Weeks Six and Seven: What Do You Mean "It's Monday Again"?

Busy, busy, busy. Here's an update on the past couple weeks in Thessaloniki and beyond:

1. The first day of Spring!














2. My birthday may have been a Greek national holiday, but my sister's (March 13) was the kick of the annual Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival. This is an international film festival that lasted until this past Sunday. This country must really love us - Maggie's not even here and they gave her a whole film festival!

The real present though was that ACT (the school) acquired free passes for us so that we could attend any screenings we wanted to for free! So, I saw 15 movies throughout the week on topics from poverty to grassroots movements to guerrilla journalism to gymnastics to schizophrenia to nuclear testing taking place in places like Kenya, China, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Tanzania and Myanmar.

Some of the films were good, some excellent, some mediocre. Almost all of them were thought provoking, passionate and important. Thank you, Thessaloniki.




3. ACT is part of a larger campus that houses all levels of education from kindergarten to MBA's. I've started volunteering on my days off with the US College Counseling Office at the Anatolia High School. I have been helping one student prepare for the writing section of her SATs (SOOOOO glad that I missed that new SAT piece by a year!) and am also working on re-organizing their collection of summer programs in the US that are open to their students and re-vamping their application processes for the programs. Sounds exciting, huh?

In any case, the staff at the College Counseling Office is wonderfully friendly, welcoming and appreciative and I'm happy to be working with them. They have a beautiful office that is actually in a lovely victorian-style house with little gardens, vines running up the walls, and pomegranite trees out back. No pictures yet, though.

4. I have to give my Mom some props here for be my trans-Atlantic editor. I've been spending a lot of time in the last couple weeks getting my resume ready and starting to put it "out there." It's easy to forget when you're in such a beautiful place that the real world is getting closer and closer.




No!!!!! Don't make me do it! You can't! I won't! I just want to be a student forever!














5. Oh yeah, and I went to Bulgaria this weekend. To Sofia, the capital city. We took an overnight train Friday night and arrived in Sofia around 8am. After hunting down our hostel, we were given free breakfast, and we met a guy from a town in Wisconsin just 20 minutes away from where one of our travel companions was from. We headed off with our new Wisconsinite friend to explore the city. Sofia is actually a pretty small city and we easily walked around and through most of it on Saturday while stopping to take pictures and go inside many of the historic (and not-so-historic) churches and buildings.

Bulgaria was initially allied with Nazi Germany during World War II, but was defeated (rather easily) by the USSR toward the end of the war, and subsequently became a communist state. Since the collapse of the USSR, Bulgaria has been a democratic state.

We ate lunch at a restaurant recommended to us by the hostel staff. It had traditional Bulgarian food served by traditional Bulgarian waitstaff. Apparently this means rude, slow and forgetful. We got a good laugh out of it, and ate some great food. I remembered to take food pictures this time, but only when everything was half-eaten :)

After lunch, we finished touring the city and headed back to our hostel for some relaxing card games and a free pasta and beer dinner. We went to bed fairly early and were on the train back to Thessaloniki at 7am. All in all, it was a great 23 hours in S(n)ofia...see the photos below to understand the parenthesis.



The streets of Sofia.






















The sign on top of the building says, "Be Happy" as in, you're in snowy Bulgaria, why wouldn't you be happy?



















We decided to chalk these up to being communist art. I'm not sure there's any other explanation.














This is from a statue portraying a bunch of kids playing some kind of tug-of-war. There's either melting snow on her head, or she's crying because of communism.















This is a communist-made monument glorifying the working class. (Perhaps you sense a theme?)







Beautiful Orthadox Church built in the late 1800s-early 1900s. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside most places.









A series of vendors outside the above church were selling all kinds of Nazi and Soviet memorabilia like this. Hmmm...











Another Orthadox church - this one was built in the 1200s and was completely below ground level. Again, no pictures inside.












FOOD! This was a great traditional Bulgarian dish - kind of like chunky mashed potatoes with a feta-like cheese and dill, topped with another cheese and baked in this iron dish. Mmmmm!














Our grilled veggies was also delicious, but mysteriously came with one raw tomato slice.










The only church we could take pictures inside of. Like the rest of them, the big, open space in the middle is meant for parishoners to stand during the ceremony. The walls are covered with icons of Jesus, Mary, and most any imaginable Saint. They are also fond of dragons, lions, and peacocks in their iconography. Couldn't tell you why.


It has been a busy couple of weeks of running around, things to do and see and new things to think about. Most of all, I can't believe that March is already over. Wasn't my birthday just yesterday? What do you mean it's Monday AGAIN?