myceane and olympia

quick note: two weeks ago i went to... epidurous (i've just been informed by helana) and we saw the "most acoustically perfect theater in the world". very cool. even better- i sang bohemian rhapsody in it along with 4 other girls. good memories.

Last weekend was spent on a hot smelly bus. why was it hot and smell? well, when you're dripping wet and the bus driver tries to simultaneously warm you up and clear the fog you get a lot of sweating people, drying clothes, and humid environment. but it was sooooooooooooooooo much fun!

our first stop in our last weekend excursions was this coll small town with lots of history (don't ask me about any of it- i wasn't feeling well so i slept during the enire tour of the town). in the morning we left the town and we stopped at his venentian fortification and as we were driving up to it the rain, which had been drizzeling for the majority of the day, really started to come down with thunder rolling in over the mountain and lightning illuminating the sky. way cool. we actually had to cut our time short there and make a made dash for the bus. after driving for a few hours we drove through this badass little town that was built into the side of a mountain. it was so pretty i wish we could have stoppped.

About another hour after that we finally arrived at Myceane. It was really cool to be able to run around the ruins of a place that i've read about since i understood what ancient greek was. it was really amazing to just run up to the gate in the rain and stare up at the lion gates that have dominated such a huge part of my imagination of this place. there wqas this really collcistern that we all clambered into when the rain really started to pour. i along with the majority of the group decided to climb all the way down it. problem: it was comepletely pitch black. good thing for Nicola's flashlight. afterwards we made our way back through the storm to the museum and the treasury of atreus. treasury (well, tomb in reality just called treasury b/c of all the gold found in it)- very cool. museum- not so much.

the next day dawned just about the same as the day before so we spent our time in olympia sopping wet. but we all had good fun. some ran in the stadium and we stood in the tmeple of zeus.

i realize i need to put pictures but don't expect any until after the semester is over. i finished 1.5 out of 5 papers. *sigh* it never ends. also- thanksgivng/christmas update coming soon....

Cretan Travels - free travel part II

I forgot to mention one part of my travels in turkey- topkapi palace. It used to be the sultan’s palace. It was amazing. There was gold and engravings and extravagance everywhere we looked. There were two treasuries with rubies and emeralds the size of a fist, a weapons’ room, and a kitchen with pots big enough to act as a bath tub.

On the morning of the 30^th we got up really early (6ish) to catch a taxi so we could take the ferry to some nothing town to catch the bus to Ayvalik so we could take a ferry to Mytillini so we could take a cab to Hotel Votsala where we’d been living on Lesvos. We spent two days on Lesvos and left the afternoon of our second day. We got onto this tiny plane and spent about an hour flying to Heraklion in Crete. Poor Mel, she hates flying and none of us were sitting next to each other so she couldn’t hold anyone’s hand easily, however I was sitting in front of her so I stuck my hand back there so she could hold it during take off and landing.

We spent our first day on Crete just wandering around the central square looking at shops. Out first dinner was really good. We just a bunch of appetizers and split them between the four of us. Then the owner gave us a little small piece of cake and some raki which is like Turkish ouzo but sweeter. Our second day in Crete, we visited the Minoan palace of Knossos. It was amazing but very hot. We did, however, get in for free because of our Demikes cards that say we’re Greek students. Afterwards we caught a bus to the “largest aquarium in the east Aegean sea”. It was really cool. They had sharks, sting rays, and tons of fish. I think my favorite part was the tank of just jellyfish because they were all lit up. I’ll put pictures up when I have the time. On our third day, Mel left in the morning and then the three of us split up. Clariece and Chris left to go wander and left me to my own devices. It was okay. I went shopping and found Dad and Jeff Christmas presents. I also spent a couple hours in an internet café just surfing around and even watched a few episodes of some TV shows. I called a few friends and my parents. It was nice to just sit down and talk to some people from home. I also read quite a bit of one of my psych books- the one about the paranormal research. We met up later that night to eat and then take a cab to the airport. Then we flew on this smallish plane and got back to Athens within 45 minutes. I then took a cab back to my apartment while Chris and Clariece took the subway because they had fewer bags. it was nice to spend a night back in my own bed.

ancient byzantium: free travel part I

okay- first thing's first: i know that everyone has been having problems commenting on my blog, i have no idea what's wrong. i'm doing everything right and nothing works, so here's what i'll do: down where you normally click to comment there's an envelope button if you press that you can send me an email just as though you were commenting without the hassle of running around trying to remember what you wanted to say to me. sorry for the inconvience but it's the best i can do. ONTO TURKEY!!!

turkey was amazing!

after being set free for our "free" travel, Clariece, Chris and myself (along with some other LCers including Carolyn) got on a plane at the Izmir airport and flew for 45 minutes to Istanbul. Once there we grabed a bus and directed it to our hostel. There were other people on the bus who weren't going to our hostel but the driver just dropped us off at our respective destinations.

as we drove into the city the walls of constaninople engulfed us. it was awe inspiriing to see those huge walls still standing after centuries of battle and to know that thousand died trying to breach those walls, slaughtered by the unstopable Byzantine/Roman catafrax (cavalry). the catafrax was the descimating force of the byzantine army. when the first (of three) walls were breached, the Byzantines fell behind the second. it was here, between the 1st and 2nd walls, in a grand total of approxamtely 20yrds that the catafrax caught their enemies between the walls and slaughtered them all. Byzantine history rocks! w00t!

The rest of the LC crew was staying either in the same hostle as us or veryclose to us. We stayed at the Orient Hostel- one of the best and yet still very cheap. This hostel was located approxamately a 5 mintue walk from Ayia Sofia, the Blue mosque and the bacillica cistern and then 15 minute walk to the Grand Bazaar.

Our first two days were spent in relative bliss. We hung around our hostel and surrounding areas, waiting for Melanie (our friend who's abroad in France) to get there. We spent a lot of time just wandering the back street were tourists were few and far between. there we oftne found the best deals and the best food.

When Mel finally arrived we spent the day being tourists. We saw the Ayia Sofia, Blue Mosque, bacillica cistern and grand bazaar in the span of two days. The bacillia cistern was my favorite, all nice and cool. It was really an amazing piece of roman architecture. the cistern was originally design to hold all the water that was necessary to supply Constantinople throughout a long seige or through everyday life. the interesting thing about the cistern were these two carved heads of medusa. one was completely upside down and the other was parallel to the floor. medusa heads were oringally used to ward off enemies/robbers/people who mean you harm. however, these medusa heads would have been under thousands of gallons of water where no one could see or get to... so, what's their significance? no one knows.

the hagia sofia (meaning St. Sofia) was quite a sight to behold. originally, the agia sofia was a church built by the byzantine emperor Justinian who married "Wonder Bitch" (or so she was dubbed by Prof. John Karavas.... the hot one.) her real name is Theodora and she was the true power behind his reign. words cannot describe this amazing place. it's huge and vast and is truely a wonder. go visit turkey. now. just go.

the blue mosque, while beautiful and spiritual signifcance, failed to caputre my interest. don't get me wrong it's beautiful and if you leave istanbul without seeing it you'll be an idiot, however this was not the shining moment of glory on the trip.

two full days were spent at the grand bazaar. this place is packed with people all the time, a writhing mass, all pushing and calling and cajolling. it's a headache but amazing. the vendors try to get your attention any way you can. "excuse me, where are you from? you're so beautiful." "charlies angels." "let me help you spen your money." "we've been waiting for you." are just a few of the many examples. i bought the majority of my christmas present while i was here, withdrawing over 300YTL (new turkish lira) to buy all of them, so you better like them. a few people will recieve gifts from athens/greece instead. don't hate me!

pictures and a post with the rest of trip will be forthcoming. whenever i'm not busy writing one of my four papers or practicing my lines for the play. (more on this later.)

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!