Catching up!

Ok, ok, I know I need to do this. The problem is that I’ve started feeling like I’m writing less for myself and more for class. The feeling of “needing” to post here makes it more of a chore and less enjoyable. One of the classes that I’m taking here requires us to keep a journal of our time here in Greece and according to the syllabus I need to write three times a week. I liked that I have motivation to keep writing, it just makes it feel like all of the things I could write about are looming over my head. I’ve spent over a week without more than a couple minutes of internet and most of it without my laptop. This doesn’t present a great writing environment for me since I like to type and not write on paper to type later.

Ok, enough complaining. I’m in Greece after all! My birthday was an incredible experience at the local taverna and I love everyone that works there dearly. It was so great to have my mom here with me in Greece to share my 22nd birthday with me. Nothing like that will ever happen again! After my birthday my mom and Rino were planning on visiting Naxos and Santorini and leaving me in Athens. I decided this wasn’t going to happen, I was going to go with them! I played hooky from school like I’m so good at doing and sailed off to Naxos last Tuesday. I only found out from Facebook pictures later that I had secretly had a cake and cookies waiting for me at the class I skipped on Tuesday night. I only got to spend one night on Santorini this time but I still managed to make a whole slew of new friends!

As soon as I got back from Santorini on Friday night I was off again. I got back to my apartment at midnight on Friday and then hardly even unpacked since I left at 8 am on Saturday for a class trip to the Peloponnese. We spent 4 days touring around with most of our time spent in Nauplio and Olympia since those were where we spent two of the three nights. The other night was spent in the tiny village town ofAndritsena that had maybe 10 people living in it. In Olympia I ended up meeting a 7th generation Olympian at random and spent that afternoon and night talking with him. I’ve been asked to write a paper about a Greek that I’ve met while being in Greece so I’ll very soon be writing and posting a paper about him.

Mycenae and Olympia were the two most grand ancient sites to me that we visited. Mycenae for its grand display of war and defenses, and Olympia for its display of competition and society. I find that I have a hard time writing about the ancient places that we visit though. I’m not sure why but it isn’t something I can describe with any accuracy. It’s kind of like when I first visited Santorini and didn’t feel like my words could do it justice. I will try to let pictures do the work for me but I haven’t uploaded them quite yet. My favorite thing to do with my camera at these places is to let Photoshop make panoramic scenes for me so I will upload those soon.

I don’t have enough time to delve into everything that has happened over the past 7 days so I’ll get some more detailed writing in later with lots of pictures!

Love you all and I can’t wait to come home!