Hair New Era

including this program. Today I had a conversation with some of the girls in my program, and I'm glad to say I'm not the only one who has been feeling not so great about our program. I don't know if it's the fact that I'm spoiled by a liberal arts school education where classes are based on student-teacher interaction or if I excel in an environment where conversations with the professors are constantly taking place. Either way, I find that my program lacks a lot of this. I find myself struggling to want to go to class because I am so uninspired. On top of that, my Modern Greek class moves in a speed that I think is unreasonable. We cover a chapter in about 2 days without many explanations of what's going on other than here it is, we'll look over it, do enormous amounts of hw on it and keep going. There's SO much vocab that I still have no clue what it means and today we learned a topic that I still don't know when we use it, yet we're moving on. Tonight I have to create an entire dialogue with another person to recite tomorrow in class. I haven't taken a language class in a while, but I know that intro classes don't just tell you to run before you can walk the way this course is commanding us to. Sigh... I enjoy the field trips and hands on aspects of the program, but as soon as we enter the classroom, I'm immediately discouraged and quite frankly, frustrated. 

fire in the hole!

one of the crazier peeps getting detained.

enormous amounts of police.

bloody noses from the tear gas.

Greece "swat".

Moving away from that kind of craziness to another- Thursday night was Vogue Fashion Night in Athens! It was absolutely amazing. A few of us girls decided to get dressed up and hit the town to preview some of the new fall and winter designs for some ritzy fashion places. Immediately we were offered lovely champagne and different kinds of games in order to win free prizes. The companies here do not play. One of the girls in our group won a free perfume for hitting a bullseye on a dart board. A few of us made some purchases- I got a sweet tote and the others got some sweet shirts. It was an interesting experience because Athenians are already well known for being stylish and Thursday night was just an extension of that stylish living. Everyone was so gorgeous and dressed like they had just walked off the runway. Camera crews were covering all the new styles and the atmosphere was very fun. They gave out a ton of free booze, so us college kids capitalized on the hospitality and took it all in. I'm not usually into that kind of scene with fashion and whatnot, but it was fun to experience it while in Athens with all the fabulous Athenians.

After all the photos and drinks from fashion night, Amy and I were invited by a local Greek our age to hang with her and her friends at this waffle house 30 mins from Athens. It was SO nice to get out of the area for a while and escape the CYA bubble with some locals. We met Alexandra around 9 and went out with her friends Nikkos and Stella. They are incredible! Nikkos is hilarious and Stella is a riot. The 3 of them were absolutely hilarious together. At one point we were driving and Nikkos reached over to whisper in my ear, "When we stop, get out and let's dance". SO at the next stop light, we unbuckled, hopped out and danced to Party Rock Anthem in the middle of the road. I absolutely enjoyed every second of it. As soon as the light turned green we jumped back into the car and continued on our way. We arrived at the Waffle House and I was blown away by the selection. We had waffles and ice cream. I went for Ferrer Rocher flavored ice cream. It was so glorious! I thought chicken and waffles was an interesting combo- try waffles and ice cream. SO.MUCH.WIN.

After we finished our food, Nikkos thought we had to see the marina. He was right. There were the most amazing yachts and beautifully colored water. They had put in lights in the surrounding walls that showed the fish in the water and created this purple-blue glow for the water immediately on the edge. Beautiful. Here is where we learned about Greek culture and got to witness the bustling life that exists at 2 in the morning. I swear, people here barely sleep. I'm starting to get use to it though, which can be good and bad. I was definitely tired for my class this morning, but it was so worth it. Finally we headed home and called it a night. Nikkos invited us over for a roof-top garden party on Sunday. I can't wait!

Today I experienced why I chose this program- on site classes. My monuments class was held at the National Archeological Museum of Athens. After a nice 20 min trolley ride to the site, our professor spent the morning showing us everything we had discussed in class. I was wowed by the preservation of such ancient artifacts and I really appreciated the opportunity to witness the greatness of Greek history. Below I share some of my favorites from the day. I am so happy I have the chance to not only learn more about this amazingly interesting country, but to see the artifacts first hand. Yay study abroad!

prof. explaining the swords found in graves.

mycenean cauldrons.

death masks-full gold.

pillars to the entrance of cities.

greek style decoration (mild nudity ;D )

I'm kind of hoping to luck into a similar scenario if I get the word out around Annapolis and people know to look out for my impossible-to-miss, custom-painted baby blue scooter, but I don't think I'm that lucky of a person. I'm not sure they'll ever find mine. I don't know whether to resign to the fact that it's likely gone forever in case that's the truth or to hold out hope that they'll find it. I don't want to jinx myself or get my hopes up... I'm just sad in general right now (and out a ride to work - since parking downtown is prohibitively expensive, vs. parking your scooter in your office for free).

Sorry to be such a debbie-downer, but I wanted to share A) what's going on and B) why I might not get posts in today (working, searching, kickball semi-finals, checking in with police, etc.). If you could send good juju my way it'd be much appreciated. Thanks all.