Olympic Champions

The last stop on our tour of the Peloponnese was Olympia!  We left early in the morning (again...), and started our drive.  We drove through some of the most beautiful mountainsides ever!  I was too busy staring out the window to be car sick even!  There was one part where the cliff hung over the road and our bus barely made it through.  I definitely would pick mountains over beaches. Any day.

When we got to Olympia, we went to the hotel, but no one was there.  Absolutely no one.  No guests, not staff, no one. Beginning to a horror movie?  I think so.  Eventually Robert our prof tracked down a lady and she let us in to drop off our bags, but we couldn't get into our rooms yet.  A.K.A they forgot we were coming.  Sweet.  So, we had a quick stop for lunch, but since it is the off season, most of the restaurants don't have their full menus, so you pretty much eat whatever they have.  After that we did, it was a bit of a rush to get to our meeting spot for our next adventure.  The archaeological site at Olympia closes at 3, so we just missed it, but we went to overlook it and see this BRAND NEW site where they've just recently found a temple to some goddess and the priestess at this temple was the only woman allowed to watch the Olympic games.

That night we had a make-up lecture in the hotel and Robert bought us all drinks and went off on tangents about how much he hates Spartans and how they're barbaric.  It was a very enjoyable class :)  After that was dinner...more meat and potatoes.  We played some card games after with most all of us and Elaine, Andrew and the kids.  It got really funny when I was about to get killed off, but little Finn came to my defense and said that we had been playing Starcraft Warrior all night and there was no way that I could have done it. :)

The next morning we had breakfast. Kayla's parents were along for the trip and they didn't know that Greek yogurt is a lot different from regular, American yogurt, so they were running around telling everyone that it was sour cream.

After breakfast, we went out to the site and did our lecture there.  we even go to go out on the first Olympic track!  We had a race, but I wasn't much in the mood for running, so I skipped and lept the whole 190 meters.  Steve won and there was no way that he would let anyone forget.  Molly interviewed him and accused him of cheating, but he denied it.  Right... ;)

We did a quick tour around the museum after, but not much there was exciting especially after a looonnnggg weekend.  Our bus ride back to Athens was a grueling 5+ hours, I fell asleep so that helped.  And then the bus driver remembered that he had a DVD player and a bunch of movies, so we watched "The Spy Next Door".  We stopped midway at a McDonald's and a bunch of us got 1euro milkshakes.  Then we got yelled at for bringing "things that could spill" on the bus....ugghhh.  So we had to stand outside the bus and chug them before getting back on.  BRAIN FREEZE!  The the bus driver said he was impatient to go, so we could get on with our contraband.  Great, I'd already drank all of mine.

We finally got back to our apartment and we were all filthy and tired.  My room seriously smelt like wet raingear for a week.  Yuck, but it was a really good weekend, especially over a holiday, because then we were more focused on doing fun, new stuff as opposed to being homesick.

THIS IS SPARTA!!!

So the day after Thanksgiving when my retail buddies were getting up at 3am to wrastle with angry Moms fighting for that last $2.99 toaster, I went to Sparta. We left Nauplion early in the morning and first headed to Tiryns for a little site visit.  It was only 15 minutes outside of Nauplion and we could still see the acropolis hill that we climbed the day before.  The site that we visited was a ancient Mycenaean palace.  Robert, our prof, would let us 'walk through the walls', but made us walked around the site as if it wasn't ruins and go through the proper doorways.  I really like that, it made it seem more real.  We had a little lecture about the layout of ancient palaces and then headed out the door.  Robert doesn't mess around.

From there we went to Mycenae to see the biggest Mycenaean palace in the area.  There was quite a bit there that was still intact which was really neat to see including this really deep cistern.  After our lecture, Robert said we could climb down in it.  The first 20 feet or so is just a regular stairwell, but then you round the corner into this tunnel, still with stairs, and it gets really dark.  No one had a flashlight and no one had a cell phone, so people were frantically searching their pockets for iPods and cameras.  We were taking pictures left and right just to see where we were going.  They're some of the most horribly candid shots I've seen :)   Since we were in the complete dark, we started getting a little giddy and excited, much like how you feel in a haunted house.  People we claiming to see snakes and spiders, even though we clearly couldn't see anything.  My personal favorite was Sam yelling "Rachel!  Get your hands off my ass!"  Don't worry, my hands were on the wall trying to feel my way down the well, not trying to feel up Sam.  The bottom was just a boring dead end, but the 20 minute adventure to get down there was worth it.

From Mycenae, we headed to Sparta.  People were running around yelling THIS IS SPARTA! and high kicking people.  Watch 300 if you don't get the references, it's pretty darn good.  There aren't a lot of ruins left from ancient Sparta, which is kind of a bummer, but Robert told us this neat quote from an ancient historian that I quite like, "People will see the remains of Athens and think she was 4 times as great as she was, but they'll see the remains of Sparta and think she was half as great as she was."

That night we goofed off in the hotel.  Kayla's family was there and her mom, Mama Sue, knows a bunch of parlor tricks that we played in the hallway.  After we got shushed enough, we watched 300 and played some card games to end the day.

Corinth, Epidarus, and Nauplion

As part of our History class, our Prof.  Robert takes us on a trip around the Peleponnese -- that's the western part of Greece that looks like an upside-down hand minus a finger.  So we left early on Thanksgiving morning and headed to Corinth. Apparently Robert thought Corinth was only worth 20 minutes, because that's all he scheduled for it.  We stopped at this sketchy little way side rest and looked at the canal and then got some ice cream treats and hopped back on the bus.

From there we went to Epidarus where there is this really well preserved sanctuary to the healing god Asklipius and a theater.  As a part of this god's cult, they used snakes to heal people of all these crazy ailments like being continuously pregnant for 7 years or, as Robert calls it, having a malignant tumor.  Apparently this eternally pregnant woman agave birth to a healthy 7 year old - fully developed and functional - after visiting.  The theater was really awesome.  If someone stood at the center, you could hear a coin drop all the way at the top.  It's true, we tried it.  We had a little impromptu concert of Disney songs and many renditions of Happy Birthday because it was Kyle's 21st on Thanksgiving.

After Epidarus, we went to Nauplion which happens to be the first capital of Greece.  It has this huge harbor and 2 acropoli!  We checked into our rooms, which always seem to be stacked on top of one another and I was leaning out the window eating a Clementine while Abby, a floor below, looked out too.  We decided it would be a great idea to see if I could drop a wedge of my Clementine down if she could catch it in her mouth.  My aim was pretty good, but not great and the wedge hit her right under her nose and made this horrible splat noise.  Who knew that a piece of fruit could reach such a high velocity in such a short period of time.

After the fruit fiasco, we went on a little walking tour of Nauplion.  At the end Robert pointed out the upper acropolis and said that there were stairs leading all the way up.  Ellen told me that this was one of her favorite parts of study abroad,so I rallied some troops and we started.  There were about 15 of us at the beginning, but our numbers quickly shrank to 6.  The entire way up was stairs, no flat patches, just stairs.  It was one heck of a calf workout!  Sam, the jack rabbit, RAN the entire way up.  He calls it ADHD, I call it impressive.  Julie and I played tortoise and took our time, and we all finally got to the top in time to see the sun set into some clouds.

On the way down my legs felt like complete jelly.  It was almost a little harder to go down than up just because I was scared of missing a step and falling all the way down.  We stopped for gelato on the way back to the hotel.  Nauplion is the only place in Greece that has legit gelato and it was delicious!

Back at the hotel, we changed quick for Thanksgiving dinner and then headed down.  We got a real Thanksgiving turkey that was actually stuffed with stuffing made out of rice, lentils, and beef.  We also at some cabbage salad, potatoes, and pudding stuff for dessert.  We demolished that turkey.  Ate every last bit, the boys made sure of that.  After dinner we went out for a little walk by the harbor and stopped at an outdoor cafe for some coffee and drinks.  I, as is my nature, started falling asleep in the chair, but by then a bunch of people were ready to go back, so we put on our pajamas and watched a whole 10 minutes of 300 before falling asleep.

Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron Weasley!

So just because I'm abroad and semi off the grid doesn't mean that I am willing to forgo one of the most important events of my entire life.  I am talking about the premier of Harry Potter 7.

Seriously, it's a bit obnoxious how excited I get for this.  Obsessively watching trailers, reading blogs about what might happen (even though I've read all the books), and planning my sweet, sweet costume for months.  We even went to Theology class all dressed up and took a picture with us.  Anyways, we got our tickets ahead of time to ensure our seats and actually at the theater we went to, they assign your seat with your ticket!  Prevents the rush to the coveted middle of the row seats, but it kind of sucks when people don't buy tickets together and therefore don't get to sit together.  Good thing European seating arrangements are more like suggestions than rules.  

We all showed up at the theater in our costumes.  They were pretty creative.  We had everyone from Harry, Ron, and Hermoine to Hagrid, Doby and a couple of broomsticks.  I was Professor Trelawney.  A pretty convincing Professor Trelawney if I do say so myself.  

The movie was amazing!  It seriously felt like I was in there for only 30 minutes when it lasted for over 2 and a half hours.  As we were leaving, a couple of guys just pointed and laughed at us while standing only 5 feet away.  They were just jealous that they weren't dressed up like the cool kids.  

After the movie, we went over to some of the guys's apartment and a bunch of the other CYA kids were there and thought we were the most ridiculous people in the entire world and not in a 'these kids are cool way', more like a 'everyone from MN is a crazy' way :)

P.S.  Watch this video and then call me in a month when the song is still stuck in your head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4