Returning Home

Hello everyone,

It's been nearly a month since I returned to the States after spending four months in Greece. All flights went smoothly and luckily no luggage was lost. Surprisingly, I didn't get jet lag either. :)

I've heard that many students who study abroad have a few problems adjusting to American life/culture after being away for a few months. I think it can be difficult for people mostly because of the time given to that person to readjust. Let me explain: If I had studied in the fall semester that would have only given me a month to completely return to American culture and return to OWU to start classes once again but I studied in the spring semester so I have three months to readjust and wait to return to school. I think time is the greatest factor for readjusting.

Personally, I didn't really have problems re-assimilating to American life. At first, I wanted to say things in Greek and I was thinking in Metric but other than that, I didn't have any problems. (The hardest part for me is knowing that I have so much time until I have return to school. I can't wait to go back to OWU!)

If you've studied abroad or if you've spent an extended time in a foreign country and you have any advice for students returning from studying abroad, feel free to share them below please!

So, this is Erika (and Maerwynn) signing off. Have a wonderful and fantastic summer, everyone!

Trip to Northern Greece

Hey everyone! I'm back for another post. CYA had another five-day field trip, this time to northern Greece. It was loads of fun. I went to Delphi, Meteora, Thermopylae, Thessaloniki, and a few other places. I loved Delphi. It has to be one of the most amazing places on Earth. Here are some pictures of my favorite sites.

Here's a picture of the Temple of Pythian Apollo as seen from beneath it. This is the east section because the altar is directly in front of these pillars. And this is the eastern portion of the temple as seen from above. The western portion doesn't have any standing columns. The Pythia, who delivered the oracles, sat above a chasm with mysterious vapors on the western portion of the temple. However, no chasm has ever been discovered by archaeologists or geologists. (I know that the dates on these pictures aren't the same; that's because I also went to Delphi over spring break with my mom so I took a majority of my Delphi pictures then.)

This is the Great Meteoron Monaster at Meteora. Meteora has these huge stone pillars with monasteries perched on the top. This particularly monastery is still active; a few monks still live there despite that it's a huge tourist attraction. Since it's a monastery, women aren't supposed to be there. However, they do allowed women enter only if they are wearing skirts. I didn't bring a skirt so I had to wear a wraparound skirt that was provided. Today, there is a road and steps that lead to the monasteries but back in the day, people and supplies were pulled up with pulleys and rope baskets. I think that would be terrifying.

We stopped for lunch in a town in the mountains. After a quick lunch of a gyro and Coke, my friends and I went to see the waterfalls on the river that flows through the town. There were three or four waterfalls including a rather large one that I unfortunately coudn't get a picture of because you could only see it from the road and I didn't have enough time to go down there. I thought that it's just so beautiful looking, don't you?

I know that this is rather a cloudy picture but I gave up after about ten minutes because the clouds just weren't cooperating. This is Mt. Olympus. That's right, people. MT. OLYMPUS, home of the gods and divine gods. I think that's pretty awesome. I was told that Mt. Olympus is nearly always surrounded by clouds. I suppose that Zeus wants to keep him and the other gods hidden from prying mortal eyes.

I bet you know this one. Three guesses who this is. Yes, it's a Spartan. Yes, it's that guys who yelled, "This is Sparta!" Yup, that's right. It's King Leonidas of Sparta who led the legendary 300 against the Persians at Thermopylae. Let me tell you that Thermopylae is full of mosquitoes and smells like sulfur because there is a sulfur hot spring that runs through it. The Greek on the statue is, "Molon labe," or "Come get them," which is what he says to the Persians about their weapons. Below is the sunset at Thermopylae (taken from the bus).

Thessaloniki was really nice. It's must smaller than Athens but is the second largest city (it has about 500,000 people). Thessaloniki is rich in Roman history rather than ancient Greek history. I also saw Pella, which was the capitol of the Macedonian empire (you know, Alexander the Great?). I hope you enjoyed my quick rendition of trip to northern Greece!

Rhodes!

Γεία σας! (That means "hello you all" in modern Greek!)

So I've been traveling tons here while in Greece and finally I have time to tell you all about my weekend trip to Rhodes, one of the largest islands belonging to Greece. It's, like, the best Greek island ever! It was so amazing. The weather was great, the food was wonderful, and the people were nice. (It was lots of fun surprising the owners of shops and restaurants with my Greek, ha ha!)

This is the Medieval castle in the middle of Old Town inside Rhodes Town. (There's also New Town Rhodes, which is the modern town around it.) Rhodes was used as the final pit-stop before the Holy Land during the Crusades. Knights lived in the fortress and the town. The castle on the left is called the Palace of the Grand Masters. I just like the name. Below is the room that was used for the hospital inside the fortress where the knights lived. Isn't just huge!?

Of course, there were people on Rhodes before the knights. These are ruins from the Temple of Pythian Apollo are on the left side of the picture while the remains of the Temple of Artemis are on the right. I had a blast climbing through the remains of the Artemis temple. There weren't any ropes to keep me out so I went explore. It was loads of fun (of course Erika wasn't around with her camera to take any photos of me; she was off enjoying the view, which was amazing too). That's the view. You can see the sea.

I also went to Lindos, where there was a sanctuary to Athena. There are still parts of the temple left with sections of the original stoa standing. This is the sanctuary-turned-castle at the acropolis of Lindos, which is nearly two hours south of Rhodes Town (the capital of Rhodes island). Also you can see the white buildings below the acropolis. This is stereotypical of Greek islands. Here you can see the pretty water, too. It was so awesome but too cold to go in, at least for me.

I know this picture is a little hard to see but I didn't get to see this famous landmark until right before I fly back to Athens. This is one of the famous deer columns at the entrance to Mandraki Harbor, the main harbor of ancient Rhodes. As you know, the famous Colossus statue was in Rhodes. The two deer columns mark were this huge statue might have stood. This column has a stag on top; the other one has a doe at the top.

Even with all those knights around, I still managed to find some new friends on Rhodes. On the left is Rhodes and on the right is Helios. They agreed to come home with me to the States too.

Isn't that super awesome!?

I'll leave you with one more parting photo. Enjoy! I'll be back soon!

Trip to the Peloponnese

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't been on in a while - classes you know and I've been traveling quite a bit, including this five-day school trip to the Peloponnese region south of Athens with my study abroad program. It was amazing! I went to so many awesome places in five days. Here's a list of the places we went (including archaeological places): Corinth, Akrokorinth, Napflion, Epidarous, Mycenae, Sparta, Mystra, Methoni, Messene, Pylos, and Olympia. It was so great. I took 745 pictures and since I obviously can't upload then all, I've selected a few of my favorites for you. Enjoy!

This is the Corinth Canal. It enables ships to safely and quickly pass from the Ionian Sea on the west side of Greece to the Aegean Sea on the east side of the Greece. This is facing west. People actually bungee-jump off this bridge! Isn't that crazy?! The water is an amazing blue too. I'd hate to fall off the walkway were I was standing. It would be a long way down that's for sure.

This is the first gate entrance to Akrokorinth, where the town of Corinth was before its modern location at the bottom of this large hill. It's a large fortress that was used by the ancient Greeks, the modern Greeks, the Turks, and the French (maybe the English too but I don't recall). We drove up the side of the large hill but as far as I'm concerned if anyone could climb that hill with supplies and animals then they were welcome to the fortress. It sure would've been a hike. The walls go almost all the way around the top of the hill; there's a natural outcropping on part of the hill (you can see it on the right side of the picture) where there aren't any walls but the cliffs are hard to scale.

This is the world-famous Lions Gate at Mycenae. Of course, I had to take a picture of it. The stone blocks surrounding the gate and in the walls around Mycenae are absolutely enormous. Some of them weight many tons and are four to six feet high and wide. Crazy big. The ancient Greeks called these huge cyclopean blocks because they thought that cyclopes put them into place they were so big. The lions don't have any heads, and it's unknown of each of them had a head or if the two bodies shared one head. Supposed there was lion figure found at Mycenae or in the area of Mycenae that had a lion head with two bodies. Archaeologists aren't sure which option it is.

Napflion has the best gelato ever. Here's the sign for the gelato place. My advise: have gelato for dinner; it will definitely fill you up and it tastes great. Napflion is a medium-sized town about two hours south of Athens by bus. It's very nice and I'll make an effort to go back while in Greece. To the right, is the floating bastion. A bastion is a fortress where ammunition was stored. Today, it's just s castle where tourists can visit.

This is the bastion as Methoni (left). Methoni was by far my favorite place I visited. It was a fortress used in the Medieval times, I think. It was really windy the day we went but that was okay. The professors on the trip just turned all the students loose in the fortress and told us to go play (literally). They let us explore everything in there almost two hours. It was great being able to just run around and explore the buildings, rooms, and tunnels. Methoni was on the sea, as you can see by its bastion. I've took a picture of the causeway that you have to cross to get to the bastion. The water was rather turbulent that day. I got splashed on the causeway, and let me tell you, Mediterranean seawater tastes different than Atlantic seawater.

As we were driving to Olympia through the mountains, there were sheep blocking the road! It was crazy. I managed to get a quick picture before the bus scared them off. It was really funny. And you could hear the bells on the sheep too.

The final day of the trip we went to Olympia. This is just one of the many toppled columns from the Temple of Zeus. This is where one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World was - the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The statue was never found but the molds used to create the statues were found as was the probable workshop. The columns were pulled down by Christians traveling through Greece in order to topple (no pun intended) the "pagan" religion of the ancient Greeks. The archaeological museum at Olympia was really neat too with many sculptures from the Zeus temple and other temples and buildings in the Olympian complex.

As I was heading back to Athens, we passed the coastal city of Patras. This is a picture of one of the most famous bridges in Greece and one of the most revolutionary bridges in Europe: the Rio-Antirrio Bridge. As you can see, it's a cable bridge. It's firmly secured to land on both sides but it's not secured to the sea floor. The pylons are actually merely resting on the bottom to allow the bridge to move naturally with earthquakes.

That's all for now! If you have any questions about any particular places or would like a blog entry with pictures about a particular place, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige!

Clean Monday

Clean Monday is national Greek holiday. It marks the start of the Lent for the Greek Orthodox church. This holiday is celebrated by kite flying on Philopappos Hill, one of the many hills that surround Athens. This is picture of my friends attempting a kite. It was really difficult. We tried for about a hour but we never managed to get it far off the ground. Oh well.

There was a live Greek band there playing on the hill too. They were really good. They used traditional Greek instruments. We could hear the music from a really far distance away.

This the Pynx Hill where we tried to fly our kite. It's a smaller hill next to Philopappos Hill, which was really crowded. The Acropolis is on the right (obviously) and Lykabettus Hill is in the background. Lykabettus Hill the highest hill surrounding Athens.

These are deep fried dough balls covered in melted Nutella or chocolate (I'm not sure what it was, but it was amazing). This is would be the Greek equivalent of the funnel cake in an American fair. In fact, the whole atmosphere of Clean Monday is like a fair or a festival. There are street venders of popcorn, roasted corn, roasted nuts, drinks, souvlaki, and these fried dough balls. Venders also sell kites and balloons. There are also street entertains playing music. It was a wonderful day.

Marathon!

Hey people!

I went to Marathon on a school-sponsored trip. I had a great time even though it was overcast with rain and windy. Here are some of the pictures I took. Enjoy!

Here's the tomb at Marathon of the 192 Athenians killed at Marathon when they fought against the Persian invasion in 480 BCE. As you can see, it's a really large mound of earth. And since it's a tomb, you aren't allowed to walk on it of course. (One of the girls in my group asked why people weren't allowed to walk on it. Really?) Anyways, it was neat. It's located in a grove of olive trees. There's also a marble statue imitation of the original grave stone at the site. Here's what it looks like.

We also saw graves from the Middle Helladic Period. There were seven graves. They all had these nifty plastic windows so the people walking through wouldn't throw trash into them. One of the graves still had bones it it. Cool! There's a foundation of a tomb-like structure in the background.

After we saw the Middle Helladic graves, we saw the Archaeological

Museum of Marathon. Then we went to Ramnous, a small area near Marathon. These are the remains of Temple of Nemesis. There are two buildings placed next to each other that make up the Temple. It overlooks the acropolis of Ramnous and the Mediterranean Sea. The day was rather overcast so there aren't any fantastic pictures of the Mediterranean Sea or of the acropolis I can show you. Not cool.

After eating lunch near the Temple of Nemesis, we went to the beach. It sounds exciting, which it was, but it was really windy and rainy now so it was a little bit of a disappointment. There were kite surfers on the beach as you can see here. These guys were really dedicated because the water was definitely chilly and the wind was very strong.

Overall, it was a great trip to Marathon. You should definitely check it out!

Reporting Live from Athens!

Hey people!

It's been, like, eons since I've written anything. (Stupid faulty internet in IL over winter break). And now I'm pleased to report that I'll be reporting from Greece for the next few months while I'm hanging out with my human while she's studying over here. Anyways, the flights over were fine and I've been chilling out in the Mediterranean sun. Despite that it's the Mediterranean, however, it's been cold (relatively speaking) here. It's only in the 40s F some days, and it's rained a few times. Here are some pictures of fun things I've done while over here though.

Here's me looking at the map of where I live. I know that the pictures isn't the best, but I'll describe it. (This is as large as I could get it). Do you see the horseshoe shape? That the Athens Stadium, where the first modern Olympic Games were held, and it's completed made of white marble. It's a stone's throw across from the school. By the crease in the middle of the map, there's a street called Stassinou. That's where I live. It's directly south of the light blue square.

Since I'm in Athens, I have to practice my modern Greek. Here are the numbers in the textbook. I've discovered that modern Greek is definitely harder than ancient Greek. That's just what I think (and Erika definitely agrees).

I went on a weekend walking trip with Erika and one of her roommates to Olympian Park. It was only about a half hour walk away so nothing terrible. I'm sitting outside the wall on a large piece of marble. The columns beyond the wall are the tops of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. They are huge! It was amazing that's for sure.

That's all for now. I'll be posting again really soon now that I have a stable internet connection again. I'll have enough fun for everyone while over here, basking in the Mediterranean sun (and making sure that Erika continues to do all her homework). See ya!