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.
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