Two weekends ago my friend Alex and I went to Santorini. We had to get up at 4:45 to make it to the port on time to catch our ferry. The ferry ride was extremely long (8 hours!) and we had deck seats so we were constantly getting sprayed by water and since the sun wasn't up for some of the trip it was also really chilly. But when we got to Santorini, the ferry ride was definitely worth it. Santorini is so beautiful! It's exactly like all of the pictures and movies. Santorini is actually a lot bigger than I expected and there are two main towns, Oia and Fira. Alex and I stayed in a hotel near Fira that was in a great location and only about 5 minutes away from the main area. We opted to stay in a hotel rather than a hostel after coming back with bedbugs from Crete (thanks CYA for putting us in dirty hotels!) We didn't do much Friday when we got in because it was almost 4:30 when we checked into the hotel but we walked around the area with all the shops and restaurants which was really neat. For dinner we had fried tomato balls and beans in tomato sauce, which are traditional Santorini foods. Alex wanted to go to a club Friday night but we walked around and mostly everything was empty because it's starting to be off season in the islands.

Saturday we got up early and took a cable car down to the old port. Then we rode donkeys back up to the town, which was really fun but also smelly. Saturday afternoon we went to SantoWines and did some wine tasting. The views from the winery were really spectacular you could see almost the entire island and the volcano. Plus the wine was pretty good. After the winery we took the bus to Oia which is the more traditional town on Santorini, with all of the white houses and blue roofs. Alex and I kept trying to see if we could figure out the spot where Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed but we think that it was filmed on one of the other islands that is part of Santorini. Saturday night we watched the sun set over the caldera and had delicious gyros from a Greek fast food chain and I also had Ferrero Rocher gelato.

Sunday we just walked around the island a little before our ferry left. Santorini was definitely very touristy and I heard more American accents there than the entire time I've been in Greece, but I would definitely go back. I didn't get a chance to go to any of the beaches but I heard they were fantastic.

Last weekend I stayed in Athens and was able to explore more of the city. Thursday night I went with some people to the James Joyce which is an Irish pub in Plaka. Most of the kids from my school hang out there every weekend, but I think it's kind of funny that we're in Greece and they end up at an Irish pub. Friday, my roommates Sybil and Alex, and I took the metro to the shopping mall here. I was expecting the mall here to be much different but it was just like an American mall, if not better. They were handing out free food everywhere! We got free loaves of bread, boxes of cereal, and gouda paninis. All of the stores were very expensive but I will definitely go back for all the free food they hand out. On Saturday Alex and I went to Filippopos (I'm not sure if this is the correct spelling) Hill, which is a park/hilly area behind the acropolis. It was very quiet and pretty up there and we had a nice picnic. Here we also saw Socrates prison, which is the cave where he supposedly died.

I've also been seeing more things around Athens with my classes. Yesterday for my Monuments and Sites class we visited the Agora, which was the ancient market place, and we're going back there again tomorrow. With my Athenian culture class, I've also visited one of the Athens cemeteries. Cemeteries are strange here in Greece because they're very overcrowded so people usually just rent plots for 2 or 3 years. Then when the lease runs out they exhume the bones of the person and put the bones in a special box. Finally, yesterday I went to a Greek Orthodox service with my religions class. I had no idea what was going on because of all the Greek. Although it was interesting to see what a Greek Orthodox service was like it got boring after awhile like most other churches.

Here’s an entry that I meant to post before I went to Santorini this weekend but I forgot. I’ve also put up pictures from my trip to Santorini and will be writing a blog entry about the trip soon.

Some of my friends in other places have put up blog entries relating to food, so I thought I would do the same. All the food here is extremely delicious. I didn’t really know a lot about Greek food before I came, but I’m definitely enjoying it now. Tzatziki is one of my favorite Greek foods. It’s a cucumber, garlic, yogurt dip that you can eat on pita, bread, fried zucchini—basically anything you want to. The pastry foods here are also really good. I’ve just recently started buying frozen spanakopita from the grocery store. Spanakopita is feta and spinach wrapped in phyllo dough. The bakery across from my apartment sells wonderful spanakopita that’s also very cheap. I also like cheese pies, tiropita, which are similar to spanakopita but just contain different types of cheeses.

I always get lunch at school, which is always really good. We always get bread and feta, a Greek salad, some type of main course and then fruit and dessert. Before I came to Greece, I didn’t really like feta but it tastes so much better here. In the U.S. feta has a very strong salty flavor but it doesn’t taste like that here at all.

I haven’t been out to eat much but when I have eaten a taverna, my friends and I usually get tzatziki and bread, Greek salad, fried zucchini or eggplant, and cheese pies or spanakopita. The fried cheeses at the restaurants here are also extremely good. I’m never exactly sure what type of cheese I’m eating but I’ve liked all the ones I’ve had. It’s particularly hard trying to buy cheese at the grocery store because everything is in Greek. My roommates and I have just started buying the cheapest cheeses we can find because they all look the same to us.

Before coming here, I had thought that pita and hummus were traditional Greek foods, but I have yet to see them on any taverna menus. They do sell both at the grocery store, however, and I probably eat pitas and hummus at least once a day.

I couldn’t post an entry about food and not mention Motion. Motion is an apple, pineapple, orange, kiwi, and mango juice and it’s very good. My roommates are obsessed with it and we probably go through one carton a day. We’re not sure if Motion is a strictly Greek juice but it is very popular here and recently sponsored a free Akon concert.

Other Things Happening:

I had my first anti-American encounter yesterday. One of my classes was meeting at the ancient agora and we were waiting with out professor, who is also obviously American, outside the metro station for the rest of our class and a man walked by shouting obscenities at us and pointing and told us that the United States is the devil’s country. I haven’t experienced any other anti-American sentiment since I’ve been here so this was surprising to me. Usually when people learn that I am a student from the U.S. they get really excited (I’m not exactly sure why this happens, the other day I was with my friend who is from Paris and we were interviewing people for a project about politics and when he said he was French people would just nod but when I said I was Americans they would smile and get very excited).

The Greek elections are this Sunday and tonight I’m going to the PASOK rally. PASOK is the Greek socialist party and the party that is predicted to win the elections this weekend. The party in power now is the conservative New Democracy party. Even though I won’t be able to understand anything said at the rally, I think it will be exciting to attend. The pre-election environment here is very different from what it was in the U.S. last year. There isn’t a lot of campaigning and most people seem disinterested and disillusioned because of corruption and scandals. It’s also interesting to me that the elections are on Sunday. However, in Greece people have to go back to their villages to vote so I guess this makes sense. I’ll be in Santorini this weekend so I won’t be back for the elections but hopefully I’ll be back in time Sunday to see people celebrating in the streets.