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.

Crete

Tuesday was the first day of our school field trip to Crete. I was really excited to visit Crete because I’d heard a lot of interesting things about it. One of the professors gave us a lecture about Crete before we left and said that it is basically the unlawful part of Greece. He said that while Athens and the rest of Greece have low crime rates and hardly anyone owns guns, everyone in Crete has a gun. In 2007, the police on Crete tried to enter one of the mountain villages because of suspected drug activity and they were ambushed by shepherds with AK-47s. Apparently the mountains are still a very dangerous area of Crete and no one goes up there not even the police (the professor said that when the Nazis occupied Crete during WWII even they stayed out of the mountains). Despite, this I had a very nice time on Crete and didn’t think it was a dangerous place at all.

We left Monday night and took an overnight ferry. The ferry was actually nicer than I expected. I think it was about an 8 or 9 hour trip but I slept for most of that time because we all got cabin rooms with beds. We got into to Crete about 7am Tuesday and it was a very busy day. The first city we were in was Heraklion and we had a walking tour of Heraklion and the old Venetian fortress that surrounded the city. At the top of the fortress the author of Zorba the Greek was buried. After the walking tour we went to the National Archaeological Museum in Heraklion and saw artificats from the Minoans and Myceneans. For lunch, we visited a traditional Cretan village that is being restored by the EU so it can be a traditional village yet function in the modern world. Apparently, it was voted one of the best villages in Europe or something like that. The village, Archanes, is also in the process of switching all its agricultural practices so all of the village’s products are organic. In ARchanes we also visited an olive oil refinery, which wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would. We watched a video on the benefits of olive oil and then saw an old oil press that wasn’t used anymore. I thought we would get to see olive oil being made or at least taste it, but we didn’t.

After visiting Archanes, we went to Knossos, which was, I think, the largest Minoan palace. I was excited to visit Knossos because I’ve been learning about the Minoans in my Monuments and Sites class, but I was disappointed when I found that most of the structures were restorations. However, Knossos was huge and still very interesting to visit.

The second day of our field trip we went to see the ancient city of Eleftherna, which I think was a Minoan city. We had to drive up into the mountains (all of Crete is very mountainous and pretty) and hike to see the parts of the city. The city was all spread out among the area we were in so we saw the city’s tower, caves that had been used as storage facilities, and the remnants of the city’s layout. It was a very pretty hike but was also kind of tiring.

For lunch, they drove us to another little village, Margarites, that is known for its pottery. There was literally a ceramics store on every block. In the afternoon we visited the Arkadi Monastery. I didn’t know anything about this monastery before, but I learned that it is Greece’s equivalent of the Alamo. In the 1830s after the rest of Greece had gotten independence, Crete was still under Ottoman rule and there were many uprisings, one of which was at Arkadi. When the Ottomans, surrounded Arkadi in one of the uprisings someone (I can’t remember from which side) blew up the monastery and killed all the people hiding inside and the people attacking it. After this it became a symbol of Cretan uprisings. The monastery was really beautiful and peaceful.

Wednesday night we stayed in the town of Rethymnon and Thursday morning had a walking tour of the town. My favorite part of Rethymnon was visiting the old Venetian fortress of the town. Wednesday afternoon we went to Chania, which is one of the largest cities on Crete. In Chania we visited the last remaining synagogue on the island and walked around the old town and harbour.

Friday the whole school was supposed to go hiking in the Samaria Gorge but something changed with the ferry schedule and we couldn’t go so they said we could either stay in Chania or go to the beach. I decided to go to the beach, which was very nice and relaxing after all of the sites and museums I had to visit the rest of the week.

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/Caitlin.A.Foster/Crete#

Monday night I had my first Greek cooking class. The cooking class is an activity sponsored by the school and I thought I would try it out to learn more about Greek culture and food (and it means one less dinner I have to worry about during the week). I didn't really do much cooking, I basically just stood there while Chef Stavros ordered everyone around, but the food was very good. We made tzatziki (which is a yogurt, cucumber, garlic dip), fried pitas to eat with the tzatziki, lentil soup and some type of meat and rice which I did not eat. Some of the people in the cooking class went to go buy wine from the wine store around the corner from the school from which I learned to stay away from homemade wine that comes in big water bottles. I'm really excited for our very last cooking class which is going to be devoted completely to desserts!

On Tuesday we had a school wide meeting about our trip to Crete next week. We leave next Monday night and take overnight ferries to the island and stay until Friday. They didn't explain much about what was going to happen on Crete but I'm pretty sure we're going to Knossos, the ancient Minoan city, and I did learn that the last day of the trip we have to get up at 5 am to go hiking to the place where the ferry is leaving from. I'm excited to go hiking through Samaria Gorge but it sounds like a very intense excursion. The hike is 16Km and they warned us about falling rocks, the heat, and Cretans with guns (although I think the last one was not serious). Tuesday I also bought my plane tickets for fall break. My roommate, Alex, and I are going to go to Dublin, Edinburgh, and London. It will be a lot of traveling but I'm very excited.

Last night everyone at CYA was invited to the CYA president's house for a garden party. The president lives in the northern suburb of Kifissia which took over an hour to get to because of the traffic. On the drive I got a glimpse of the Olympic complex from 2004, it looked really amazing so I will definitely be taking a trip back there. The president's house was extremely nice and also very big--his backyard was big enough to fit enough tables for over 160 people and there was still a lot of space left over. The food was very delicious. I had a pita with tzatziki and grilled vegetables and some type of Greek potato salad. I'm usually not sure exactly what I'm eating but it's always very good.

Today, I had to get up early to go to the hospital for a TB test so that I can get my student visa extended until I leave. That didn't take very long, so this afternoon (because I don't have class until 5:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays) I decided to go walking around Athens. First I went to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I got to see for free because I'm a student. Most of this temple has fallen down, but it was still amazing to see. Then I walked to Plaka which is the old area of Athens but it was so crowded with tourists that I think I'll have to go back and visit again when it gets cooler and less people are visiting. I walked back through the NationaGardens, where I saw two turtles fighting (I didn't know Athens was a native habitat for turtles). This was probably the highlight of my day.

Pictures from Aegina: http://picasaweb.google.com/Caitlin.A.Foster/Aegina

Friday, while everyone else here went to Mykonos, two of my roommates and I and a couple of other girls went to Aegina. Aegina, compared to Athens was very relaxing and quiet. To get to where the ferries are, Piraeus, we had to take the Metro which was actually quite easy to figure out. Then after waiting in the rain we took a flying dolphin (which is basically just a high speed ferry) to Aegina. The entire ride only lasted about a half hour. The weather on Aegina was not much different from Athens, it was a little chilly and rainy, but we still had a fun time.

When we got to Aegina, we had some trouble finding a place to spend the night. The first few hotels we called told us that we couldn't have more than two people to a room and there were 7 of us. But after walking around we found a tourist agency that had rooms to rent for the night that were only 15 euros. The rooms weren't very fancy but they were nice enough.

Friday afternoon we just walked around the main harbor area and when it started to get colder and rain harder we found a cafe to sit at. For dinner we ate at a taverna overlooking the water. It was really pretty to sit right on the water. We had traditional Greek food--like Greek salad, tzatziki, fried zucchini, and spanakopita--and at one point during dinner a traditional Greek stray cat sat between my feet.

On Saturday the weather wasn't much better but we were able to visit the Temple of Aphaia. I don't exactly remember who Aphaia was but I think the story had something to do with Zeus and Aphaia killing herself. The temple was on a really high point of the island and you could see to Athens from up there. The views were amazing. There was also a monastery on the island that we wanted to see but the bus schedule was very irregular and by the time the bus came back for us at the temple we didn't have enough time to go to the monastery.

We left Aegina on Saturday afternoon but unfortunately we weren't able to take a flying dolphin. Even though the ferry we took did take a little longer I think it was worth it. On this ferry I was able to sit on the top and see all the islands and scenery (the flying dolphins are completely enclosed).

Last weekend I went to see the archaeological sites at Brauron and Sounion. Even though the professor that went with us explained what the sites were, I'm still kind of unclear about what the sites were actually used for. Apparently the Brauron site had a temple that was dedicated to Artemis. Greek families used to send their daughters there to worship Artemis, it was almost like a summer camp. I can't remember anything about Sounion except that it was the temple of Zeus. I tried to pay attention but since I'm not a classics major I was more interested in the actual structures and the landscape and less interested in the actual history/mythology behind them. The Greek countryside is so beautiful. There are olive trees and mountains everywhere. Even though the land is really dry, it's still really pretty. After we went to Brauron and Sounion we went to a beach to go swimming. Swimming in the Aegean was so refreshing and the water was so clear and pretty! Last Saturday was the hottest day of the week and even though I enjoyed the field trip the heat at the sites and on the bus (it didn't have AC) was horrible.

That field trip was Saturday and on Sunday morning I decided I wanted to go to the flea market at Monastiraki, which turned out to be a bad choice. Even though I left relatively early for the market, by the time I got to Syntagma Square, it was already so hot that I decided to turn around and go back to my apartment. Since Sunday it's really cooled down in Athens (it was probably 65 today) so I think I might try to go back this weekend.

This weekend is our first entirely free 3 day weekend and after much discussion and research, two of my roommates and I finally decided that we are going to go to the island of Aegina. Basically every other person at CYA is going to Mykonos this weekend. But the weather isn't supposed to be too nice this weekend and Mykonos is supposed to be extremely crowded so I decided it wasn't worth it to travel that far. Aegina is only about 40 minutes from Athens and has a lot to do so I'm sure it will be a lot fun. My next island stop will be Santorini!