

Jesus and the Devil were having a programming contest to see who could write code the fastest. Jesus, in all his serene glory, typed rather leisurely, while the Devil pounded away furiously. 3000 lines later, the power goes out and all the Devil's work is lost. He howls and curses until the power comes back on and resumes his assault. Meanwhile, Jesus is still leisurely tapping away. 5000 lines later, the power fails again. The Devil blows up, screaming and fireballing all over the place. Finally the power comes back on and the Devil is back, trying to make up for lost time. A couple minutes later, Jesus proclaims himself done. 

"How the hell could you be done?" asks the Devil, "The power failed twice!"

Smiling his Jesus smile, "Jesus saves."

Sunday 7.18: This has got to be the good life.

I was going to go to Sunday services but a good night's sleep was something that I needed so much more. So instead, I went to Syntagma and watched the Changing of the Guard. We actually got relegated across the street because there were too many people watching [on Sundays there's more of a procession], so I didn't get a picture of the actual changing, which involved a lot of high steps with elaborate costuming, but I did get a video of the band playing and the rest of the guard marching behind them. At one point, one of the guys in the back tripped and fell, but I'm not sure if I got that on tape.

It's definitely an experience that one should see if one comes to Athens, a cool ceremonial thing. Although their hats aren't as cool as the British ones, their entire costumes are pretty cool. Although, it is a little sad that they have to stand in the heat, motionless, in stockings.

11. Watch the changing of the guard in front of the Parliament.

Shivani and I then hit Plaka and Monastiraki and did a bunch of gift shopping, which made me very happy. It's nice finding the things you're looking for. I really only have 4 people left to buy for so that makes my life a whole lot easier even if I don't have any more time, really. I usually don't mind spending money on people I care about because I don't spend a lot of money on myself. We walked around for a long while, and finally sat down to lunch on souvlaki row. And the waiter gave us roses. For free. We looked around and no one else had roses, but he gave them to us, so we took them. It was a very nice gesture and we both perked up after our long shopping trip.

After a quick kip, we met up with Marj and headed over to the ancient Agora, the marketplace of ancient Greece. Some of our comrades work here during the day, digging in the trenches and washing pottery, so I never really thought much of it as a place to go visit, even though I knew I should. I should have also known better by now, but every time I think "Oh it's just another ruin, you see one, you've seen them all," I get floored by something awesome. In this case, several things. First, the totally reconstructed Stoa of Atalas. It's such a long building, kind of like a horizontal skyscraper.

And inside was the Agora museum, where there were some pretty awesome things. Such as:

A GIANT bronze shield. [I bough some bronze items to give as gifts, so I know a little bit of how heavy bronze items are, so I am still wondering how people carried these shields] (Shivani miming someone carrying one)

A bronze head of Nike

Pieces of pottery that people used to ostracize politicians [they would vote to exile the politician with the most power for 10 years, after which they could return to Athens. Most decided just to leave for good]

And, a training potty!

We then saw a Byzantine church and moved on to the Middle Stoa, which was the biggest building in the Agora. Unfortunately, none of it is left, but Shivani and I found the remains of a column to make ourselves higher.

Finally, the building the Agora is most well known for: the Temple of Hephestus, the best preserved temple in Greece. And it was.

 As far as I know, this was not a reconstruction, although there is scaffolding there to keep the building from falling down. Any traces of monuments to Hephestus are long gone, but it's kind of awesome to see an actual temple still standing. Me, for scale.

On the way home, we saw parts of the Roman Agora, what we could see from the outside at least. What's the difference, you ask? Well, the Roman Agora was built by, you guessed it, the Romans! They had some cool stuff too, like the Tower of the Winds, which personified each of the eight winds.

As the sun set, we decided to forgo trying to cook and got delicious Sweet Chili Cashew Noodles from NoodleBar and decided to do a movie. Unfortunately, the sun sets at 9:00 here and the movie we wanted to watch was Troy, so we nomed it down and watched half of the movie [and saw the other half tonight, Monday]. The thing about Troy, though it's a great movie, is that it inspires a great sadness in me, due to its tragic roots. I love the character of Hector [Eric Bana doesn't hurt either]; he's such a noble guy, ready to do the right thing for his country, ready to stand by his brother, a man for his kingdom and his family. And with one mistake by an arrogant boy, he dies.  And having read the Iliad, I know he dies, and that just makes it all the more sad, when good people get bested by Fate. Darn Greeks and their darn good tragedies. And of course, I want to hate Achilles, but I really can't [and it's not just because of Brad Pitt], because he too is partially redeemed by love. Sure, he's got anger issues, but they can't be cured in a day, and he does lament for desecrating Hector's body. Sigh.

Pensive,

Angela

Saturday, 7.17: Now this is just absurd

The day begins. I wake up still grimy from the last night of theater, still fairly tired, but extremely hungry. So I make myself a cereal breakfast, watch some Criminal Minds clips to wake me up, shower, and decide, what a great day to re-try #14! So I get all set, and, remembering my blunder from last time, I make myself a map of Athens University Campus (not to be confused with Panepistimio Metro Station), look up the bus schedules, and set out. I make it to Evangelismos and sit there waiting for this bus that's supposed to take me to the university. Apparently, there are no buses to the university. Not on a Saturday. Maybe it's the weekend. Maybe it's summer. Whatever the case, there are no buses. So, after waiting a while [read: 30 min] I decide to just walk it. It's not that far away. So, I do. And I walk, and walk, and walk. And the "campus" is completely empty. There are no people, whatsoever. There aren't even really many buildings. In fact, most of my walk looks like this:

No cars, no people, nothing. After a twenty minute walk inside campus, I see...buildings! And on one of the buildings, a map! The problem with my crudely drawn map was that it had no scale and once I found the real map [which also had no scale], I quickly saw the problem.

But...I decided to keep going because I had already gone so far, right? Eventually, I reached the little circle thing on the map and I was like...I can either keep going on the same road and go up this ginormous hill, or I can go take a look at the theology department, the arts and literature departments, etc. before reaching science. So I go through this totally sketch tunnel...

Walk along the road where there are no people and no cars, and reach this building of sketchness.

See if you can find it on the map above. As far as I could tell, this was the theology school. UM. WHAT? There isn't even a door! There is a HOLE in the middle of the building! There are stairs that don't lead anywhere!

And then, as I had thought I went the wrong way, I turned, slipped on a rock and twisted my shoe. And bam! No more flip flop.

To be honest, I shouldn't have been wearing flip flops to go walking, but I figured I wasn't going to be doing that much walking so I did. Also, it wasn't really that surprising that they were going to wear down soon, because they were the first pair of flip flops I ever got, way back in sophomore year of high school or something, but it was still super bad that they broke because the ground was rocky and hard and there was a dead rat lying a couple meters away from me and the first thing I thought of was, "Really? Is this really happening??" And proceeded to crack up.

Because if you think about it, how absurd is this, that my shoe would break in the sketchest building with not a soul around, not even the soul of the dead rat currently being eaten by small insects? So, at a loss, I called my mother. I'm pretty sure I was laughing so much that it sounded like I was hysterical, but it was just a total surreal situation. After talking to her, I rummaged about and found this hair tie in my bag:

And...why not?

There was no way I was going to keep going to the chemistry building at this point because I had no idea how long the hair tie would hold up, and though it held my shoe on my foot pretty well, it wasn't good enough to randomly wander around an empty campus. So, dejected, I headed back. I treated myself to an ice cream to help compensate for my complete and utter failure.

As I trekked home, I thought about how far I had come as a person. Only a few years ago, I would have been hysterical in the opposite direction, probably burst into tears, would not have known what to do with myself, and gotten a stern talking-to from my mother who, if halfway across the world, would tell me that there's nothing she could do and I should just rough it barefoot across the disease-ridden ground. I definitely would not have started cackling at myself in the middle of the empty road, and would definitely not have had the sense of mind to take pictures of my broken shoe but in fact would probably have sat on a rock next to the dead rat and lamented about my life and how unfair everything was. But if I've learned anything about life being here on my own, it's that you have to make the best of everything. Wash your clothes by hand when you haven't got a washing machine. Walk when the Metro goes on strike. Tie your shoe to your foot with a hair tie when your strap breaks. Complain if you want, but do what you have to do to fix your problem.

So slowly, I walked back to the apartment, munching on my ice cream cone and breaking out into peals of laughter at myself and my situation every once in a while. Luckily, there was no one around me to hear this insanity, although the few people that I passed looked at me funny, possibly because I was limping a little due to the extra thing on my left shoe. But finally, I got back to my apartment, collapsed, sweaty and dusty, onto my bed and fell asleep for a good while. When I awoke, the absurdities continued.

First, Marj, Shivani, and I made these absurdly delicious stuffed peppers. They came out 10x better than the ones we made the first time and the surprising awesomeness of the cheesy top made the day all better.

Then, as I was browsing the internet, I came across this absurdity. And let me just say: MWARHHAH



With that, I'll leave you. #14 failed yet again. Debates on whether to try it one last time.

Friday 7.16: A Comedy

The thing about tragedy is that it's pretty universal. Betrayal, missed opportunities, spiraling depression; all things most everyone can relate to as being things that are not too great for the human soul. Tragedies play on emotion; anguish is the same in every culture; anger crosses language barriers. And that's why seeing Oedipus last week was so moving, even though I had a cursory understanding of the story and could only understand two words in the whole play. [They were "yes" and "no", if you were wondering]. Comedy, however, is different. Most comedies play on language. Things are punny, or not, and only groan-worthy if you know all the nuances of the language. And sure, it's might be funny seeing a bumbling guy being hit over the head with a can of beans, or also, whatever Mr. Bean does, but intellectual comedy is best done with wordplay.

The story of Lysistrata goes as such:

The city states are fighting and it's taking a toll on the women, who never see their husbands. To stop the war, Lysistrata gathers all the women from all the city states and they make a pact to keep celibate until the men stop the war. When the men come back from war expecting a warm welcome from their wives, they instead find themselves shut out and frustrated, they try to physically control the women. This doesn't work, as the women stand up for themselves and rally against the men. Finally, super sexually frustrated, the men decide to stop the war and begin peace talks and there is a giant party to celebrate the rejoining of man and wife.

It's a comedy, full of puns (on the word hard, for instance) and physical hilarity, but a little bit of the hilarity, which the audience around us seemed to thoroughly enjoy was entirely lost on us. It didn't help that we were super tired from getting to Epidaurus because we had to switch tickets to go to Nafplio (my fault entirely, from misjudging the time it took to get to the bus terminal) then only had 3 minutes to eat our epic hotdogs, suck down some drinks, and hike it to the upper tier.

So the first thing we notice as we walk up into the theater is this:

Now you tell me what a car is doing in the middle of ancient Greece. Obviously, the play was going to be a modern re-imagining, which was alright with me but strikes issue with the purists who like seeing the traditional costumes in the traditional theater space. While I would have loved to see that as well (and it was what I expected), the only real issue for me here was that it was much harder to follow the play, considering what I imagined the staging to be when I first read it a few years ago. I actually love seeing interpretations of well known stories, probably stemming from the Amazonian bird version of Midsummer Night's Dream I saw in middle school and I have long since recognized that there are no new story lines, only new takes on what's already been said. And I'm always up for a new take.

Speaking of Amazonian birds, the costumes here were epically fantastic, full of color and poof, a sort of a 1920s flapper nightdress-esque look. There were men playing women (obviously, a la John Travolta in Hairspray <3), women playing women, but, as far as I could tell, no women playing men. This may have been because the men's costumes consisted of black slacks and a black coat thing, making them all look like shirtless Batmen. Whenever they would do something dramatic, bam! All their capes came off and it was just a bunch of shirtless men [one of which had a giant red attachment on the front of his pants].

There were also segments of interpretive dance, which were really weird for me because I couldn't tell how they worked into the story. It was like So You Think You Can Dance meets...well...Lysistrata. And a black dress-white shirt+black tie couple who came in at the beginning and the end and were arguing about something [she threw her underwear at him and called him "Malaka" (wanker), which I had incidentally just learned from Marj] and then finally reconciled in the end. I suppose they were the token "modern" couple that this story applied to, but I couldn't really tell.

The most important thing I took from this was that while physical comedy is funny, and watching the frustrated men chase around the women did render a "hahahaha" from me, it wasn't as hilarious as it could have been. Exaggerations and caricatures aside, watching comedies for me is really about the language and the wordplay, nuances that I can't get here. It was awesome to have watched both a comedy and a tragedy in Epidaurus and it certainly opened my eyes to a world of modern ancient theater of which I could never have dreamed.

Btw. The dudette in the pink cottonball dress. Totally a dude.

Peace and love,
Angela