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.