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.