Playing Catch-Up: A Week in Review

Today I’m going to attempt to do the impossible, catch up on my blog.  (An eerie silence falls over all the blog followers.)  Yes, even though it is over one week after the last day I wrote about in the previous blog post I shall catch up, mainly because nothing of great touring importance happened, but maybe you’ll still be interested in following my life here. 

Sunday- We woke up whenever we wanted to (Lazy Sunday wake up in the late afternoon call Parnell just to see how he’s doin’…..Anybody?  Ok, anyways).  We left for church at 3:30 to give us a while to walk around and explore Glyfada.  Glyfada is like a suburb of Athens that is really nice.  Our church meets in the Kong Palace Hotel, the place that HUG used to live in during the early days.  Church meets at 6, but it takes about 30 minutes to get there and then we were just going to chill until church.  There is a Starbucks a block behind the church that most of us went to.  At church we are the majority.  There were about 20 others.  This is an English speaking service.  It’s somewhat of a church plant, for lack of a better word, of the church in downtown Athens.  The same preacher, Dino, preaches.  He is also the boss of Aristotle Travel, the travel agency we use here at HUG. 

Looking down on Porto Rafti from the mountain.
You can see the HUG building about in the dead middle.

Monday was the first day of class.  After class, we took a group of kids to the Koropi metro because they wanted to go into Athens.  Dr. James drove the large passenger van and I followed with the small blue sedan behind him.  After we dropped those off at the metro station the other 5 students continued with Dr. James and I on to the Greek equivalent of Best Buy.  It was a fun little adventure, seeing where Greeks buy their electronics.  Then we went to the “Famous Brands” factory outlet mall.  It’s not like an outlet mall you would think of in America.  It was a huge building, like a Wal-Mart or Sam’s, that had little half rooms, or dividing walls, where different stores had their own room.  We saw stores such as Nike, The North Face, Tommy Hilfiger, New Balance and many, many others. 

Then I drove back to Porto Rafti with the students in my car.  We drove all around Porto Rafti.  We took a right at the “Y” and went all the way to the paid beach and up the mountain to look back on Porto Rafti.  Then we went back to the “Y” and went to the left and drove a while, eventually up a mountain to a fort.  We found out later that the fort is a nice restaurant.  Then before coming back to the Artemis we stopped for ice cream. 

The road to the right of the "Y."  Far left is the parking for the
private beach.

The first group of the semester to hike the mountain.

Tuesday- I finally led a group of students on a hike up the mountain across the street.  Even though it had rained nearly everyday since we’ve been here, we decided to go anyways and hope the mountain wasn’t too slippery.  It was only slippery in a few places.  
It took an hour from the front door to get to the top.  Coming day was pretty rough.  It was very thorny!  It was thorny on the way up too, of course.  However, I guess we came down a different way because it was even worse on the trip down.  My right arm was scratched to shreds.  I turned around to see those behind me and slipped into a huge thorn bush.  That wasn’t the funnest fall I’ve ever taken.  However, one of the students was laughing at my fall and not 30 seconds later she fell into it herself.  I told her that I took out most of the bush for her so she wouldn’t have so much pain.  It is my job to look after the student after all. 

That night, Slagle and I had dinner with the James, Mrs. Ragsdale and Dr. Hopper.  It was a great night to catch up and visit.

The Golden Mask of Agamemnon.

Wednesday was just a typical class day.  
Nothing super special. 

Thursday we took the group to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.  Once again, we had our tour guide from Saturday, the Ancient Athens tour, James.  He walked us through the museum.  I especially loved seeing the Golden Mask of Agamemnon, the Statue of Zeus and the actual arrowheads from the battle of Thermopylae again for a third time.  That was Thursday.

Friday was just another day, until…The Power went out.  The James left, taking a group of students to the outlet mall again and left me in charge, with the Thompsons (the visiting professor) here too.  The power went out and Meitek, our handy man, had to show me where all the fuses were and how to open the back gate into the campus manually because he was about to leave.  I walked out to the gym only to find that its alarm was going off.  I had to call Meitek on his phone to figure out how to turn it off.  After about an hour and a half in the dark, the electricity came back.

Famous Statue of Zeus.  Possibly
Poseidon, but most think it's Zeus.

Saturday was nothing noteworthy; except that Matt Gulley came to tell us about the Soup Kitchen work that we can help with every Monday.  That night we all got to go out and eat on our own.  I went with a group to To Misos, the place that Matt Parks and Justin Jones thought was run by the Greek mafia.  It wasn’t as good as Dimitris (the one just down the street) but it was good to try a different taverna (yes, that is taverna, not tavern).  

Sunday we chilled and were able to sleep in.  Breakfast crew made pancakes, and they were awesome.  I had five.  Church was once again that night in Glyfada. 

Now I am caught up with this week.  Monday was interesting since it was this groups first time at the soup kitchen in Athens.  I will post about that soon.