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.