a week without internet leads to a really long post

eight hours.

That's how long our layover was in Frankfurt, Germany. It was 5:00 in the morning local time when we arrived, but to us, it was 11pm. Luckily, I met some Northeastern students at the airport, and 11 of us met up after the plane landed. We hung out for a bit, went to the airport supermarket, and spent half and hour trying to figure out how to get into the city. I found that I have never felt as incompetent as I do in a foreign city. Simple things become so hard!

We finally made it into the city...and promptly ordered 11 beers. It was 9:30 in the morning, and we were in this tiny bar that is the size of a large bathroom. Let me preface this part by saying that what happened next is one of those moments that you simply had to be at to really appreciate. Being in a foreign city, coupled with the time difference, jet lag, and an old drunk German man turned out to be one of the craziest, most random times I've ever had. We listened to the Backstreet Boys while an old drunk man named Thomas tried getting us to dance with him. Meanwhile, his lady friend slid off the barstool and passed out, leaving people who enter the bar (yes, at 9:30 in the morning!) to walk over her. Our bartender was this warm, middle-aged woman who kept yelling "No, Thomas! No!" every time he got too close. It was so surreal, but SO fun.

"Welcome to Frankfurt!"

balconies. lots and lots of balconies.

Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece, and has a population of 1 million people. Our apartment is located on Alexandrias Street, and is further away from the other two apartments that study abroad students are staying in. Most of the people I met on the plane are in the same building as me, except for a few who are in the other building. Driving through the city at night, I was reminded of the drive from the airport to the resort in Puerto Rico, and also Montreal. I don't think it was the architecture or anything, but more so the fact that everything looked foreign to me, especially the billboards, which of course, were in Greek. There are no skyscrapers, just buildings. They don't reach very high. For example, my building has 8 floors. I think only a few go past ten. Also, these buildings are apartment buildings, mostly. But whether apartments or businesses, each building, and I mean EACH building has one thing in common...balconies. There are balconies everywhere. There are balconies on my building. Every apartment has one. I think it's wonderful, it's like a glimpse into each person's world, looking at their balcony, and seeing how they decorate it, if they have plants or whatnot.

"Sunshine on a Cloudy Day"

The city has a couple of old buildings, mostly churches; and ruins. The entire city was surrounded by a large wall; the study abroad office took us on a city tour today and we saw the north part of it. Everything there dated back to the years before the common era (or before Christ). So the modern city was just built around these monuments, leaving everything intact. In around 1917 there was a huge fire that wiped out most of the city, so the architecture isn't extremely old.

Our first full day here we explored the city... we walked toward the water and then along the waterfront. It's crazy how spontaneous we all are. We had a map but we weren't looking at it on every block. We just wanted to explore and we knew we wanted to see the waterfront so we picked a direction and started walking. There's a large area along the water, and no fences or anything separating the walking area and the water. The White Tower is the icon of Thessaloniki. It is to this city what Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower are to London and Paris. It used to be a jail, and it's not white anymore, but once you get past it you are in the "old" city, basically where the city was before it expanded into what it is today. We saw the statue of Alexander the Great, the Arch of Galerius, and the Rotunda.


poso kani?

Thankfully, I bought a Greek phrasebook before we left. I don't know what I would've done without it! Greeks here are incredibly hospitable, but they definitely won't help you if you act like a spoiled American and expect them to speak English. Most of them do, but some of them don't. I've found that once you even try to speak Greek to them, even if you butcher it, they are more likely to help you out. But if you walk into a store and start speaking English, they are completely offended, which I would be too if I were them.

So whenever I walk into a store, I say yiasas [Hello], and my most used phrase, especially when we needed to get things like groceries, phone cards, etc., is poso kani [how much?]. The other day I needed to get a sim card for my phone, and this old man in the store knew absolutely NO English, but I told him, Thelo... and pointed at my sim card, and he just smiled at me ("look at this non-greek trying to speak Greek.. how cute") and spent a good half hour helping me and some other girls, even activating our phones for us, and calling his wife to translate when it became really necessary.

orienting.

Orientation was a three-day affair, beginning on Wednesday. Our bus picked us up from the apartment at 9:30am, and it was a quick 15-minute drive to the campus. The American College of Thessaloniki is part of Anatolia, which also includes an elementary school and high school. The university part of campus is pretty small, but the entire campus is a decent size; and I think the students from different grades can mostly interact with each other. But all of my classes are in the same building, so it will feel a little different, and more like high school.

So on Wednesday and Thursday we had basic orientation information: stuff about Greece, payment issues, potential programs, clubs, field trips... we were also fed, very well. I'm a pretty big fan of Greek food, especially chicken slvatkia (sp?), and I love how everything is served in courses and one meal turns into this big affair. There are about 90 students in total from the US studying abroad, most from New England, some from the Mid-west. They had some programs organized for us, including a Greek dancing lesson, and a Greek night out.


Friday (today) we had a day trip to Vergina and a city tour. Vergina is a town that's about a hour away from Thessaloniki, and is where King Phillip (father of Alexander the Great) is buried. It's really unassuming; you walk toward this tiny hill and there's a small door that leads you inside...once you're inside you realize you're in this museum that was built around the different tombs found there. It was really interesting learning about what clues led archaeologists to believe it was King Phillip's tomb, and there was a fresco on one of the tomb walls depicting one of my favorite Greek stories: the story of the goddess Demeter, and Hades' kidnapping of her daughter Persephone.

One of the tombs buried here was a very plain one that included a woman and her baby. I don't know why, but this story really affected me, because I wondered what had killed them. Had she died in childbirth, the baby with her? Were they in an accident? The most dramatized story that my imagination jumped on was that maybe she was in such grief over her child's death, that she couldn't live either. I know that if I lost a baby I would feel like I didn't want to live. I also wondered why her tomb was so close to that of King Phillip. She must not have been a commoner if their tombs were so close together. I wonder what her connection to him was? She did not have any of the clues or markings that King Phillip's tomb had... so if she were a commoner she must have been very special, in some way or another. As you can tell I like to speculate a lot...

"View of the city"

"At the City Walls"

Classes begin on Monday. I have this weekend to settle in before that. I am actually looking forward to classes, because I am taking mostly Greek culture classes. I can't wait to learn more Greek (we had a Survival Greek mini-class at orientation - I can read some Greek words now!), meet the other students at ACT, and have an organized schedule. At this moment it feels like vacation, which I know this isn't. I want to feel like I live here, and not that I'm visiting.