This past weekend I took a school-sponsored trip to Mt. Athos and Halkidiki. On the way to Ouranoupoli, (the town where we caught our boat tour of Athos) I felt like I was driving through every country and every climate of the world. I had the desert lands of Africa, the green rolling hills and mountains of Ireland, the rocky cliffs and fjords of Norway, canyons of Colorado, and the blue clear waters of the Caribbean. I really enjoyed seeing the land of Greece on our journey. We haven't seen much more than city life since we've been here, so it was nice to see the villages and the nature of Greece.
It was cloudy and chilly when we got on our boat in Ouranoupoli, and while we would have preferred a more sunny and warm day, I was really excited to see what Mt. Athos was. I didn't really know much about it, and I was expecting to see just one dinky monastery. I was definitely wrong. Mt. Athos, which means Holy Mountain, is a large peninsula that is home to about 20 monasteries, built by different countries of the world. The peninsula is covered with cliffs and mountains (reaching up to the actual Mt. Athos at 6,670 ft) and each of the monasteries is very much separated from the rest. Women are not allowed to step foot on the peninsula and are only allowed to see the monasteries from boats at least 500m from shore. This is because of a religious reason, and it is a law that has been followed since the very first monastery was built in 980. Men need an entrance permit, and Orthodox Christians get first dibs. All of the monasteries were impressive - built nestled into the cliffs overlooking the sea, they had beautiful architecture. Its hard to imagine when and how these monasteries were built.

The village of Ouranoupoli

This is what I thought the monasteries would look like. I was wrong...

The cliffs and hills of the peninsula

The first monastery

The Russian monastery. This one was my favorite. 2000 Russian and Greek monks live here.

A monastery on a cliff

Mt. Athos, called the "Garden of the Virgin" by the monks

Once the boat turned around to head back to Ouranoupoli, we decided to go downstairs and get out of the chilly wind for a while. Maggie, Dana, and I sat down at a table near an elderly man. When his wife came back she started talking to us in Greek. We quickly pulled out our Greek dictionaries, but it wasn't really helpful at all. We quickly introduced ourselves (mainly because thats the only real Greek that we know) and started talking to them with hand gestures and very very simple language. Demitri and Dana (I think thats his wife's name. She got all excited when Dana told her her name, so we think they had the same one) loved us. Demetri gave us lavendar and Dana kept kissing our cheeks. We also took several pictures of us all together. I'm pretty sure they wanted us to come to their home for lunch, but we had very little time to spend in the village. As we said goodbye we exchanged cell phone numbers, as though we would be able to understand eachother on the phone.

Boat and Ouranoupoli

The we drove an hour or so back to our hotel in Halkidiki, a beach resort town. Our hotel was beautiful. It was in its own little cove of crystal clear blue water. Because the summer tourism season is now over, we were the only ones in the hotel except for a family from Germany. We explored the beach before we drove into the village for dinner. This is the taverna we ate at right on the water. Taverna is my favorite word in Greek mainly because with Greek letters it is spelled "TABEPNA" and I think its funny. It also means really good cheap food and free wine, which may also be a reason its my favorite Greek word.

The next day the sun came out, but it was still pretty windy and cold. A few brave souls decided to swim in the Aegean, myself included. Obviously. Why in the world would I miss out on what might be my only opportunity to swim in the Aegean sea? The water was so warm and once you got past where the "waves" broke the sand was soft. It was a great swim, it was only getting out that was the hard part. This is Jaime and I after our swim. We were the only girls to brave it, and we were pretty proud of ourselves. But you guys know me, even if the air and the water had been colder I still would have done it.


We got warmed up and hung around the hotel for a while before having lunch and heading back to Thessaloniki. Its too bad that the wind never died down, I know we all would have enjoyed sunbathing a bit more, but it was a great trip anyway!

I started classes yesterday, and most of my classes seem like they'll be really good. Because I only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday (YES!) I'm on campus from 11 am to 8pm. Its a long day, but its worth not having to get to campus every day of the week. My first class is an Anthropology/Sociology class focused on Gender, which I think will be very interesting. After that I have Greek, which clearly will probably be the most useful class that I'm taking. I'm already learning a lot of useful phrases, and I'm learning how to read pretty quickly too. But when I say read, I mean I can slowly sound out things that I see written, I still can't put meaning to it yet though. After Greek I have Ethics, which will probably be my favorite class. I have to take a "moral inquiry" class as a graduation requirement at Stonehill, and I'm so glad that I jumped through all those hoops for them to allow me to take it here instead. Greek students are extremely outspoken and don't care at all about what people think of them, so our discussions are uncensored and very real. On the first day of class we were given an ethical dilemma, and there were already arguments creeping through. I'm sure this class will be very interesting and thought-provoking. My last class is Econ...which i'm not all that excited about, but its a requirement at Stonehill and I think it will be easier here than at home. Classes here seem to be at just about the same difficulty level as the average class at Stonehill, which makes me very grateful to only be taking 4 classes. My professors all remind me a little of Sr. Castro, which is sort of a scary thought. English is their second language and they all seem like they might be a little bit crazy, but hopefully not nearly as crazy as Sr.

Up until this point I've been giving just a basic rundown of what I've been doing each day. Now I'll tell you more about the everyday observations I've made since I've been here. It may seem like I'm ranting and that some of these things bother me, but its just taking a little while to get used to some of the things here.
1. Everyone smokes. And not how people smoke in the states. I mean they SMOKE. In the hour or so we were on the bus with Stephano (the student that picked us all up from the airport) I could swear he smoked an entire pack. ON THE BUS. crazy. Every indoor place you walk into is smoky, which is why we are so grateful that nearly every place is an open-air cafe/bar so you can sit outside and get some fresh air. This has probably been the hardest thing to get used to, and I don't think I will ever get used to it. As college students, we come from a generation that knows how bad smoking is for you, and we're also used to the smoking bans in the states, so this is certainly an adjustment for most of us.
2. Stray Dogs and Cats. Everywhere. I don't know how all these animals ended up on the streets, but they're everywhere. Its really sad to see sometimes. I think its because when people can no longer afford to feed their animals they just let them loose in the city. By no means are these animals starving, there are countless places for them to find food, but its really sad that they don't have homes.
3. Stoop Sitting. Stoop Sitting is an extreme sport here in Thessaloniki, and I love it. People just gather in groups of varying size and sit. For hours. Sometimes they'll try to talk to us when we walk by, sometimes they'll try to imitate us, sometimes they'll say "bella" (which may or may not be the greek word for beautiful. I think its the only word they know that they think we'll understand), sometimes they'll say "I love you," which anywhere else would get really annoying but for some reason its just really funny here. If its a creepy guy saying it though we'll respond with "se agra po" which is "I love you" in Greek and then they get really confused and kind of ashamed, which is also really funny. I think the guy that owns the market on the corner sits on his stoop 20 hours a day with whatever friend has stopped by. We don't think he likes us very much, but why should he? He lives near a bunch of American college students who walk around in large groups at all hours of the day and night, laughing and talking in a foreign language. We don't blame him for not liking us, but we do give him a lot of business. In fact right now, there is a man walking down the street playing an accordian in hopes of receiving some spare change from the stoop sitters.
4. The toast man. His name is Nikos, and he is by far my favorite Greek person. Toast is basically a panini that you can put anything into, and its delicious. He also makes crepes, which before I came here I thought of as a French dessert. Crepes in Greece are a meal, anything you put into a regular sandwich you can put into a crepe. Anyway, Nikos' shop is right down the street and he is adorable. Ordering things has been our biggest challenge here (and most people must think we're idiots when we try to speak greek), but ordering from Nikos is an absolute joy. He knows basically no english, but is always willing to learn. And he tries to teach us Greek too. The other day Heather and I went down for a crepe and he had us try some cheese spread, it was a little spicy, so Heather taught him that word. We were there for a while, and we tried to chat with his as much as we could. He asked our names, and when we both said Heather, he laughed and I'm pretty sure he thought it was the greatest thing in the world, either that or he thought we didn't understand his question, we can't be sure. Last night we were walking by his shop coming back from the bus stop and we waved, and he got all excited and waved back. He is adorable and we love him, he always has a goofy smile on his face and is always so happy to help you.

Thats all for now!

Agios Demetrious Church

Here's my apartment building from the Old City walls. Its the building with the slanted red roof and the balconies! The lucky ducks on this side of the building have a fantastic view. Ours isn't nearly as nice, but we have bigger rooms. (No, Mom, you can't change rooms in Greece hahaha)

The view of Thessaloniki from the top. Our neighborhood is in the middle far left side of the photo

The Old City's walls

Joana, Allie, Me, and Heather at Vergina in front of King Phillip's undeground tomb

Aristotelus Square

The Arch of Galerius

First night out on the town. Joana, Heather, and Shira are posing under the arch of galerius

Me, Heather, Demetri and Dave at Dante

Kathryn (my roommate) with Angel, the bar's manager. He keeps insisting he's going to take us all to a concert. Apparently he's pretty famous in Thessaloniki, everyone knows of him.


The view of Thessaloniki from ACT's campus...so pretty!

Hope you enjoyed just a small sampling of the pictures I took this week. They take forever to load, but maybe the internet on campus is faster and I'll be able to post more tomorrow!

Kalispera!!!

Remember when we were younger, toys came in the bottom of the cereal box. Well I'm sitting here in Greece eating my Honey Nut Cheerios (yes they have them here!!!) and about 2 minutes ago I pulled out a little figurine of The Joker. It was a great blast from the past.

Anyway, we had a great weekend here in Thessaloniki. Friday night most of us decided to stay in and go to bed early because we had all been out every night. 10 minutes later when we found out other people were going out we were ready to go!!! Thank you, peer pressure. hahaha. So we walked down to the waterfront (which is really the #1 place to go) and tried a new bar. Demetri, one of the guys in our program is Greek and has friends and family that live here so we met up with a bunch of them and again tried to practice our Greek, which is never that successful. We didn't stay out too long, and some of us made it home the earliest we've been in all week.

Saturday night we decided to go to a club near the airport. In the summertime, because of noise restrictions within the city, all of the clubs have to move out to the airport. The first club we went to wouldn't let us in because they heard us speaking english. At the second club we kept our mouths shut and were eventually let in. Greeks don't dance here, and if they do, they don't do it well (stonehillers, this is NOTHING like our mixers). A bunch of the freshmen happened to be there so we had a little american corner going on for a while.

I honestly don't know how Greeks function on so little sleep. We didn't get home that night til 5 am, but we slept all day to make up for it. Greeks do this almost every single night and have jobs to go to in the morning. Thank goodness for the afternoon siesta!

Last night we decided that since we'd been eating Greek all week, we would go to Applebee's. And we ate dinner at more of an American time (8pm) so we REALLY looked like foreigners. We got back early and played some cards and went to be at a relatively decent hour.

Classes start today, but since I only have class on Tuesday and Thursday I had yet one more day of a four month long summer. I'm very excited to start classes and meet some Greek students.

Next Post:
- more on the Greek culture and Thessaloniki
-PICTURES!!!

Week 1 in Greece

I suppose its best to start from the very beginning. Since I've already been here a whole week, I'll just give a basic run-down of what I've been doing.

Saturday - My flight left Boston late in the evening. Northeastern's pre-freshman (students that were accepted for the spring semester were given the option of studying abroad in the fall) program at ACT was also leaving that night, so I was able to wait with them and meet a few people that I would see around the city of Thessaloniki. A friend from high school, Chuck, is actually in this program, so there is a little piece of home in Greece if I'm ever in need of it. It was a long overnight flight, and I didn't really sleep at all.

Sunday - Hung out in the Frankfurt Flughaven (be proud ricky, be proud) for a couple hours before boarding the plane. Once I got on the plane, I had doubts about my entire trip. I was easily the only American on this flight, and I'm pretty sure there were no other english speakers. It was 2 hours of me being seriously scared out of my mind at what I was about to do. I couldn't communicate with anyone and at that point I was seriously wishing I had chosen to go to Spain instead. However, all my fears were cast aside the minute I walked into the Thessaloniki airport from the plane. Enter Stephanos. He was holding a sign reading ACT and did the whole european double kiss thing. I must have looked at scared as I felt because he told me not to worry about anything. After a little baggage confusion and the quickest customs ("where you come from? ne go") experience ever, I met some other people from my program. Some people came with a group from their schools, but I was pleased to see that there were other people here on their own. We waited an hour or so for our bus (time is more of a suggestion here) and then were dropped of at our apartments. On our drive through the city were pleased/surprised to see some american staples, such as starbucks and mcdonalds, and even an IKEA. One of the apartment buildings, Alexandrias, is really far away from the other two and houses all of the freshmen and about 10 regular SA students. We kind of feel bad for them because its difficult for them to meet up with the rest of us, especially because we don't have our phones yet. When we got to our neighborhood Evangelistrias, we all piled out the bus and dragged our bags to the two other apartment buildings, which are only a block away from eachother. I live in Panepistimiou5. The buildings themselves look new with marble floors and and indoor and outdoor balconies. The rooms are small, about the size of a regular dorm room with a little extra space for a kitchen and bathroom. So I got settled and then a few of us headed over to the other building to meet some more people.

Monday - A day of exploring. One of the girls in the other apartment building is here for a 2nd semester and speaks fluent Greek, so she took a bunch of us around the city. We followed her around like little ducklings the majority of the day. Before coming here, I was told several times by people who've been here that many people speak english. This is not true. Very few people can speak some broken english. The only people that can really communicate in english are other college aged students, but it is still very difficult to understand eachother.

Thessaloniki is a modern city, but there are greek and roman ruins around nearly every corner. You'll be walking down the street and you'll see an arch or you'll see a part of the old city's walls, or there will be a football field sized area enclosed in a stone wall filled with ruins and roman forums. Everything is organized around the city's center. There are several squares a few blocks away from eachother filled with cafes and bars and gyro restaurants. The square closest to us is referred to as the student square because Aristotelus Univeristy is just down the street from our apartment. The actual center of the city Aristotelus Square is where the shopping is with all these designer stores mixed in with a few independent shops.

We walked around for a while and encountered the market. You can find anything you need in this market, clothing, towels, food, octopus, an entire pig, you know, anything. We are fortunate enough to have fruits and veggies, a bakery, a deli and several small markets right in our neighborhood, and the grocery store is only a few minutes away.

Later that night we decided to walk down to the waterfront (its a 5-20 minute walk that varies in time based on how many people you're with - i'm not sure why this is true but last night it was a 20 minute walk there but only took 5 minutes to get back). The waterfront is where the famous turkish White Tower is, which is the icon of the city. All along the waterfront are open-air bars and cool places to just relax. We went out way to early and sat down in a bar. Not too long after the NU freshmen walked into the very same bar. They were certainly taking advantage of the freedom of the college lifestyle, but it is not at all appropriate to be drunk in Greek culture, and it was blatantly obvious that they were American. We left pretty quickly because we didn't really want to be associated with them in that state.

Tuesday - My roommate finally arrived. Her name is Kathryn and she's really nice, we're getting along well. Her 21st birthday was Wednesday so we had a countdown and went to this place called Dante that evening and spent several hours getting to know eachother and trying to teach the bartenders some english. Funny thing - I've been thinking in Spanish since I got here. I guess its because other people are talking in a foreign language, I feel like i need to speak in a foreign language too, so they got some spanish lessons as well. We made friends with Christof the owner, Angel the manager and bartenders Socrates and Maximous, and promised them that we would be back. On the walk back we stopped for crepes and sat for an hour near one of the ruins and tried to chat with some other Greek people.

Wednesday - The first day of orientation. We finally saw ACT's campus. It is located in the outskirts of the city and is on top of one of the hills surrounding the city. ACT is part of Anatolia, where there is also and elementary school and a high school. There are only 2 buildings on the college campus, the library and the building where classes are held. But from campus there is a great view of the entire city. Wednesday night we all went back to Dante yet again. And when I say all, I mean all 40 of us walked down to the waterfront together and met up with some of the 60 freshman and the 10 other SA students from the far building. We were greeted at Dante with the double kiss and the bartenders remembered our names and the english that we taught them. We filled that bar very quickly and it was a lot of fun just wandering around and meeting everybody.

Thursday - The 2nd day of Orientation. We learned more about the Greek culture and some important phrases to know in Greek. We also got our class schedules. I only have class on tuesday and thursday!!! Its a great schedule because I can take ACTs free bus instead of using the public bus system and I have 4 day weekends to travel with. Thursday night we decided to have a traditional Greek night out. This entails going to a taverna for dinner. But dinner does not start until at least 10 pm. So we walked down to the big square where all the tavernas are and the hosts literally put their arms around you and guide you into their restaurant. They all want your business so if you act hesitant they will give you free wine. The host spoke a little english and told us "the wine is for me," we must of looked a little confused because he started laughing and said, " ohi the wine is from me." There were 11 of us girls there and we each ordered an appetizer and ate like the greeks, putting all the food in the middle of the table and sharing everything. Each dish we ordered was amazing and very inexpensive. We each paid 5 euro for the entire meal which is equivalent to $7/8. We tried to stay as long as possible because in greek culture it is rude to leave the table too soon. So we stayed and chatted and listened to the men playing the guitar around the tables and watching some other people dance. We stayed there until 1 am, but by greek customs it was a very short dinner. It was so much fun, and it was then that it really hit me that I'm in Greece.

Friday - We took a field trip to the modern village of Vergina, the burial place of King Phillip, Alexander the Great's father. The village was adorable and very much a tourist destination. On the way back to Thessaloniki we stopped at the very top of the city and saw the old city's walls and the view of the entire city. We even were able to find our own apartment building from up there. We also went into Agios Demitrios, a byzantine church down the street. Saint Demitrios is the Saint of Thessaloniki so this is the most important church in the city. Then we took advantage of the siesta time (2:30-5:30 pm) and after a quick dinner walked down to the waterfront for a drink in a new place.

I really love it here. I have never been so happy, challenged, confused, and excited all at one time. This city is beautiful and I'm so glad that I decided to come here. I'm loving every minute.

Our goals for the weekend are as follows:
1. Get enough sleep. Going to bed at 3 am and waking up by 8 for orientation is really taking a toll on our bodies. I don't know how the Greeks can do this every night.
2. Get settled enough to cook on our own. Even though you can get a meal for 1-4 euro, it is definitly time to cook for ourselves.
3. Go shopping. It is much colder here than anyone expected and I think its the beginning of the rainy season. We've been told that it is unseasonably cold and will warm up again but flip-flops just aren't cutting it. Greeks dress up for everything, so we all are planning on investing in a few nicer warmer things. Things here are very cheap. Even though the exchange rate isn't that great, the extra low prices more than make up for the difference.