turkish delights

hi all! *waves furiously*

so after my last post of disappointments and madness, we finally got to turkey!!!! but not after finally making sure that we could in fact get back into Greece. turns out that so long as you're going to Turkey you can buy a multiple entry pass valid for 90 days. Our last days at Hotel Votsala were amazing and on our last night we prepared farewell presents to the staff of Votsala, as well as out teacher Sofia, and Iannis our guide/hotel owner. My contribution for the thank you ceremony was a slide show of all the fun things we did on Lesvos. Everyone loved it. the beauty of creating the slide show is that I had the final say, needless to say there are only a certain number of pictures of me in it.

Iannis and Sofia decided, along with Janette (the bar tender from votsala) and Demetri (Iannis' friend) to come along with us. we took the 8:30AM ferry to Ayvilik, Turkey and then drove to Assos. From Assos we visited Troy as well as the local ruins of Assos, which are mostly remnants of Byzantine (i.e. late Roman) and not Greek but they were amazing non the less. Even more amazing is the way the Turkish government treats the ruins in comparison to the American and Greek governments. As you can see from the picture below, the Turkish government just lets us run rampant in the ruins. This was the remains of a temple, I believe dedicated to Athena. We climbed all over it. It was so refreshing to actually be able to walk among these beautiful ruins and feel the power that they convey still today. There was also an acropolis with a mosque on it where we watched a sunset, here's a picture of me in front of the sunset on top of the acropolis in Assos below and to the right.
We were staying in this beautiful little hotel with amazing food and atmosphere. On our second day we went to Troy and then on our second day we went to Pergamon. Both were amazing. Below are pictures from Troy. Carolyn as Achilles kicking mine, aka Hector's, butt and she stands victorious over my dead body. The one to the left is a picture of Hilary and Nate Kugler as well as Chris, Clariece and Rianna in a model Trojan horse. Troy was amazing. Almost all ruins were buried and then excavated downwards and there are even more ruins underneath. The coolest part was that there were both Greek and Roman walls right next to each other. So Clariece and Rianna geeked out over the Greek side, and I geeked out over both the Greek and Roman walls. We even saw the place where the legendary battle probably took place.

Today we went to Ephesus which was amazing. Not only did we get to really get into the ruins, but the ruins that are left there are amazing an d very intact. There will be pictures up tomorrow because my camera died while we were there.

Tonight was awesome. I went out with Rianna, Helana, Gussi, David, Amanda, and Carolyn to this amazing hookah bar and hung out with the people from the hotel Votsala on Lesvos who decided to join us in Turkey. We spent about 4 hours there, just drinking, smoking, talking, laughing, dancing, and talking with the owner. It's been the best night I've had in a long time.

So, I'll end this on a high note, with very high expectations of my free travel to Istanbul and a good long night of partying under my belt.

a week of trials

I’ve been making plans for my free travel week for over a month. The first time Clariece, Chris and I made plans we had planned to meet Mel, who is in France for her semester abroad, in Istanbul and then travel to Bucharest and then Budapest. However, we got the smack down on that idea by saying that the free travel was restricted to Greece and Turkey, which is contradictory to the definition of free travel in itself. So after we lost that battle we decided that instead we would travel around Turkey and then go spend a few days in Crete

However, this week when we were going to Turkey for a field trip the immigration officer told us that apparently we could not get back in. Why? Because student visas are restricted to one entry, which was used when we first entered the country. Stupid, hun? So, Professor Kugler has been calling the Greek Embassy, American Embassy, Greek immigration police, and the Greek Consulate trying to get us an exception to the rule because this has never been a problem for students from CYA in the past, but since our group is going together and is so big it would be a blatant violation of the law. So, basically if we were in small groups we could get in and out of the country with ease. So why can’t we still go to Turkey, have our free travel and then sneak back into Greece? Because the school won’t let us obviously violate the laws. MOTHERFUCKERS. Ahem. Sorry about that. So instead, Professor Kugler is trying one more time and then we’re going to have to re-plan our entire trip, again, and maybe see if we can go to Italy or northern Greece for our class field trip. We’ll know tomorrow.

In other news, it’s very cold here however with the cold, as long as it’s not raining, it’s been amazingly clear. We can see Ayvalik (the closest port town in Turkey)! How cool is that.

Last Thursday when we tried to go to Turkey, I woke up and couldn’t find my wallet. I knew that it couldn’t have been stolen because I’m very anal about shit like this but that OI had probably left it somewhere and then not able to find it again. So, I was rather relieved that we didn’t go to Turkey because I would have had no money to spend anyways. Some people then decided to spend the day in Mytillini but I went back to the hotel and had a hot breakfast and then recruited my roommate into helping me search for my wallet. She found it in two minutes in my coat pocket which I had worn all the time a few days ago because I was sick, including when I used my debit card to purchase plane tickets a few nights ago. So that was a lot of fuss about nothing.

I feel like a lot of this trip has been a view as to what not to do on an overseas trip. What with all the promises of trips, feeling misled often, and feeling cheated I’m surprised that I’m enjoying myself as much as I am… and I am honestly.

Chris and Clariece have started dating and they’re very clingy, so I’ve been hanging out with Rianna and Carolyn more and talking to Sam, Helana, David, Emma and Francis which has been a lot of fun. It’s nice to feel separate from the clique, even if the clique consists of my closest friends.

photos

pictures of the weekend excursions

the going ons

So the past two weeks here, everyone has been going to archaeological sites. The first week and a half I was in Mytillini (the big port town) working at different restoration sites as well as a "rescue site". This is a picture of Gussi, McKenzie, and Wendy (the three other members of my group) at the pottery restoration site. We got to put together a vase. We worked here for the first two days of our excursions. Day one was really boring because they had no idea as to what to have us do, so we spent five hours washing pottery fragments. The next two days were spent in the metal restoration workshop. This was really interesting on the first day because we got to clean metal objects with a scalpel. However, when we found out that those items were still going to be worked on on day two, that meant day two was infinitely boring. The days at the rescue site were the days I was sick, and it's too bed because I heard that that one was the most fun out of the workshops.

Last Tuesday was Wendy's 22nd birthday, so we threw here a Lesbian bash. hehehe. We went to downtown Mytillini to this bar called the Monkey (it's funny b/c a famous Cycladic wall painting has a picture of a blue monkey). The bar was fun and played a lot of American music. We all went and had a bunch of drinks and hung out. As the night wore on we knew that we were never going to be able to stay awake until 3AM when the dance club opened so we turned the bar into a mock dance club. I think the locals were amused and even a few of them joined our dancing in the middle of the bar.

(Pictures from left to right: Wendy surrounded by most of the guys on the trip; Clariece and her "tower 'o shots; Carolyn the "cake eater")















The weekend was amazing. Sophia, our professor for Modern Aegean Culture, took us on a roaming bus tour of the island. On Saturday we went to a monastery, an old mansion, another monastery overlooking a village, this really cool market street and then we stopped at this church with a famous icon which legend says the last surviving monk of a pirate raid built using only the bloodied sand of his fallen brothers. Apparently, sometime the face is smiling other times it's frowning, and its face can also be either brown or red. however, at the time, there was a wedding procession heading towards the church so we didn't stay long. Pictures will be forthcoming.

Sunday was spent almost entirely at this amazing ranch. Everyone cooked lunch, with different groups preparing a different dish. We made souvlaki, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, potatoes, fresh bread, tsatsiki, greek salad and then Sophia brought us baklava for desert. While waiting for lunch to cook, we took off for the nearby town and toured the local church. After lunch, there was a dance instructor who taught us many traditional greek dances. My favorite was the on that local pirates danced.

that's all for now. and no complaining that I don't update!