Kalimera!

That is Greek for "good morning" :).

I am now settled in Greece until mid-October!  It is a weird feeling to think that I will be here for close to two months.  My initial feelings when I got here were those of overwhelm...this is a big city!  When you are used to living in Sioux Falls, SD and little St. Joe, MN throughout the year, this is quite the adjustment! But as the week as gone along, I'm reaaaally starting to enjoy it.  I'm in an apartment on the 2nd floor with 4 other girls, all of which are wonderful people.  Our apartments and school is right next to the old Olympic Stadium, which is very cool.  After doing a celebration dance for moving my luggage for the last time for awhile, I unpacked all of my stuff and have been experiencing orientation all week.

The college we are attending here is called College Year in Athens (CYA) or Dikemes as the Greeks know it.  All of the students here are study abroad students.  There is one other group here with a lot of students like ours, but otherwise there are students here from all over the country.  For example, on the bus from the airport to our apartments, we met a student from California.  All of these other students will be here all fall, so we don't have to go to everything within the orientation.  Our schedule keeps changing all of the time too, due to hurricane Irene preventing other students from getting here.  A lot of it is just listening to the administrators talk about different bits of information.  They all seem really great, very Greek, but they all speak English well and are very, very helpful.  I have a couple favorite events that have taken place this week as a part of orientation.  First, we went to a taverna for dinner as a group.  They split us into three tables, and all of us had an instructor from one of our classes at our table.  At my table, we had our Literature and Art History Professor.  I'm not taking Literature, but I will have have her for Art History.  She was very quirky and interesting.  She used to study at Berkley, came over to Greece for a year of study, and never went back to the US!  It was nice having her at our table to explain the different dishes they brought out.  They brought out bread and olives, and a bunch of dishes served like appetizers for us to pass around and try.  I can't remember the names of them, but there were things like tomato balls, spiced pork, and eggplants.  It was alright, I enjoyed trying so many different things even though some of them I didn't like.  They also brought us a dessert which was covered in honey and nuts - not too bad!  The style of the dinner is what was my favorite...it was very sociable.  I loved sharing and passing so many dishes with people, and we were there for pretty much three hours talking.  My other favorite event of orientation was a reception we had last night.  They had a Greek couple do some dancing for us, and they had us get in a big circle and dance too.  The dance was just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding style, no joke!  Tonight we have a dinner at the President of our college's house and gardens, which sounds pretty awesome!

We have also done a lot of exploring and learning.  I have had one class so far, which was Language and Culture.  Man oh man...we have a lot to learn this semester!  We started learning the Greek alphabet, and it is very hard!  It's different than any other language I've ever been around.  I'm excited to learn, but our first lesson was very overwhelming, and we had a lot of information thrown at us at once.  I'm so excited to keep learning though, and so next week we will have classes in full swing.  Oh yeah, and we don't ever have class on Friday.  That's pretty nice I guess :).

One night, the girls in my apartment and the guys from down the hall made a pasta dinner.  It was very good, and fun to make our own food like that.  It is good practice for the rest of this school year, living in apartments.  After dinner, we walked up to the Acropolis, which is up on a hill and is all lit up at night.  There are lots and lots of stray animals here - cats and dogs all over the place!  I love dogs, so it is so fun having them around, even though you aren't supposed to pet them.  When we were walking back from the Acropolis, a dog started following us.  He walked with us all the way back to our apartment, which was like a 15 minute walk and went across some busy streets!  We named him Skittles.  It was amazing that he followed us all the way home.  We felt very safe, because if anyone approaches dogs on the streets, they will bark like crazy at you.

Last night, we were going to go to an outdoor movie.  When we got there, a few of us noticed there was going to be a movie showing next week that we'd rather watch, so we decided to wait and walk around the area instead.  It was a beautiful area, lots of restaurants and shops.  The best part was that we had conversations with so many Greeks.  The people here are SO nice and friendly.  They truly care about where you are from and learning more about you.  My friend Megan would ask them how to say things in Greek too, so they were very willing to help us.  They really like it when you try to speak Greek - even if you kind of make a fool of yourself sometimes :).  But really, the Greeks are loud and in your face, but they love to talk to you and after you talk to them they say, "We are friends now."  We talked to some restaurant owners too who told us about great deals they would give us if we came back.  It was so fun learning about these people and really getting immersed in the culture.  We are looking forward to going back to that place and talking with the people more.

Things here are really getting underway, and next week with classes I'm sure we will get a routine established.  This weekend, we are taking a day trip to Sounio to hang out at the beach, have dinner, and watch the sunset.  We have a lot of trips like this planned as a group and through school for the weekends, and with classes during the week, I'm afraid that time is going to fly as usual!  The Greek life: so far, so good!

Peace and Blessings,
Laura