Soup Kitchens, Bon Fires and Fashion Shows...What a Week

Alas, it feels great to be writing about what just happened in the past few days and not from what happened over a week ago.  Monday was our first chance to help out with the soup kitchen.  Dr. James drove 8 students and myself into downtown Athens via the big white passenger van (more on why I wasn’t driving the van in a minute.)

We left the Artemis about 5 pm and it took us an hour an half to get to the soup kitchen in downtown Athens.  The reason it took so long was because the metro was on strike that day so everyone had to drive.  Traffic was crazy!  I was in charge of navigating, via Dr. James’ iPad. 

We made it to the soup kitchen, which was on the 8^th floor of the building, at about 6:35.  We sat up there until about 7:30, once the preaching finished, and then began to serve the soup.  Let me step aside to explain.  The 8^th floor overlooks the 7^th floor.  The 7^th floor is a large room with rows of tables and a small stage at one end, like you would see at an elementary school or something. 

I went down to the 7^th floor to serve all the round tables that hugged the two perpendicular walls.  The longer of the two walls had huge windows that looked out onto…wait for it…the Acropolis, which was all lit up.  It was an amazing site!  It truly looked like a picture.  After my group served our tables we went back up to the 8^th floor to begin washing the bowls.  We had to do this because another group was coming in as soon as the first group finished eating.  So, all in all, we washed every dish, some multiple times.  At the end of the night we found out that we served about 400 people, which is more than they’ve had in the past year.  Before we left, we went up to the roof, the floor just above us to get a nice look at nighttime Athens, especially of the Acropolis. 

Afterwards, about 9, we meandered our way through the windy pedestrian streets of the Plaka to make our way to Sabbas, many a HUG students favorite gyro place.  It was astounding how empty the Plaka was.  What was even more astounding was the view we had once again of the lit-up Acropolis.  As we looked up the narrow streets we could see the well-lit Acropolis, a very cool excursion all around. 

Tuesday was an interesting day, the first day I practiced driving stick.  The only downside was that there are not really any parking lots around here I can just go to and practice.  Instead, I had to learn on the back streets of Porto Rafti.  Actually, to get the white van (now you see why I couldn’t drive the students into Athens in the van Monday) out of our complex I had to back out and circle around (almost a 3-point turn) which probably was not the best thing to start on.  I definitely killed it enough for my first time. 

That night, a group decided we have spent enough time watching movies at night so instead we were going to have a bonfire down at the beach.  After dinner I took 4 other students with me, along with firewood, and drove down to the beach.  The rest of the group, basically all but 5 students took about 30 minutes to walk to the beach.  It was ridiculously windy and took forever to start a fire, however, once we got it started it was a great fire!  I had to ferry most of the students back because it was so cold.  I took about 5 car loads back and then a few students decided to walk all the way back.

When I went to pick up the last group, I rolled up on them singing.  It was a great time with about 9 students.  We were the only people on the beach except for two people that walked up.  The started to talk to us and we found out that they were here on a mission trip from Florida.  Weird!

Wednesday I spent some more time that afternoon practicing driving stick.  I killed it much less than the day before, so that’s always good, slowly improving.  That night, some students were planning to go to a fashion show in Athens, however, the tickets they thought they had fell through.  So, we decided to have our own fashion show here at the Artemis.  Naturally I “SUITED UP!”

Everyone who participated in the Fashion Show.

Thursday it rained all day, really hard.  The students decided to watch movies all day; the first one was Hercules.  Great choice!

Today, Friday, we just chilled around.  Doing work.  Typical day of class.  I did payroll for the students for the first time.  I think they were excited to get paid.  I also helped plan out a soccer (European football) trip tomorrow.  We are going to watch AEK vs. Aris at the 2004 Olympic Stadium in Athens. 

This may be my last post for a while.  We are leaving on Sunday for a trip to Israel.  I’m taking my netbook with me, but we’ll see how much Internet I actually get there. 

Talk to you guys later.  Thanks for following along.