I would cut my foot for some sweet jewelry.

So, I've had no internet in my apartment since I got home from Spring Break, and have been busy entertaining friends who came to visit. First Ashley, Margaret, Kayleigh, and their friend Taylor from UCL came to town after meeting us in Santorini.  Then a day after they left, Gina came and I've been showing her around.  Magically, the internet is back in my apartment! So I can finally mention some things about my spring break, but that's going to have to wait because first I have to talk about the epic adventure I had last night.

I gave up on Athens nightlife long ago.  The greeks never dance, espeically to American music, and I just hadn't had any enjoyable nightlife experiences.  I came to Europe expecting to spend late nights flailing around to sweet house beats, but Athens has a dearth of discos or dance clubs.  But then Gina came to visit, and was of the opinion that it was unacceptable that we haven't been going out.  Thursday night after she got here we went out to a bar and got warm honey wine, which was delicious, and we got comped warm honey raki, which was less delicious. We met some boys, I made out with a guy named Γιαννης which was pretty fantastic.  So I was actually feeling positive about nightlife in Athens.  And then last night happened.

We decided to go to a place with a reputation as a foreigner's club, because people actually dance there (because they're not from Greece).  On the walk over, my shoes broke.  Which was my own damn fault because my mother told me they were going to break, but I thought I could get away with wearing them once.  I was wrong. Always listen to your mother.  Anways, by 12:30, everything was still empty, but we ended up talking to an Athenian guy on the street who told us that the club we we'd been planning to go to would get good in half an hour, so we sat down, ordered a beer, and chatted until the dancing got going.  As we finished our drinks a good song came on, so we got really excited and went out to the dance floor.  Within thirty seconds, someone had dropped a glass.  I moved out of the way because I had taken off my shoes and didn't want to cut myself.  Within another 30 seconds, someone else dropped a glass, which shattered, and then shot across the dance floor and in to my foot.  I hobbled over to a couch, inspected it for glass, and tried to pretend it wasn't that bad of a cut.  Then we realized that there was a pool of blood the size of a dinner plate accumulating under my foot.  We hobbled down to the bathroom to check it for glass and wrap it up in toilet paper then caught a cab to the hospital.  The one the cab took us to was apparently a public hospital, which meant I probably would have had to wait for hours to get treated, so we hopped in to another cab to the private hospital.  At this point, I have to pee like mad.  I spent the entire cab ride complaining about the fact that I have to pee, to the point that I considered making the driver pull over to a gas station or something.  I'm pretty sure I was absurdly irritating to my friends who were with me, but I seriously almost peed in this guys back seat.  We finally made it there, I was put in to an operating room directly after the bathroom.  Then I got to watch them operate on me!  It was only something like... 8 stitches or so, but I have to go back tomorrow to get it checked out.  For now I'm on antibiotics and confined to my apartment because I can't really put weight on my left foot.  Everyone is being super sweet.  My one roommate bought me cookies, another one went to the pharmacy for me to get my antibiotics.  And the VP of CYA, who was on call last night and spent multiple hours in the hospital with us, called me three times today to make sure I was all set.  So yeah, I've now been operated on in a foreign country.  The night was certainly one for the books.

The best thing about Vienna.

I just flushed toilet paper for the first time in months. Yayyy civilized Western Europe!

I call the ace of spades.

Spring has sprung in Athens!  Little green buds are showing up on all the previous dead-looking trees, and the walk from my apartment to the classrooms smells amazingly delicious.  Last week though, I was worried. It didn't seem like spring had sprung, but rather as if summer had settled on the city as a dense dark fog.  It jumped somthing like 30 degrees in 24 hours, which might have been nice except for the opressive humidity, all of which I experienced on my walk up the side of the Acropolis.  Turns out, we'd been the victims of a sand storm up from the Sahara, which brought and trapped the heat and humidity.  From the top of the Acropolis my teacher could point out two distinctly colored layers of air: a red one, which was the Sahara sand, and a yellowish one, which was trapped pollution.  If it had decided to rain that day or the next we would have gotten covered in a film of reddish mud.  Luckily, it didn't (though I thought it would have been pretty cool to see if it had) and the storm passed on in a couple days.  Now Athens is slowly warming up, though I did have another miserable day at the Acropolis, this time with cold rain.  It was so nice this weekend that I went down to the beach in a sundress and even managed to get a little bit of a sun burn!  And I'm wearing another dress today, withouts--very unathenian, but exciting.

Working backwards, I've done some other fun things since the last time I posted.  Last weekend was my last school field trip, this time to Northern Greece as a part of my Ancient Macedon class.  We stayed in Thessaloniki and spent the days visiting the typical ancient tombs and halfway reconstructed houses. Though to be fair, most of the sites that we saw this time were better preserved than the ones I saw on other field trips.  And we went to Thermopylae! (That's the place where "300" happened, for those of you who know as little about Greek history as I did two months ago).  There's still a hot spring, but unless my professor just took us to a random mountainside, you can't actually see anything resembling the narrow pass depicted in the movie.  I was really excited to be able to envision the Spartans fighting off wave after wave of Persian infantry, but it really just looks like a solid mountainside now.  And it smells like sulfur.  Oh well.

The day before we left for our field trip was Greek Independence day.  There was a huge parade through the main squares of the city.  We ended up standing where they started marching, which unfortunately meant that we didn't get to hear any of the bands play (they waited until they were a block away from the starting point to being playing...).  But I bought a Greek flag, and pretended to be patriotic.  The parade has more to do with displaying military prowess than respecting veterans, which is what I'm used to in the states.  The entire parade was more than an hour of wave after wave of different parts of the armed forces, from multi-tonne tanks to scuba-divers!  If anyone wants to attack Greece, Greek Independence day is pretty clearly the day to do it.   Anyways, I have to go get ready for cooking class.  But I'll leave you with a picture of the coolest part of the parade--the evzones.  They're the guards of all the official Greek buildings.  They're kind of like the British guards.  The changing of the guards is a big deal, they wear funny outfits, and they're not allowed to move while they're at their posts.  They also walk in this really bizzare way, I got a video of it, which I'm thinking about putting up on youtube, but I bet there's something up there already if you're interested.  So yeah, the evzones:

Photo Post!

Okso. Mom's going to kill me. But I love this picture. And I thought I'd offer it as proof as to how windy it was at Sunion.

Πω πω! Άργησα!

So, I've been MIA for a while now... the past couple of weeks have been totally crazy. Between my mother and my aunt coming to visit and midterms and a four-day school field trip I feel like I haven't been going under 100 miles an hour since last Friday. It was very frustrating to have the only serious work I've had to do all semester to coincide with a family visit. But as of the time of posting, my midterms are all done, and grades are out! And my family is gone… But so much has happened since the last time I posted. And things happened before the last time I posted that I haven't written about!  I'm going to have to try to write today and tomorrow, but I have another class trip starting very bright and early Thursday morning, and an entire presentation to prepare beforehand, so we'll see how that plan goes.

So, my mother and my aunt were here for 10 days. Highlights:

1. Not having to pay for dinner!
2. The temple of Poseidon at Sunion
3. Weekend trip to Crete.

The first one I should think is pretty self-explanatory.  Though because my mom is as in to food tourism as I am we had some particularly good meals.  In particular, I learned that octopus isn't necessarily tough and chewy.  We had some amazing seafood in general actually, which was fantastic because most of my friends here will only touch seafood in the form of fried calamari.

The temple of Poseidon was majestic.  Our tour left just before the sun set over the ocean, so we missed what's supposed to be the most beautiful time there.  But the soft light right before the sunset was perfect for taking pictures of the monument.  And there was some serious wind.  Not omg-my-hair-is-getting-out-of-place wind, but my-course-veers-off-to-the-left-when-I-walk wind. It is a perfect for a temple dedicated to the god of the sea.

This doesn't quite capture it since you can't see the sea in the backround, but you get the idea.

Crete was a little disappointing, a large proportion of museums etc. were closed because it was the off season.  This main consequence of this is that we were very Greek and had very many coffee breaks.  But, I did get to see the palace at Knossos, an archaeological exploration that I was unexpectedly involved in.  I was in the middle of writing a paper on the similarities between wall paintings found at Knossos and those found at Santorini.  Seeing reproductions in situ made my work seem more relevant, and conversely, the research I'd done helped me better appreciate the site itself.  I taught (my mom) and re-taught (my aunt) τάβλι (backgammon) in a bar, while locals played it around us.  We had a gorgeous bus ride to the next city over from our hotel, during which I got to have some very needed mother-daughter time. I received further evidence that I should never drink frappe, because it invariably makes me skittish and nervous and vaguely paranoid later in the day.  And I hung out in a playground by myself for a bit and met Denisa and Laura, two adorable Cretan girls with whom I could barely communicate, but they were so happy to have me, they almost made me miss my plane.

Having my family here made me realize, among other things, that I'm not exploring Athens to its fullest.  I've had a pretty negative view of the city.  I've mentioned here that I feel awkward, and sometimes unsafe, here as a single woman.  I was disappointed by the nightlife, I always thought time abroad in Europe would be oft punctuated by awesome techno dance club experiences, but noone in Greece dances...  I'm going to most of the monuments and museums here with class for free, so I haven't gone to any of them on my own.  And it has rained every weekend I've been here.  That's not a short list of grievances, but its certainly not enough to write off the city entirely, so I'm making an effort not to.  On Sunday, after our field trip I went to the temple of Olympion Zeus with one of my roommates and her boyfriend, and went out for crepes for lunch.  In the evening I went out to a small movie theater with some kids I'd gotten to know better on the trip.  They're not from Pomona, which is shocking if you see how I've been spending my time here, but they're from Chicago, so they're still people that I could meet up with after the program is over, which is sweet.  We saw The Visitor, which was fantastic.  And even though it was an American film, it still felt like a distinctly Greek experience.  They had the typical concession fares, popcorn, soda, and candy, but it wasn't nearly as much of a ripoff as in the states.  And juxtaposed next to carbonated soft drinks were Bacardi Breezers, wine, and beer.  So as I slouched down in the front row of the theater I got to share some popcorn with a friend and sip on a Stella.  It was positively cozy. Until... halfway through, at a very tense moment, the film reel stopped!  I panicked for a brief moment before I realized it was for intermission, which is just a euphemism for cigarette break.  Oh nicotine addicted Greeks...  I am starting to love you so.

You actually can go back to Constantinople, from Greece at least.

So. I am a terrible blogger. I have been slowly writing this post for a week now. I got sick, and then my mother and aunt came to visit, and had midterms, so I just haven't updated. But now its done. Though I don't have any pictures right now because I didn't take any digitally. I only brought a disposable camera with because I was worried about travelling with my digital camera. I'll steal some from my travel companions soon though, and share. If you want a quick recap of the weekend, since I've been so slow, here are the main things I learned on my trip:

1. Getting to new cities at night is awesome.
   
2. Hostels are the best way to travel.
3. I am wicked bad at bargaining.
   
4. Being naked can be fun!
5. Excoticizing things really can ruin them.
6. I'm pretty bad at hookah.
   
7. Food tourism is my favorite part of travel.
8. Istanbul is freaking baller!

So yeah, as suggested by item 8, my trip to Istanbul was really really fun. I was there from Thursday night to Sunday night, and it was definitely not enough time. I really really want to go back again in my life.

We got there after dark, it was around 9 once we had gotten through customs. Our hostel had an airport pickup service, but it was expensive, and we had to book it well in advance to get it. So instead we took public transportation at night, which was somewhat difficult. We got a LOT of directions that were just points in a general direction. Then we turned a corner and Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque were just in our faces, lit up, surrounded by birds. It was totally awesome. We eventually made it safely to our hostel, and got heckled by our first restaurant owner on the way there. At essentially every store and restaurant there's someone standing in the doorway trying to entice you to come inside. When they see a group of clearly foreign tourists though, they get a little... creative. We were regularly called beautiful girls, sexy girls, spice girls, Shakira, and many more. This one particular guy at the restaurant on the way to our hostel called out to us from across the street EVERY time we walked by. It got fairly annoying.

Our hostel was rated the best in Istanbul by one service or another for something like 4 years running. Its the first one I've stayed in, so I don't have anything to compare it to really, but I loved it. It definitely helped that we didn't sleep with strangers and had a cheap room entirely to ourselves since we were a group of 6. But the staff were really nice (particularly the night desk guy), we met some really awesome people (read: cute English boys) and had evening activities pre-planned for us in a city where we didn't know the night life.

However, we didn't spend our entire time in the hostel. The first day we went to Topkapi palace, the Egyptian spice bazaar and a tour of the Bosphorous. We also went out to our only real sit-down dinner, saw a belly dancer brought in by the hostel (I wouldn't be surprised if she moonlighted as an exotic dancer, she was not classy) and hung out with the aforementioned cute British boys at the hostel. We decided against going out to a club with a cover charge with these boys, which was a little disappointing but necessary given how much we still had to do in the city.

The next morning we set out early to try to check out the little Aya Sophia. It was the practice, small-scale version of the bigger famous one, which is now a functional mosque, but it looked like it was closed. We saw the Blue Mosque which was fantastic for many reasons not the least of which was that we got to walk around in socks on its warm carpet. The big Aya Sophia was not as impressive as I had been led to believe, but the Basilica Cisterns were way cooler than I thought they would be.

Then we went to the Grand Bazaar. Some guy the day before had told us not to shop at the Grand Bazaar, because it wasn't a good deal. We didn't take his advice, but we totally should have. When we went in to some of the shops the next day I definitely saw multiple things that were much cheaper, but that's ok. I mostly bought presents for other people, but I also bought myself a backgammon board! It was the one thing I wanted for myself. I was a little too dedicated to getting one really, and I bought one fairly hastily and I'm pretty sure I got ripped off, which was a little depressing when I realized it.

But then we went to the Turkish bath to relax. Turkish baths are fantastic. I only had the slightest idea of what I was getting into. I almost don't want to say what is was, if there's any possibility that you're going to go to one yourself, I feel like you shouldn't read this. It's more fun to go in a little confused. But, anyways, we had to strip down, which for me included my glasses, which meant I couldn't really see anything, and we had to wear this giant croc sandals. We went in to a huge, hot room. It had a huge hot slab of stone in the middle, with a bunch of half-naked women on it. Emphasis on the half naked. We had thought that we were supposed to totally strip down, I definitely didn't want to look like a weird tourist too embarrassed to disrobe. But we were pretty much the only people there not wearing underpants. Trying to fit in can often backfire. But it was liberating! I mean, I didn't have glasses on, so I couldn't really see anyone else in the room, it helped me not be embarrassed about who could actually see me. And the women there, particularly the workers, were so comfortable with their bodies. And then we were bathed. In this warm warm room, when it was cold and rainy outside. It was lovely to be pampered when I'd been worrying about organizing travel. They scrubbed us down, I could see the dead skin just flying off my body. Then they soaped us up, and the way the did it was the best part. They filled up what looked like giant pillowcases with soapy water and air and then twisted it closed. Out came huge clouds of fluffy white soap. It totally engulfed me, got in my mouth and up my nose. It freshman year foam party all over again! And then basically gave us a massage. And then we laid down on the hot rock and got warm and dry. It was lovely.

One of my friends had been sitting in Starbucks for over 2 hours because she knew she wouldn't enjoy the bath. So eventually we had to go back in to the cold world. After spending some time at the hostel we went to a Whirling Dervish show. We didn't quite understand before we got there that it was really just at a restaurant, so we ended up paying for dinner on top of it. The whole thing just felt very commercial. Someone at the hostel the next day said that when she went to see the whirling dervishes in the states she could feel the energy in the room change when they started dancing. That wasn't the case at all here. It had the air of a performance, rather than anything religious. And honestly, its not even that interesting. They spin. My English/GWS friends had a very extensive conversation about how we had "exoticized" and ruined it. I don't know if that's exactly why, but they were at least partially right. I have never felt so much like a dirty tourist in my entire life.

The rest of the visit was not quite as interesting. We smoked hookah at a awesome local bar by the hostel (and I was wicked bad at it). The next day we walked around the Asian side. The best part of that was probably our 50 cent sandwiches. The food there was awesomely cheap. And awesome. It really became evident that food tourism is my favorite thing. Trying new food always always improves my mood. But yeah, all in all, I loved Turkey.

And it came with a very large nose.

This past weekend was the last un-pre-planned weekends I'm going to have in Athens for a very long time. Next weekend I'm in Istanbul (woooooo!), weekend after that my mommy and my aunt come (more wooo!) and I have to show them around Athens. Weekend after that the three of us are going Island hopping. Weekend after that I have a trip to Olympia/Delphi with the whole school. Weekend after that I have a trip to Northern Greece with my ancient Macedon class. My schedule is pretty crazy...

So I let this weekend be chill. Thursday after class I went out clothes shopping for the first time here. I seriously needed some warmer clothes. CYA was not totally obvious about just how cold it was going to be here, and how long its going to be cold for. I bought a turtleneck, I had to after the CYA handbook told me that they are both warm and stylish! I also bought a pair of awesomely patterned tights, because they're very popular here. But one of our main purpose was to try to find boots. ALL the women here wear calf- to knee-high boots here, and I've seen some really nice pairs. However, they are all also pretty expensive, at least to my taste. I've never personally spent 100 dollars on any individual piece of clothing, and that was pretty much the cheapest I could do for a nice pair of boots here. At the very end I saw one nice pair, that I knew from another store was definitely real leather, marked down to 20 euros! So exciting! I chatted with the salesguy as I was trying them on. We didn't find any that I liked in my size, but I did find out that he has family both in Wisconsin, and in Oak Park!!! (for those who don't know, that's my home town) He also repeatedly told me that I had a beautiful smile, and that I brightened up his day, and I walked out with his phone number. I'm potentially going to meet up with him later this week for drinks. So yeah, I have a new Greek friend, which is pretty exciting.

Friday was uneventful and Saturday was not as eventful as I wanted it to be. I went with two of my friends to explore an Athenian university in an attempt to meet Greek students, as suggested by one of my friend's professors. On the way there we passed the sketchiest street I have ever seen. The directions we had said that there was a street with a fair amount of drug use that we could avoid if it made us feel uncomfortable. I've walked through the immigrant neighborhood before, which is where most of the drug use is centered, so I figured that this one little street couldn't be so bad. But it was terrifying. Every roughly... 5 feet there was someone obviously strung out on drugs, most people were smoking... something, I made no attempts to ascertain what exactly that something was. We made a unanimous decision to go to the University by another route. The University itself was desolate. Now, I know that I have a slightly skewed version of what a University should look like, after having spent two in a half years at the holiday resort that is Pomona College, but this place was bleak. There was graffiti everywhere, including inside the buildings. The buildings were huge and dirty and imposing and utilitarian and grey, inside and out. Even the student center was uninviting. It was two big blank rooms with plastic chairs and tables. I would like to thank Pomona right now for its adorable Spanish architecture and obsession with landscaping.

We totally chickened out about talking to students. I blame the totally depressing atmosphere of the whole place. Even my friend Aleedra, who never ever gets nervous about talking to people, couldn't muster up the courage to approach anyone. Eventually we just walked up to the square behind the school to see if we could figure out what cafes the students who weren't working were hanging out at. In the middle of said square were a couple of homeless guys sitting in couches around a fire. Athens is a pretty cool place... Eventually we saw a group of students and followed them in to an adorable cafe that had a bunch of board games. We busted out the Greek scrabble board and proceeded to play the least competitive game of scrabble I have ever taken part in. We were glad whenever someone could manage to make a word. But make words we did! And when I showed it to my Greek professor today we had only spelled one word incorrectly! (I think that they should just do away with omega, and use omicron for everything. Stupid Greek vowels) Later that night I met up with some other friends and we went to a καρναβάλι parade. We went to the early evening one, instead of the one at 2 in the morning, so it was pretty weak, and the fireworks only lasted 5-10 minutes. But after, we went to a creperie and I got the best crepe that I've had here so far.

Sunday was pretty awesome because of our trip to the wine festival. I went on Friday as well, because the entrance fee was for all weekend. But I went on Sunday with someone who had taken the experience pretty seriously when she was with some other people on Friday. She could tell the difference between a Merlot and a Syrah, bandied around words like "spicy" and "peachy" without sounding like a fool, watched how the wine swirled to judge sugar content and asked the wine merchants questions that sounded intelligent. This is in contrast to me "Mmm. I think this is buttery. Yeah? That's a word I can use for wine right? Does this taste like butter to you? What does buttery taste like." And so on. But. As the afternoon wore on (and I sipped on some more liquid courage) her confidence started to rub off on me. I honestly recognized that the syrahs were spicier than the merlots, and that I don't like sweet wines, from personal preference and not just false pretension. I also said that a red tasted of blackberries without doubling over in laughter. And I asserted that something else had "nice legs" (to be honest, though I know what legs are, I don't really know what they have to look like to be qualified as "nice"). Then I went home and made amazing ratatouille from the vegetables I bought at the market on Friday. All in all, it was a very satisfying Sunday.

Holy moly that was a long post. Well, here is proof that I have friends! Blogger kind of fails, so I don't have a way to put captions on these if they're in the body of the text, but here they are now.

Danielle and Aleedra and our Greek Scrabble board!

From left to right: Dena, Hilary, Anouska, and Lynette at the awesome creperie.

Dena, Hilary and Lynette are my flatmates, and Anouska pretends that she lives in our apartment.

Food post!

Today was my trip to the weekly farmers market! It's on Friday mornings, the past couple of weeks I've either forgotten about it, or been on trips to other parts of Greece. But today I finally got my butt out of bed and went produce shopping. Its still too cold here for me to say it was a totally awesome experience, (Pretty much everything I do right now is marred by the fact that I didn't bring warm enough clothing) but its a really awesome resource to have around. There were so many delicious looking vegetables. So I bought a bunch, because I decided that I'm going to make ratatouille. I've never made it before, so I had no idea how much to buy of anything. As a result, I definitely overbought. And bought poorly in one case. A couple of the vendors had zucchinis with flowers attached. Looking at them conjured up mouthwatering images of fried zucchini flowers. When I got home I looked up how exactly one makes them and was sorely disappointed. I'd never seen flowers un-fried before, so I didn't really know what their supposed to look like. Mine are definitely too wilted. And I bought the female kind (the kind that's attached to what we think of as a zucchini), and apparently the male flowers are much tastier. And my flowers are attached to mature plants. Usually you buy flowers on their own (or attached to baby zucchinis) to fry. All of these are things I did not know. But now I do. I can't decide if I'm going to try to fry them anyways, as you can tell from the picture, they're pretty darn sad (and this guy, or gal actually, isn't even the worst of the bunch) But I'm so looking forward to veggie goodness in some form.

Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll really end up making it, because this weekend is the apex of καρνaβάλι, which is the Greek Orthodox version of Mardi Gras, which is way awesomer becuase it lasts for two weeks. Last night was Tsiknopempti, which literally means the Thursday of the smell of roasting meat. Everyone eats absurd amounts of meat to prepare for lenten fasting (which doesn't actually start for over a week, but I like that they're getting a head start). It doesn't feel quite proper to make a vegetarian dinner today, but I won't be around for the market again for quite some time.

Other food adventures. I attempted to make shakshouka earlier this week. This was a mishap-filled experience. I bought half as much crushed tomato as I was supposed to (they should warn me that 28 oz is super-huge can sized!) which wouldn't normally be a problem since we have a grocery store downstairs. But I didn't realize the error of my ways until well into the cooking process when the sauce had reduced. I also forgot to preheat the oven. And then I proved to myself that I am a fail at cooking eggs. I've never made eggs in a way that required me to know if the yolks have set. I'm all about the hard-boiled, scrambled, and omelet egg varieties. The way that shakshouka works is you make a tomato-based sauce, put it in a baking dish, break eggs in to it, and bake them in the oven until just set. It looked to me as if the eggs weren't setting, so I turned up the heat, came back in two minutes, to what looked like eggs covered in plastic.

After warning my roommates that I may have ruined dinner, we dug in. It was not a total disaster. There was enough food for three people, rather than four, which was fine since our other roommate ended up working late in the library. The eggs weren't horrible, they were basically just hard-boiled, but in the shape of an egg-over easy, and the sauce was, to my mind, very tasty. Then I redeemed myself with an awesome new find from the bakery for the dessert, and all was well.

Well, I'm off to the wine festival (its another part of carnaval). But, did you know that this is what a cashew fruit looks like? I did not. Now we both do.

What am I doing with archaeology?

So, I'm going through a little bit of science withdrawal. I thought that once I finished my grant proposals I'd be thrilled to be able to take a break from thinking about nerve cells and chemical reactions. But I'm not! I miss it! Well, maybe not the chemical reactions, I was never very good at mechanisms... But yeah, my archaeology class, the most relevant class to be taking here in Greece is not thrilling me. Reading about ancient Mycenaean tombs sooo does not appeal. I enjoy our on-site lectures a lot. The professor gives the artifacts in the museums the context, and therefore relevance, that I can never manage to muster up myself when I'm there on my own reading the little information cards. I get that much closer to imagining the people of these ancient times as they lived. But to what end? Just to fulfill intellectual curiosity? Or is there a wider social implication of this work that I'm missing? I'm hesitant to to makes thoughts like this public, I know I look like a huge science elitist. I've definitely come off as one before (please let's not have the "is psychology a science" debate). That's part of why I came here I think. Pomona is a liberal arts college. As such, it should be exposing me to different methods of inquiry all the time. It has in the sense that I've taken at least one non-science class every semester. But I usually end up viewing them as little more than a diversion from what I'm legitimately studying. I chose my two English classes (one on science fiction and one on food studies!) so that I could read books that I thought looked interesting without feeling guilty, and I only threw together literary analysis when forced. I haven't taken non-scientific methods of inquiry very seriously (well, I tried with philosophy, but that definitely failed).

Being here is all about expanding my horizons, trying to immerse myself in a new culture, a new language, new ways of academic thinking. And its not really happening... I need controlled experimentation! I need biological pathways! Or something. I feel so narrow-minded. But at the same time I feel relieved. I'm not just studying neuroscience because of a potentially dishonest life plan I came up with to get in to college. I really like this stuff! So I've been searching out science on my own, namely through blogs. Research Blogging is totally the love of my life right now. (http://www.researchblogging.org/) It's a compilation of posts by science writers that reference peer-reviewed research articles. I love it. I'm hoping that by paying attention to what I'm most interested in there, and other blogs etc. I might start to realize what it actually is I want to do with neuro. Medicine? Research? Clinical research? Ahhhhh my future is stressful!

I'm sorry, I know that wasn't really an appropriate travel-type post. But hopefully its better than nothing? I'll get something up about my real-world experiences soon too. Wine festival this weekend anyone?

That is to say... Argolid!

So, this weekend I had my first class field trip, to Argolid. It was a combination of awful and awesome. First, an itinerary:

Day 1 (Thursday)

Eleusis

Corinth

Epidaurus

Day 2 (Friday)

Tiryns

Palamidi

Day 3 (Saturday)

Treasury of Atreus

Mycenae

And we stayed in the charming town of Nafplion Thursday and Friday night.

So, everyone except for the full year students went on the trip, so we were divided up in to 4 buses with two touring groups each. Generally, we were supposed to be divided up by classes. I was supposed to be with my ancient archaeology class, but my professor has too my students in her classes. Therefore I, along with two other people from the class, had to be with someone else. This was disappointing from the start because she is a really awesome professor, and a specialist in the era of the sites we were going to see. But it was even more disappointing when we got on site for the first time. My tour guide was truly awful. She spoke English, you might even say that she even speaks it fluently, she always came up with the words eventually. But it took some serious effort, with lots of pauses, and lots of repeating things she had already said in different ways. It was miserable. And it was doubly miserable because it kept raining off and on, and was quite cold. Greece isn't supposed to be cold!!

But, the sites themselves, once I managed to figure out what they were, were very cool. Eleusis was the home of the Cult of Demeter. There were tons of cults to random gods, but this one is especially famous because the particular rituals associated with the cult have been kept almost entirely secret. We know that they bathed with pigs, and may have done something with a box of dildos.

Our stop in Corinth was largely a bathroom/pit stop. But we also went to look at the channel there. It was built in the late 19th century by the French to allow for faster passage between the Aegean and Ionian seas. It is CRAZY deep. I tried to take pictures, but there's no way to capture the sense of vertigo you get from looking down in to it.

On the first bus ride we also stopped in Epidarus, which was cool, even given the horrible narration, and the rain, because its the main site of the cult of Asklepius! I got some sweet pictures of ancient medical tools, and the building where they'd go to dream up (literally) their cures. Also, the theater there has amazing acoustics. I had climbed to the top of it at one side, heard someone say my name, thought they were just a couple rows away from me, turned and saw that they were at the top at the opposite end of the theater! And this place seats 15,000 people!

We then ended in Nafplion and dropped off our stuff at the hotel. I was supposed to be rooming with two other girls, but when we got to our room there were only two single beds. And there was no running water. We finally got that all sorted out (one of my friends got to be by herself in the teacher's double with a gorgeous view of the sea) and went out to explore the city, which is totally adorable. We walked around the shoreline and took pictures of the misty mountains in the distance, and wandered around the shops, and went to a taverna dinner and got wicked ripped off. It was our own damn fault and I'm too embarrassed about how it happened to explain, but suffice it to say I won't make the same mistake twice. It was an unfortunate ending to a pretty frustrating day.

View from my hotel room.

Misty mountain shot

Day 2 was a little better. We had to get up early again, but the breakfast at the hotel was surprisingly good. Greek yoghurt with honey can make pretty much anything better. Tiryns was pretty. It was probably the port of Mycenae. Today its basically just some rocks on a pretty hillside. Palamidi was much more interesting. Its a Venitian fortress on a hill above Nafplion. The view was gorgeous, as always. The best part there was actually walking down to Nafplion. I've heard that winding staircase has 999, 857, or 1013 steps. All I know for sure is that when we got to the bottom my legs were shaking so bad I was afraid I'd fall over. But then we sat down at a cafe and had a Greek salad and everything was all better (have I mentioned that I love the food here? because I do). We also went on a walking tour of the city, which was painful. At least half of our original group had defected to the other tour guide, which was pretty rude, but also brilliant on their part. After that though, the day got infinitely better. I met up with a friend from another group for coffee, then went out with my roommates for gyros (cheap AND delicious!). Then I went our for gelato which some describe as better than you get in Italy (I don't know about that, but it was damn good). Then I went out with some other friends, and finally got to go out dancing! We've been trying all semester to find a dance club in Athens, to no avail. Greeks apparently just don't dance... However, since all of CYA was in this small town, we could pack the bars with Americans and dance ourselves. It was awesome.

Olive trees, from Tiryns

Day 3 continued the trend of awesomeness. I ditched my tourguide for our trip to Mycenae, which is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been, and the weather was beautiful the entire time. We started at the Treasury of Atreus, which is a dome-shaped tomb held together solely by the placement of the stones. Its amazing, if the placement of any had been off by even a couple millimeters the entire thing would have fallen down! Walking around the Mycenae citadel itself was very cool, and made more so by the fact that my friends here are huge archaeology nerds and were SUPER excited about everything. We came back for a quick lunch at Nafplion and my roomies and I ate food that we had brought with us to save money and had a picnic by the water, and then got some more delicious gelato, and slept on the two hour ride back to Athens.

One of the views from Mycenae

And another one.

So yeah, that was my weekend, how was yours?

winblog!

This week has been pretty awesome.

I finally succeeded in getting the plane tickets for Istanbul. The trick is apparently using a debit card, rather than credit.

I have almost solid spring break plans.  (To be revealed when they're really solid)

And I turned in my final research proposals!  Those were stressing out my week hardcore.  My advisor decided a little last minute that I should try for a second, slightly more prestigious grant. It was somewhat flattering that he thought I had a chance at it (I'm not really sure I'm eligible, though we'll see).  But at the same time it was frustrating to try to pull it off as quickly as I did.  I'm just glad I don't really have to do homework here, otherwise that could have been really annoying.

I have to be up in a little under 5 hours for our field trip to Mycenae, so that's the extent of my update for now. But I'll be back on Saturday with awesome pictures!

Playing Catch-Up

So, I'm going to try to write about all the random little things that I've been failing to do so far.

First thing--I've started uploading pictures to a Picasaweb Album. Since there's no easy way to do a "Read more" function on Blogger, putting up large quantities of photos just doesn't really make sense. So, this is the address http://picasaweb.google.com/torrig. It's also in my links in the right-hand column.

Right, so the first album I've put up there is from the walk I took around Pangrati (my neighborhood) on Thursday. I'm done with classes at 2:30 on Tues/Thurs which gives me lots of time to explore. I started with the grocery store (I put those pictures up here earlier) and then went away from the main street in a direction I hadn't been before. I found a fig tree, which could be exciting in a couple months, but its nearly barren, and hanging out from someone's personal property. I suppose I probably shouldn't try to steal from it. The picture currently at the top of this blog is from that excursion.

Basically everywhere I walked was residential. My neighborhood isn't touristy at all. In fact it's not in any of our guide books. It made me feel a little bit like I was trespassing, even though I was on the streets. But it was nice to be reminded that I'm in a real place where real people live. CYA is a very contained program, so sometimes I forget that this is somewhere new and interesting that I'm living. Right, so I got to a street that I realized was going to take me deep into residential neighborhoods that I didn't really know how to get out of. So I turned around and saw a like... 60 year-old man standing in the middle of the street staring at me. As I passed him I said hello in Greek and he didn't say anything back. I crossed the street a couple yards in front of him and glanced back and saw that he was following me. And there was noone else around. I got pretty freaked up and pretty well ran down the stairs in front of me (the neighborhood is really hilly, so there are lots of stairs) and didn't look back til I was on a busy street. My excursion came to a fast end.

This is related to my main complaint with this city. I just don't feel comfortable walking around by myself. I'm constantly comparing Athens to Paris, and I'm sure its getting annoying to someone, but when I visited Paris last summer I spent every day wandering the city by myself, and I never ever felt unsafe, or even uncomfortable. Clearly, the lack of language barrier there probably made me way more comfortable. But its not just that I don't know the language here. I feel uncomfortable as a female. I feel weird sitting down in a cafe by myself and just reading or people-watching. There are very few women out in general. Most tables are groups of men, and some are couples. I rarely, if ever, see a solitary woman doing anything than just walking through the street with an obvious purpose. Men (including the national guard) stare and hiss in the street. In the middle of the day I certainly don't feel unsafe (with the exception of that one creepy man), but I don't feel relaxed. Its sad, because one of my favorite things to do in Paris was to sit in a cafe with a glass of wine and relax. I'm going to start walking around the city by myself and see if it makes me feel any better, because I don't want to feel like I have to spend all my time in my apartment and the academic center, but I don't know if its going to work.

On another note, I mentioned that the picture at the top of the layout right now is a picture I took. I've been messing with the layout, but I can't really figure out what I want to do. There's too much blank space at the top of the layout right now for my liking. But, I would really like to have one of my own pictures incorporated into the page. So, bear with me if the layout changes some more. And if you have any suggestions where to look for good layouts, I would greatly appreciate it.

Sto Spiti!

I went on my first day trip today!  My first real traveling experience here!  Sweeeet.

So.  I woke up at 6:30 (after going to bed at 2, which is early for me, I've been consistantly falling asleep at 3) We met to go on the metro but we couldn't transfer to the line we wanted to because it was out of order. So we took a bus out to the part of track that was working, missed the ferry by 10 minutes so chilled for an hour and a half in Boston's Cafe/Restaurant. Then we took a 1.5 hour ferry out to Aegina.  We walked a monastary (for the most recently cannonized saint of the Greek Orthodox church) , and before that walked around the island a little.  It was gorrrrgeous.  And hunger-inducing.  We had totally awesome seafood, including probably the freshest fish I've ever had.  (Given I'm from the midwest, not that hard to accomplish, but still)  All in all, it was an awesome day.

The title of this post means "at home" as in "Yianni einai sto spiti!"  It refers both to a random quote from the day (as will most titles that make no sense) but also the fact that my apartment here has stopped feeling like a place I can sleep to a place I am actually living.  Crossing the sqaure to get to my block really made me feel like I was entering my space today. It was nice.  My mood changes so quickly here, we'll see if the feeling stays.  But for now, its good.

Now on to pictures!

I ended up eating one of these!  Soooo fresh.

 I don't know why, but I really really like the Greek flag.

This is a walk that supposedly has 300 chapels on it.  Each family was allowed its own church back in the day.

Views from the monastary

View from the Orthodox church.

California Squid

My class just got cancelled! Ten minutes before it was supposed to start. Sweet! Good thing I'm glued to my computer here.

My family wants pictures, and pictures they shall get.

I decided to go out exploring in Pangratti yesterday because I have been spending too much time in my room doing nothing interesting. Plus, I needed to take some pictures of my own. I started by hitting up the grocery store that's literally under my apartment. I really really want to figure out something to do with these. Anybody have any thoughts on what to do with a whole frozen octopus? Or... what's the other thing? A squid. Noone else in my apartment really likes fish though, so I don't know if I'll ever really be able to make this dream come true.

However, I did get to make one food-related dream come true yesterday. These are two of the Greek snack foods I've been hankering for. Most of the stuff you see is either American like Lays chips, they have salt and vinegar, and barbeque (though they call it oriental barbeque for whatever reason) and Oreos, or familiar from other parts of Europe like

Hobnobs and digestive biscuits yummm. They put oregano on EVERYTHING here, so oregano

chips seemed pretty "authentic" (oi, food studies class last semester made me hate that word) Greek. And these croissants in a bag are everywhere. I've been obsessed with them since I first saw them in the grocery store. My roommate thinks I'm an idiot for buying them,

since we can get real croissants at the delicious bakery down the street. But I had to have one. And seriously! This one is called Trendy. What really did me in though was the brown pile on the front of the package which was delightfully reminiscent of the dog droppings that are all over the streets here.

So, verdicts.

Oregano chips: tasty. 2 out of 2 roommates polled agreed with me. One added that they were different, but maintained that they were still tasty.

Trendy bagged croissant: pretty awful. 2 out of 2 roommates asked refused to try it. Poor sports I say. It tasted vaguely of cardboard, plastic, and bread. Not even buttery really. And the chocolate filling was your typical overly sweet sticky processed chocolaty-type substance. Better than chocolate fillings you would get in processed stuff in the states. But still highly (and unsurprisingly) inferior to the filling in the pain au chocolat I got from the bakery the other day. Oh well. I'm still kind of in love with these croissants though. There are many other brands. Including ones with spongebob. I will almost certainly try this experiment again.

European airlines hate America

Yesterday morning started out fantastically well (THAVMA!).  Maya found super cheap flights to Istanbul, so that Annie could come with us at the end of February.  I finalized with Annie that she was willing to pay for the flight, and I agreed to book them for the two of us in the evening.  It seemed simple enough.  I found the flights, went to pay for them, and my credit card was rejected.  I reentered the information (I am definitely known to make stupid mistakes filling in online forms). Still rejected.  I changed the card contact information to my US number in case the company was bothered by a forgein number.  Still rejected.  I called my dad, he called the credit card company to make sure there wasn't a hold on my account, there wasn't.  They suggested using his name since he's the primary account holder.  Still rejected.  I tried my parent's credit card.  Still rejected.  My dad suggested the problem might be the browser.  I switched from Chrome (which is awesome, by the way, other than the fact its still kinda buggy) to IE (evil evil evil) and tried my card.  Still rejected.  Tried my dad's card.  Still rejected.  Called the toll-free number from the Olympic website.  It was disconnected.  Called the other number.  They were closed for the night.  At this point I have been trying to buy tickets for TWO HOURS.  It is one in the morning.  I hate my life.  I talk to Graham and he tells me its probably because my card is attached to an American address, the good deals are reserved for locals.  Bah.

So, after class this morning I call the (not free) number to try to figure things out.  The phone booking agents tell me to call the webmasters, they have no policy against selling tickets to non-Greeks, it must be a bug.  I call the number they give me, find out that you can't use an American credit card online for "security reasons," that I should make my reservation over the phone. Call the phone booking number again, tell them the date and time, am about to book,until  the cost is nearly twice what I was trying to pay online.  Turns out, they can't give me the cheap fare.  Neither can the agents at the Olympic agencies in Athens.  Oh, that fare is only available if you buy online.

Lovely.

So, now I'm trying to set up an appointment with a travel agent so I can be like OMG BUY TICKETS PLZ.  Turns out, the one who CYA sends us to isn't allowed to charge us a booking fee.  But when I emailed her she mentioned the great travel packages she has to Istanbul.  I'm nervous it won't be worth her while to just get me two one-way tickets.  Its getting to the point that I'm spending more time working on buying these tickets than I'll end up actually staying in Istanbul. Gross.  Olympic airlines is damn lucky they have the cheapest flights by far.  But I'm clearly not paying for customer service...

Anyways, that's my excuse for not posting last night.  I do have some sweet pictures from yesterday.  Which I can't post now either because I have class...  You'll get them eventually. Hopefully.

It wasn't supposed to be a topless beach...

So, I just got back from a Taverna dinner for one of my flatmate's birthday. For any of you not in the know, Greek Tavernas are generally speaking adorable eateries, often family owned (probably less than I would like, but I'm going to ignore that fact) and purveyors of fine fine Greek cuisine. You're pretty much required to order a Greek salad when you go out to one, everyone is somewhat shocked and appalled if you don't. All in all, this was one of the better Taverna dinner's I've had though, which was probably helped by the fact that we got both free wine AND free dessert. They didn't have birthday cake, but the owner brought us Greek yogurt, one with honey and one with quince jam. Greek yogurt is amazing, its super thick and rich, though sometimes a little bitter to my taste. This one in particular was nearly solid, and the honey here is so much more floral and delicious. I'm also starting to get along with my roommates better, which makes me very happy indeed. They all bonded in the beginning and I felt like I missed the boat a little bit, but we've been doing more together this week, and I like them a lot. Yesterday they introduced me to the deliciousness that is whole, steamed artichoke. thought I hated artichoke back home. Turns out what I really hate is tinny canned artichokes. I feel a bit like you Mike, and your tomatoes. Some things are just much better fresh. Artichokes are so delicious they don't even need butter! I can't believe I've foolishly missed out on them for so long. 

What else... well I watched the Super Bowl. Keep in mind, however, the fact that Greece is eight hours ahead of the States. Instead of a Super Bowl Sunday we had a Super Bowl Horribly Early Monday Morning. I, and one of the other girls I went with, both have class at 8:30 Monday mornings, so we ended up leaving at halftime. Even so I didn't get in to my apartment until 4 in the morning. My sleep schedule is so irrevocably messed up, but that's its own seperate entry. The night was fun though. It really was like being back in America for a couple hours. There were pitchers of beer, and big beefy men, and drunk girls acting foolish, none of which I've seen since I got here.  But then I used the bathrooms, which were devoid of toilet seats, as usual, and I remembered I was in Greece.  Maybe I just haven't been here long enough, but there was nothing there that made me really miss the States.

Unfortunately, I've been letting other people take pictures lately. My camera is just a little too large to carry around comfortably in my purse, or to hold discretely in my hand. Buying a new camera is definitely on my to do list for when I get home.  There were pictures taken at both of these events though, so I'll try to borrow some from people later to share.

I feel like I should end with something though... How about a view of the national gardens?

First Post!

Over the past... nearly 18 hours I haven't left my apartment, and I've barely left my room. Summer undergraduate research funding requests are due in two weeks, and I hadn't started figuring out what I want to do at all until yesterday. Since I started I've been alternately frantically trying to decide what on earth I can do that's worth Pomona giving me part of their quickly shrinking research budget, and frantically doing whatever I can to avoid addressing such a question. Right now it looks like I'm stuck between working on a project with a very cool question behind it but horribly boring bench work, or something that I find intellectually less intriguing but that involves pretty cool techniques. I'm banking on my advisor responding to me with some brilliant insight. We'll see how that goes.

But! Did you see that part about the apartment? I'm in Greece! Up until two weeks ago I'd lived my entire life in suburban America either in my parent's house or a college dorm. But now I'm living in an apartment (with a kitchen!) in busy, crazy Athens, Greece. I'll be here for the next three and a half months (with some exacting travel in between, if all goes well) totally avoiding science, once this proposal gets turned in at least.

I've already been here two weeks, but I'm still just getting settled in. I'm dealing with the problems of living in a new apartment, like trying to figure out how to divide up costs among 4 people who share a kitchen, and dealing with showering when three of the four of us have 8:30 classes on Mondays. I'm dealing with the normal trials and tribulations of starting a new semester, deciding on classes (pretty easy) and extracurriculars (less so). And, you know, figuring out how to live in an entirely new city with an entirely new language and an entirely new alphabet. Quick fun fact-- modern Greek has 5 vowel combinations that all make the sound "ee"!

I'm slowly getting the hang of things. I was finally able to set up this blog because I figured out how to switch the default blogger language from Greek because I found a pulldown menu that said ελληνικά

(Greek!). I've got some extracurriculars lined up and even a potential trip to Istanbul next weekend!

I have some stories of unfortunate cultural mishaps and awkward social encounters, but I'll save them for later. For now, I'll end with a picture:

I may not be able to see Russia from my house, but I can see the Acropolis from my school!