Yasas

I am officially the worst blogger ever.. I promise to try and update this on a more regular basis, but between my constant state of "lost-ness" in the city of Athens, and my heavy recuperating time spent napping and facebooking, it is a tad bit difficult to find the time/drive to blog. At the moment, I am sitting in a cafe' in the Athens International Airport sipping on a Nescafe Frappe (most amaaazzingg drink ever!) waiting to board my plane to Barcelona, Spain. There I will meet up with my sorority sisters Yasi and Katie, and will get to spend the weekend with them. It should be an amazing experience!

As you can imagine, a lot has happened since my last update more than 2 weeks ago. I think (and hope) that I have gotten over the initial culture-shock that had a firm grip on me the first week and a half that I was here. Even better, I'm FINALLY starting to know my way around our small little neighborhood within the giant city of Athens. Hopefully as time goes on, my navigational skills will improve and maybe I can find my way into/out of Syntagma Square without getting lost....

Our first week of classes definitely provided me with a firm reality check....I actually have to go to school while I'm here...This isn't a vacation. So as the teachers passed out our Syllabi, I had a minor freak out when I saw the surprisingly steep workload we were expected to complete by December. Luckily, scattered in between the tests and term papers were multiple excursions, field trips, and day trips to amazing historical sites that I have only dreamed of visiting in the past. We jumped right into it in week one, and on that first Wednesday our class had the amazing opportunity to visit the Acropolis (Akropolis). In person, the area is much larger than I had anticipated, and it was incredible. Since that first trip, I have probably been to the Acropolis about 4 times up close, and have simply walked around it many many MANY times. In a crazy way, it has kind of just become a normal backdrop for the city in which we now live.

Something that has been rather hard for my to get used to since my arrival in Athens is the abundance of stray animals. Anywhere you go, you will have at least 3 stray dogs in your immediate vision, and it is not uncommon for one to latch onto you and follow you for miles on end (It's almost like the dogs can tell we are American...they almost never follow Greeks). The strangest part about this is that almost all of these stray dogs have collars. Apparently, when the Olympics were held in Athens a few years ago, officials would drive around Athens and euthenize stray dogs, but not dogs with collars. In order to save the dogs, the citizens would just strap collars around the necks of stray dogs, thus saving their lives.

I feel like so much has happened since I've arrived in Athens, however it is so hard to put pen to paper and describe this experience. As time goes on, I promise to blog more faithfully so I can be more accurate in my descriptions. Well, I'm off to Barcelona, I'll update you on the crazy experience on Monday. Until then, I'll miss my Frappes....

Yasas!

-Hana