A Final Fond Farewell

Wow, where the heck has the past 4 months gone?! It only seems like yesterday that I was filling out the application and waiting in anticipation to hear the exciting news that I was going to live in Italy and Greece for 4 months! This is probably the last time you'll hear from me, but I've had so much fun keeping up with this blog!

I wouldn't not have traded anything about the past 4 months for anything in the world, even the challenging, most difficult times I will treasure (as cheesy as that sounds) I have learned so much and have recieved a much appreciated awareness of these amazing cultures and world. I have come to know and love my family of 29 here so well and I am so sad to leave them. It is going to be so strange to be going home and not having them around every single minute of the day. But on that note, I am so excited to be going home and seeing all of you, especially in time for all the snow and Christmas! Thank you so much for all your prayers, they are greatly appreciated. And defintiely will be needing them now with my travels home! :)

So, a final fond farewell! I'm am now Ireland bound for a few days and I'll see you all on the flip side!!

Much love,
Laura :)

"Spring Break!" Thanksgiving weekend, Greek style!

I think it's safe to say our theme for this weekend, and actually has been since then, was "spring break!" How? I have no idea. It kind of started on our climb up Mt. Parnassus in Delphi, but has pretty much stuck with our group. Haha, beats me! :)

We were off to Olympia for a 4 day weekend of excitement and a celebration of thanks! (and boy do I have plenty to be thankful for!)This has been the very first Thanksgiving I've celebrated away from my family and not to mention out of the country! Crazy! (Thanksgiving is certainly not celebrated in Greece!)



Canal in Corinth! (the picture doesn't do justice)



Our excursion started bright and early thursday, Thanksgiving morning (and we had a day free of classes!) Destination: Peloponnese Islands! And mom, no we did not take a boat at all or even ferried the bus across to the islands because they are connected to the mainland. haha. Just thought I'd let ya know ;) We had a number of stops to make before checking into our hotel for the evening in Nafplio (which they unfortunately had no shampoo. I know, sounds desperate, but I like my shampoo) First place was Corinth! Robert, our accompanying professor of history, wanted us to see the Corinth canal, saying it was absolutely huge. Well, he wasnt lying. We stood on the bridge the crosses it and boy was it quite high. During the tourist season/summer months, you can actually bungee jump off this bridge into the canal. How sweet would that be! Believe me, if we had the chance, I definitely would have given that a try! Bungee jumping in Greece?! Come on! (don't worry mom, I never got that chance) Anyways, this was more of a pit stop because we enjoyed the bathroom and eating ice cream before out next stop and you never know when that is going to be!



Who loves ice cream?!



Temple of Asklepios



Lunch!



Well, that next stop ended up being the site of the Temple of Asklepios (healing god). It was a beautiful setting actually for such ruins, but Robert pointed out a lot of restoration and reconstruction has been taking place making it look rather "disney-esque!" Robert is quite the character, I think his favorite quote to use is "Ta-Da, Jazz hands!" (imagine a very proper englishman saying that in a british accent! Too funny!) We enjoyed our bagged lunch that our school provided for us which was rather delicious! I love the fact that school makes us lunch everyday, even if we go on excursions! While eating our lunches of spinach pies and sandwiches, we had a dog begging from us. This is nothing new though, stray dogs and cats are seriously all over the place, everywhere in Greece! And it was also Kyle's 21st birthday, so Elaine brought some delicious treats to share in celebration! I think chocolate baklava has become a new favorite dessert (look out, I'll be making it for Christmas!)

Ancient Theater

After scarfing down our lunches (I don't know about anyone else, but I was starving) we headed to the ancient theater. This is known as the best preserved ancient theather were Greek tradegies were preformed. It was beautiful! Apparently if you drop a coin at the very center of the stage, you can hear it perfectly clear at the very top of the theater. Of course we had to put this to the test and it definitely was true! The acoustics were fabulous! Beth and I proceeded to be brave and sing in front of everyone. And when I say sing, I mean an attempt to sing happy birthday to Kyle! So I can now say that I have preformed in an ancient Greek theater! Brittany and I continued to quote Shakespeare our whole time there. I'm not sure why Shakespeare because he wasn't Greek at all, but we still did anyways! Robert even preformed a quote from Oedipus the King, which is much more fitting for this setting I'd say!

(Insert quote here)

 Back on the bus and on to Nafplio, where we would be enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner, at the hotel. How classy! The entire bus ride was gorgeous as we weaved in and out of the mountains along the coast and Nafplio sits right along the coast as well. Nafplio reminds me a lot of Hawaii. Granted, I've never been there at all, but it's at least how I picture it! Palm trees line the walk way along the sea and the pier. Mountains surround this all ready gorgeous view of the sea!

The beauty that is Nafplio!

We immediately dropped our stuff off in our hotel and went on our walking tour of this small town. Robert pointed out the Acropolis (the highest point in the city) and mentioned that w can climb to the top. Then he added after climbing 860 stairs. Holy moly! Well, we at least gave it a try. We got to one point to admire the already spectacular view (not even half way up) and decided to hike back down and roam the quiet streets of Nafplio instead.



There the Acropolis!



I was fine with it because some people made it to the top, but said it was closed. A few os us enjoyed wandering around the streets window shopping. We would come across some high end jewlery stores and pick out what kind if engagement rings we like and bla bla bla, all that fun stuff! After viewing most of the town and its stores we went back to the pier and enjoyed the view while sitting by some heat lamps (which I think is a fabulous invention: you can sit outside even during the colder months and still stay warm!) Despite the fact that we were going to be eating our thanksgiving feast in less than two hours, some of the guys still got sandwiches and drinks as a "snack." Typical, I guess :)



Meghan and I :)



It is so fun to see everyone get dressed up in their fancy shmancy clothes! And boy did we look like a classy group if I do say so myself. Girls pulled out their finest dresses that they could throw in their backpacks and guys brought out their silk ties and dress pants! It was fabulous! We were shnazzy!

And the dinner was just as good. Different, but still pretty tasty. And thankfully, we had turkey! Apparently it is a bit of a chore to get turkey here in Greece. Who knew? But each table had their own turkey to carve and even stuffed with stuffing (not the typical stuffing though) We shared Greek potatoes, cabbage salad, bread and a Greek dessert. I have no idea what it's called but it is a caramely pudding almost, similar consistency to Spanish flan. It was pretty good once you get past the interesting texture. It was just great to share a thanksgiving meal with our entire family abroad!



Jordan carving the turkey!



Greek potatoes!

 But it still didn't feel quite like Thanksgiving. For one, it felt like I was in Hawaii and secondly, my family family was missing. I was able to call them, which made the night fun (I can tell they all had a bit to drink) but rather chaotic to be talking on speaker phone with 5 people! haha! Shortly after we stuffed ourselves with stuffing (no pun intended) and turkey, we returned to that same outdoor seating area on the pier to enjoy some drinks. I ordered a sangria. Hands down, best sangria I have ever had! absolutely delicious! the 5 of us who were at a table together (Sam K, Sam B, Mikala, Dan and myself) passed the night by playing one of our groups favorite games: hot tub (its much more fun than it sounds) We basically ask each other any sort of question which can reveal secrets, wishes, crazy stories...you name it. It is rather entertaining! It was such a relaxing, beautiful evening along the coast line with fabulous company! Cheers!

And on to Sparta we go! We first make two stops at  two different Mycanean Palaces. The first was called Tiryn. robert showed all around this, what was once, massive Palace ruins, pointing out all the different rooms and what kinds of rooms they were. He placed volunteers where pillars would have gone so we could get at least an elemantary glimpse of the past. We even threw in our knowledge of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian column types!



Our column volunteers! :)





Lions Gate



"Spring Break!"

The second palace felt even more massive. It was on a towering hill over looking the valley. You walk right under the lion (or griffin, we're not too sure) gates and you can only imagine what this place was like thousands of years ago bustling with royalty. Towards the end of the tour with Robert, we found this narrow, rather dark tunnel. There was a sign that read something to the fact that it was dangerous to venture in there. As usual, we paid no attention to this sign and went down into the deep chasm. It continued to go deeper and deeper underground. The walls became even more narrow the farther down we went. Eventually, it became so pitch black that there was no way to see your hand if you put it right in front of your face! Needless to say, our cameras were clicking right and left. The flashes were our only means of some sort of momentary light! It was so cool!So adventurous we were! We thought maybe it would lead us to some underground burial site or something of that interesting sort. However, we were just a little dissapointed when it finally ended with just a huge mud puddle. Oh well, the anticipation was the fun part. If you ever venture down into this tunnel, be aware of random posts in the middle of the stair well. I learned the hard way and ran right into it. Let's just say it was not the most pleasant feeling to have you're head hit metal in the pitch black darkness....

Deep, dark chasm



"We just went spelunking..again!"

After this deep tunnel and darkness, the Treasury of Atremis was next. It was a huge and built right into the hill! These treasuries are basically to store all the belongings or treasures and riches of the person that dies. It was absolutely massive!! 

After checking out all these palaces and treasuries, our most anticipated destination was next. THIS. IS. SPARTA!!! (It's not everyday you have a reason to shout that!) First of all, the bus ride there was quite interesting. We weaved in and out of the mountain sides, switch back roads, lots of hills...a lot of us were getting car sick I think. The queeziness was contagious. But we finally arrived in the little town of Sparta. (And when I say small, I mean smaller than St. Joe small, which is saying a lot...) BUT we got our first glimpse of Christmas lights! We were all too excited to see them! Straight from the bus to the hotel and onto Ancient Sparta (or at least what is left of it) There Robert taught us all about the Spartan warriors (women warriors as well, and they were tough)! (Ask me about the Spartan warriors when I get home, there are some interesting stories about them) And of course, there was no way that we could leave until Zeus (Kayla's camcorder) caught out battle scenes and our own shouting duel of "THIS. IS. SPARTA!"

 

Spartan women were tough, and so are we!



There's Leonidas (aka Gerard Butler from 300)





So that is Sparta. It definitely seems cool being able to say I've been there, but it was acutally really interesting to see! It all put us in a warrior type of mood! haha Let's go conquer the world!

What better caption than "THIS. IS. SPARTA!"

Later that evening, the hotel again supplied us with another fantastic dinner! After which some us passed our down time playing card games!! What you might ask? Old maid and Mafia. What can bet that?! Our mafia stories were hilarious! Death by mcdonalds and death by eyelashes...But what a fun night playing some card games!

The next morning came all too quickly. Olympia was another bus ride away. Again, it was another very small town, filled with a lot of closed souvenir shops (an jewelry shops!) It was a very relaxing afternoon actually. We enjoyed some gyros (pronounced like "euros"...dad. haha) and shopped around the little town of Olympia! There are some beautiful hand crafted jewelry stores, so naturally we had to peek in those stores! There was a little dessert cafe on the corner of the town with the most delicious looking desserts. I'll jsut say "slave to yogurt." (yogurt with Greek honey and fruit is phenomenal!) Some of us actually returned to this same place later that night, after our dinner at the hotel to enjoy some drinks! Like, stawberry daquaris and milkshakes! What a combination, no?! So delicious! I don't know what it is with our group, but we sure like to play the hot seat/tub game and thats exactly what Meghan, Kelsey, Mike, Sam, Kristin and I played for hours that night enjoying our daquaris! I will say that this game is a great way to know people though! :) 

It was our last day of our 4 day Thanksgiving weekend. What better to go out with a bang than with a legit sprinting race on one of history's very first Olympic stadiums of ancient Olympia?! We definitely did so! Olympia was absolutely incredible. Here are just a few pictures for you to take a look. We also toured the museum containing artifacts from this same site. What a "spring break" it has been! :)



On your mark, get set, GO!

Ready to run!

These are ruins of a Christian Basilica!





"What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?"




Ron, Dobby, Hargid, Crooksanks, Katie Bell and Moaning Mrtyle!

 

Living in Europe defintiely has its ups and pluses. One of which where we definitely reaped the European benefits had to do with Harry Potter. Yup, this is the beauty of living in Europe! :) haha We saw the first part of Harry Potter 7 a whole 14 hours before anyone at home could have! So what do we do? We officially make ourselves a part of the wizarding world. With the clothes and material we could conjure up, and combined all of our resrouces to make some of the sweetest costumes ever! (Even with these limited resources!) Everyone became a different character or object from the movie: we had Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, Ginny, Cho Chang, Hagrid, Bellatrix, Sirius Black, Dobby, Crookshanks, Tonks, the Patil twins, Fleur Delacor, Moaning Mrytle, Lavendar Brown, Katie Bell (that was me!), and even the golden snitch, a Nimubs 2001 as well as a Firebolt!!

 

Ginny, Ron, Lavendar, Hagrid and Malfoy

Adorned in our fabulous costumes, we went to Theology class. Fr. Stefanos got a complete kick out of all of us. It felt just like Halloween all over again! Right after class, with wands and broomsticks in hand, we walked to TGI Friday's for dinner. Never have I gotten more weird looks from other people than we did on this night. People were laughing and some actually made confused faces at us. The thing is though, Harry Potter is not even close to as popular as it is at home. We went the night that it opened (no midnight premiere) and the whole theater wasn't even full. That made me really miss home and all the excitement there is to be had there, especially since this is the last one. Everyone is so enthusiastic and excited with anticipation. At least the 30 of us were here for it though! It was fabulous to celebrate this momentous occasssion with these amazing other 29 individuals! After a delicious (and yes, I know, American) dinner, we made our way to the movie theater. The group of us reminded me of little kids on Halloween! We were quite the sight, especially since we were the only ones that dressed up for this once in a lifetime event!

The whole gang at dinner!





Fleur, Malfoy, Patil Twins, Dobby, Katie Bell and Luna

 Holy Harry! This movie is definitely the best one yet! ( I feel I say that every time a new comes out, but they are all just that good!) Can I just say incredible?! I could have sat through part two right then and there! I did not want this movie to end!! Oh, and P.S. I love Ron Weasley.

I have come to love our group soo much over these past three months. I could not have imagined celebrating Harry Potter with anyone else in Greece! They have very much become a family to me. For all of us to go out dressed up to a movie and all be in the same point of excitement?! It just doesn't get much better than that!

I love Harry Potter

Katie Bell, one Patil twin, Tonks and Moaning Mrtyle

We are a herd of mountains goats!



Byzantine Monastary



Ambiguity: (n) The possibilty of interpreting an expression in 2 or more distinct ways. AKA: things simply not going according to plan. This was actually a question we had for our initial interview for studying abroad: How do you handle ambiguity? Pretty sure most of us had to ask for a definition of ambiguity and I think this weekend in Delphi was a legit answer for us all. Quite the "ambiguous" weekend and not a single complaint from any of us. Except maybe the professor...(Wow, how many times did I just say ambiguous?!)

 

Anyways, we were all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:30am Saturday morning. However, on our way to our bus, we were greeted by a horrible scene of a dead cat on the sidewalk. Lovely. Let's just say not the most pleasant  sight to see in the early morning. We hopped on out jumbo tour bus and the 3 hour bus ride to Delphi commenced. I think everyone had their headphones in and the head bobbin' (as in sleeping) was running rampant in a matter of 15 minutes--myself included. Our first stop was St. Luke's monastary, Byzantine monastary (I think that's what the name was). Once seeing it, it reminded me of Subiaco or Assisi back in Italy--it was chilly and rainy in the moutains which is perfect monastary-visiting weather. It was a gorgeous Orthodox Church--frescoes and icons covered every inch of wall (part of the ceiling was actually gold) and the views were spectacular! The monastary actually makes its own homemade honey among others goods and it supported by those profits, so of course I had to get some real homemade Greek honey (apparently made from Thyme?) I have yet to try it! I even got a thank you hug for buying some. haha



That is lamb



Food. Pretty sure that's what was on everyone's mind at the moment and thank goodness lunch break was next on the agenda. We were dropped off on the outskirts of this quaint town on a mountain side and were told to meet the bus on the other side of town. That's helpful, there's more than one road the bus could be on. Eh, oh well, we wandered through the streets of this town, called Arahova I belive, in search of restaurants. It's a little ski town and reminds me so much of down town Stillwater--Home!! That's beside the point...6 of us, Ryan, Lauren, Brittany, Beth, Mark and myself stop at a  little tarverna along the way and we share a delicious lunch of fried cheeses, bread, chicken soup and lamb. Let's just say I have yet to eat a meal here in all of Europe that I did not thoroughly enjoy--that's how wonderful the food is!





We looked at our watches and realized we had to bounce! Plus we didn't exactly know where our bus actually was. Expecting the 6 of us to be the last ones with everyone waiting for us, we speed walked through the hilly streets, found the bus only to discover we were the very first ones. Sweet! So, to pass the time a little rock hill climbing was in store and enjoyed some breath taking views (little did we know what was in store for the next day though...). Once everyone found our hidden bus, we had our next stop to get to for some lecture/note taking. Where? Only the sanctuary of Apollo, of course (Probably best known for the Oracle that was dedicated to Apollo)!

It's a beautiful sanctuary of ruins, especailly at sunset. We listened to Anne (our Art History prof) tell us about the various, interconnecting myths of the gods and the oracle and so forth as we watched some mountain goats on a ridge above us. Too cute! Well, it was closing time for the sites, we were kicked out and had to trek up the swtich back pathed hill all over again. We got our work out today. Luckily Mike piggy backed me up the last portion of the hike! Next stop: Hotel! Hotel Acropole with spectacular views from our balconies and just in time to see the sun fully set behind the mountains! A group of us girls chillaxed for a bit, turned on the TV and to our surprise found a channel playing movies in english! That's definitely the first! Not to mention the very first movie I've seen since being over here. I didn't really watch much of it, but none the less. We eventually rolled out of bed to check ot the shops around Delphi's town--jewelry is definitely a big thing here! I couldn't really afford much of it, but it was fun to window shop!

Stomachs were growling...what else is new though (with this deliciously nutritious food, we're always hungry :) ) We walked to our fancy restaurant and started with some typical Greek appetizers: fried cheese (like a mozzarella stick), spinach and feta pie (P.S. I officially love feta cheese now!), grape leaves with rice and crab stuffed inside, eggplant/olive and tzatziki sauces with bread. It reminded me of what we had for our welcome dinner here and our girls dinner with Elaine! Yum!



Greek Appetizers

 Course 2: cabbage salad. This is the easiest most delicious salad: cabbage with shredded carrots and vinegar. woo-la! Course 3: grilled chicken with a side of egg noodles in tomato sauce. Soooo good!! Gah! Good thing I love to try new things! Then, dessert: no idea what it was. It was some sort of white cake with a sweet syrup. We were stuffed! This calls for a glass of wine and some card games back at the hotel with the chicas. Stellar evening!! (some even got some Brazilian cigars to try! haha!) We had an early wake up call the next morning, so I called it an early night.

Whose ready for four hours of museum visits/art history lecture?! (Breakfast first of course--with famous Greek honey on bread!) Well, we were all prepared with our notebooks and pens in hand to look at ancient pottery and Greek archeaological sites for the day. However...

Now, what are the chances thast the day we go, the whole musuem + site are all closed for municipal elections?! Yup, that's right. We drive 3 hours just to see this site and it's closed. Well, what can ya do? Here's where our ambiguous selves took over. Let's go rock climbing!! We were all in the mountain goat sort of mood this weekend anyways. So we had a massive changing session on the bus (good thing we're all comfortable around each other haha!) I mean, how can you climb a mountain in jeans? Shorts were a necessity! But what moutain? Mt. Parnassus of course! (Those that committed heresay back in antiquity were thrown off this peak. Comforting realization. ) and let me tell you, it was awfully high! (Over 8,000 ft I think) Believe me, we climbed to the top of it! Even with sketchy directions we still made it! Not to mention coming across a ton of shot gun shells and seeing a guy walking around with a shot gun. We all thought he was going to shoot us for being on his property. Don't worry though, he was just hunting. Our guess: mountain lion. And we weren't on his property...I don't think. We found a bunch of animal bones. One of which was a vertebrae from the lumbar region of some animal (thank you anatomy for helping us identify!) We scaled (legitimately) mountain sides, hiked switch back rocky paths, scrambled through horribly thorny plants, got lost, ran into a guy with his shot gun to see the most gorgeous view in the entire world! It felt as if we were in fact on top of the world (far from it, I know) I could see for miles! It is something pictures just don't do justice to. Wow. Enough said. I wish you all could have experienced along with me! I kept thinking of how much Dad and Sara would have completely dominated and loved this cilmb! Here's some of the pictures!



That's the peak we climbed up to



What goes up, must come down. Us included. Great. now we have the whole trek down. Our knees and legs were sore towards the bottom from the hiking down steep hills for the whole way. Once at the bottom, we admired out accomplishments--sweet! We just spontaneously climbed a mountain. No big deal. One thing is for sure, you could definitely smell the evidence that we did back on the bus. Wow! Long story short, we ALL needed showers. So worth it though! P.S. I just would like to take this time to thank my chaco sandals. I could not have done this climb without them! So thank you! I have cuts/scars all over my feet (and sweet new chaco tan lines!) but they were stellar companions! Gotta have some battle scars anyways! Best purchase, hands down.

We needed some nourishment, we all sweated off our breakfast. Gyros! We return back to Arahova to enjoy gyros, or to be technical, souvlaki pitas. Oh man, that hit the spot! Picture this: a flaming hot pita with fresh veggies, veal, tzatziki sauce, mustard and topped off with nothing else but spicy pepper and french fries! That is what's up! French fries inside totally makes these gyros! Satisfied and tired, a 3 hour bus ride of sleeping sounded wonderful. Which is basically what went down anyways.

I think we all found our honest answers: we all handle ambiguity like champs! Wouldn't have changed it for anything!