Week Nine: The Great, the Good, and the Ugly

This week commenced with a cooking class on-campus where we learned to cook "classic" Greek foods - tzatziki and spanikopita. Tzatziki is a dip for bread, fried zucchini - basically anything you want. It is yogurt-based and has olive oil, cucumber, dill, and, if you want, lemon juice in it. DELICIOUS! Spanikopita is a snack-like dish made with a couple layers o phyllo dough, a layer of spinach, eta, a couple other tasty delights, and then more phyllo dough. ALSO delicious!

The class was an interesting experience - they didn't bother to think about how the chef didn't speak enough English to talk to us and none of us enough Greek to understand him. We also didn't get to participate in the creation of the food. BUT, we did learn some interesting secrets to making better tzatziki than what we have been making and learned how to make our own phyllo dough rather than messing with those annoying dry frozen versions. Yay!

As a highlight of the week, the College Counseling Office, which I have been volunteering with for the last couple months asked me to stay in Greece as long as possible to work with them as an intern. It caused a bit of confusion for a while, but I basically now have a reason to stay in Greece until my visa runs out! They are going to pay for my housing, two meals a day, as well as at least a part of my flight change fee. YAY GREECE!


The week ended with our school sponsored trip to Athens - paid for with our tuition costs. We took a looooooong bus trip down to Athens for most of Friday. Checked into our hotel, had some dinner, took a quick trip downtown where we saw the Parthenon all lit up and had a quick dose of gelato. Saturday, we visited the Acropolis, which is the walled-in group of buildings at the top of a hill in the city. This, of course, houses the Parthenon and a number of other ancient sites. We also visited the ancient agora (market) of the city, some parks, gardens, and winding side streets, and the ruins of the Temple of Zeus (the photo of a bunch of pillars in a big field). The weather was absolutely amazing. 70 degress, sunny and breezy.

On Sunday, we went to see the changing of the guards in front of the Parliament building and went to the Athes Archeological Museum. The guards were wearing traditional military costumes rom the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s. Their shoes weigh six pounds each from the metal inserted in the bottom. This and the way in which they march is meant to imitate horses. Who knows why.








The museum holds many, MANY ancient statues, gravestones, trinkets, frescoes, etc. We were lucky enough to get a guided tour or just five of us, since others on the trip preferred to go shopping! It is a beautiful and fanciful museum full of stories, mythology and history - but not photographs. Guess you'll have to see it for yourselves.

Sounds too good to be true? Guess so.

I had a cold all weekend - bleh. It was a great drain (oh, the pun-tastic-ness!) on my energy and I was fairly done with exploring the city beyond the excursions described above. The seasons changed drastically here and I blame it on that. I'm starting to feel better now.

Also, my wallet was stolen while we were watching the changing of the guards. I had just bought a new purse on Saturday - one that zippered - so that I wasn't traveling with a purse that didn't close. I guess my old one got upset with me because someone managed to unzip my new purse and pull out my wallet without my knowledge. Nothing irreplaceable, though. Such is life.

ALSO, our bus broke down AGAIN, for four hours this time. Woo! We didn't get home until 3am on Monday.

This week has been midterms and spring break prep. I'm leaving in less than an hour for spring break. A couple days in Greece and then meeting Matt in London for a Western Europe excursion.

Wish us luck! Next post in a few weeks!