Friday, September 05, 2003

Five Fun Facts for the First Five Days

1. I made it to Greece without a problem, but I almost didn’t make it to Athens College. When I got off the plane, I was supposed to look for a man holding a sign with the college’s name on it, but there was no such man to be found. So I wait, I look around, I wander a bit. Still nothing. I start pondering my options. And then, just when it’s getting to be worrisome, a man appears beckoning to me and whisks me off to his car. Apparently another girl got off the plane before me and approached the man with her luggage. Not until she got to the car, looked at the packet in the seat with my name on it, and declared that that wasn’t her was it realized that he had the wrong person. Turns out the girl was doing College Year in Athens and when she saw the Athens College sign she just assumed it was for her. Thank goodness for that packet in the car or I might still be at the airport.

2. For the first two days it was about 100 degrees in Athens. Our house has no air conditioner. It also had no fans because after last year’s fellows moved out the fans were commandeered by offices around campus. As follows, our house was an oven. So on night #2, I slept out on the back porch along with the four other girls. Darrell, the one male Teaching Fellow, sleeps in the basement so it’s not so hot down there. It was like a big slumber party…except we were all so tired we fell right to sleep without any of the usual slumber party fun and games.

3. On Tuesday night, we went out to dinner at a rooftop restaurant in the Plaka, which is an area downtown. If we looked up at the hill above us we could see the Parthenon all lit up. I think we ordered about every appetizer on the menu and split them among the six of us. So much food! After dinner we were pulled out to the dance floor to learn a traditional Greek dance, and then we were given free watermelon and honeydew for dessert. Mmmm.

4. This morning we work up early to go to the market before we were attacked by the slew of meetings and random tasks thrown at us every day. The market is awesome…I’m sure I’ll dedicate a whole blog to them at some point. But anyhow, as we were walking back, this old woman asks us if there is a market in the area. When we tell her yes, she proceeds to yell curses at us. Then she lifts up her dress (she’s wearing no underwear) and moons us! A few seconds later she does it again! Talk about Tourette’s!

5. Our computer is so slow that I have to type my emails on my computer, save them to floppy disk, and then copy and paste them into my email on the house computer. So if you ever get an email from me and it doesn’t address anything that you may have written to me in an email, you now know why. Hey, it’s the best I can do. Count your lucky stars that you are even getting email from me anyhow. =)

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