I know its been a week...

So, its been a week since I last posted, but a rather uneventful week so I'll be able to recap relatively quickly...

We had no class on Monday, and I pretty much did nothing, since the WHOLE CITY was still closed. The Easter holiday is the most important for the Orthodox Church, so everyone has at the very least a four day weekend. The students get two weeks off, and a lot of places are closed for the whole week before Easter and the following Monday. I thought about writing my paper, but never actually got around to it...

On Tuesday Morning we visited the Athenian Agora with Cam where he lectured. We had already visited the site one before, but it is still really interesting and the museum there has a large number of very well preserved artifacts. In the afternoon we had discussion class again, but it was FINALLY about Modern Greece which is my actual interest. The discussion got very heated but was much more interesting, in my opinion, than any of the others that we have had. After discussion class I had 2 1/2 hours of my Modern Greek 2 class. Our teacher is really interesting and fun. She has taken into account what we wanted to learn, and has expanded our Greek vocabularies so much already.

Wednesday -- Today was our site visit to Ancient Korinthina (Corinth). This trip was basically the highlight of the week. We had this amazing Archaeologist named Guy Sanders, who is the director of the Corinth site, show us around the site. We started with the original site, which included the famous temple. After that he showed us their most recent, and still ongoing excavations, including one of the graveyards for the city. They had just recently uncovered a new grave, with a stone sarcophagus, indicating the relative wealth and prestige of the person buried there. They had already opened it and removed the important artifacts, but they hadn't been able to move the sarcophagus yet, so we were able to see it in its original location. Guy then went on to describe some of the burial practices of the Christian, Muslim and earlier Pagan people who were buried in the cemetery, as well as some of the more gruesome stories of the people who had been excommunicated before they were buried. These people were buried in specific ways to ensure that they were permanently denied the glory of the afterlife. Then, ironically, it was lunch time...

For lunch we went to some of the very few, and very touristy restaurants to eat. The unique thing about this one is that it has a terrace that overlooks the sit itself. It has probably the best view of the temple in Corinth that you could get in the city. The food was mediocre at best, but the view was worth it.

After lunch it was time to see the ACROCORINTH!!! So, anyone who is from my generation remembers the TV show that was on Nick called Guts. In the show, four "international" kids competed for the championship by climbing up the Agrocrag. The Agrocrag was a fake mountain obstacle course including foam avalanches. Since everyone on my trip is within one or two years of my age, we all had the exact same reaction to the idea of the Acrocorinth -- THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER! and we had to compete to get to the top fastest in order to win our piece of the Agrocrag! Unfortunately, we underestimated how HUGE the Acrocorinth. It is actually a Venetian fortress with cliffs on three sides, so it can only be approached on oe side. It was captured by the Ottoman empire and then in the early 1820's by the Greeks during the independence movement. As a group we finally, but just barely made it to the top of the fortress, where you could see both the Saronic and the Corinthian gulf, with the Corinth Canal running between the two. It was one of the most beautiful sites we have seen yet...but then we had to get down.

On Thursday we had a free morning, which I spent starting my paper, and then mastering all forms of procrastination...such as cleaning my room, cleaning the kitchen, organizing my clothes and books, ect... It was a very productive procrastination morning. Then the rental company came and installed the washing machine we rented in our apartment (hugest life improvement ever) just before it was time for me to go to class. Another day where we discussed Modern Greece, but once again, the classics majors in our class managed to make it about the ancient world.. Then another 2 1/2 hours of Modern Greek before MASSIVE paper writing.

The Friday morning we visited the National Archeology Museum -- which was a mob scene. Every annoying tour group in the entire country was visiting the museum at the same time we were. Our group has had an ongoing war with the rude tour guides since we were shushed while discussing the Parthenon while on the Acropolis (with our teacher!) so that she could give her boring intro to the site. Today, it got even worse. An Italian tour guide actually pulled one of my classmates away from an artifact that he was examining so that her group could crowd around the rather large case. Basically, it was war. But our teacher Cam stepped in and moved us on to the next gallery before a fight broke out in the National Museum. Haha.

We has our last session of the first class we are taking while here (our program is divided up into three, three week intensive classes with modern Greek throughout) on Friday afternoon. We then had another 2 hours of modern Greek. Right after Modern Greek we went to Nodia, a (pretty bad) restaurant on the square near our apartments to have a farewell dinner for Cam, our teacher. We really liked him, and felt like he was a friend to our whole group, so it was a very boisterous yet sad dinner. The food was awful, and the wine was probably a little worse, but it was fun anyway.

Saturday -- I spent the day out shopping with a two other girls from my program - Amanda and Julia. It was Julia's 21st birthday, so first we went to the bookstore to get some more light reading for our downtime, and then we went shopping for clothes on Ermou (the Michigan Ave of Athens. I bought myself a really cute dress, a pink-ish blazer, a t-shirt, a tank top and a tube top. They are all very European cool and I have a feeling I am going to be wearing them constantly while I am here. Then we went to Monasteraki for lunch...mmm gyros! We were exhausted from our excursion after that so we decided to stroll back towards home through the Monaskeraki market. On our way through we found an amazing show store with adorable and really cheap sandals! I bought a pair of gold Grecian style sandals and a pair of bronze wedge heels. Then we actually did make it home weighed down with all of our purchases.

That night we decided to go out clubbing for Julia's 21st Birthday and almost everyone in the program went along. We ended up at a club called Luv with great Trance music and a huge crowd. We stayed there all night just dancing and having a great time.

And now today all I am doing is writing in my blog and being incredibly lazy, because that is what Sundays are made for.