It's all Greek To me!

Ok hello Greece! What the heck why didn’t anyone tell me how beautiful it was!?!?! But first lets start with the first day. We were popped, dirty, ugly and tired. So naturally our Professors took us to one of the most famous tourist spots in the World, The monasteries of Greece. So I had to write a little journal about them for a class so here it is! Keep in mind it was for a class.
At the time, the only word that came to mind was hot. My head was hot, my body was hot, my throat was hot, even my feet were hot. Warm sweat trickled down my back as we walked up the steep staircase to the first monastery of the day, Saint Barbra. Though my concentration was lacking, due to the whole 3 hours of sleep I’d had in the past 24 hours, I could tell that this place was not an everyday experience as soon as we started the ascent. My tired legs climbed the several switchbacks of the mountain while my tired body more or less followed. The path was covered by a canopy of green trees and rose bushes that were meant to be neat and tidy, but somehow found their way to our feet, spilling over the stone hedge lining the walk-way. Finally we reached the top and I now understood why this was one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world.
From the balcony of the monastery there is a sheer drop straight to the ground that makes you a little light-headed if you look down too quickly. Straight across from us were the other cliffs whose tops were homes to other famous monasteries. The great, black rocks rose out of the ground like the Turkish warriors that had tried to overthrow and destroy these monasteries; straight, tall and looming over the entire city below. The view was something out of a fairytale, with the winding, stone staircases chiseled into each mountain leading up to a fort-like structure that may have been housing the three bears. The blue sky provided the perfect backdrop against the dark rocks and the deep gulley’s that separated them left room for my imagination to imagine the kind of centaurs and fauns that were living in my storybook down there. If only that fairytale were true. The monasteries were built for the monks and hermits that wanted peace and solitude from the world and were later used for protection from the Turkish invaders. Back then the monasteries used ropes and nets to get into the buildings instead of stairs. If one of the nets broke while a monk pulled up a friend I suppose they could only believe that the man must have been a sinner, and his time of reckoning was up. How else would you deal with the stress and potential guilt of being the next in line to haul a friend up? That thought jolted my tired brain and made me to turn around and actually enter the little monastery at my feet.
St.Barbera’s monastery was home to less than ten nuns. Out of the six remaining monasteries open to the public, this was the only that housed women. Right when we walked inside the tiny door, all the girls were given long wrap-around skirts to cover our immodesty. We truly did look atrocious. After a five hour train ride, the night ferry, and a long winding bus ride up the mountains of Greece we would not be called a beautiful group. All of us were in our comfiest shorts and most worn-in t-shirts with hair piled in all sorts of messy do’s on top of our greasy heads. We were a sight to say the least. Fortunately none of that mattered if we simply wore the skirt over our shorts to cover our knees. We started our tour through the hall of the monastery. Little did we realize, the whole place was only one hall way. The doors were short and most of us had to twist a little to fit inside each area. Inside the Monastery there was really not much to see. A few old
looking mosaics decorated the walls and a few plaques with Greek scripture references lined the way to the end of the hall where one nun sat reading her little book and glancing up scrupulously every couple minutes, mumbling under her breath, probably about the strange smell emitting off this long line of blonde girls. I felt sorry for the nuns. Not because they had to witness us at our best and most attractive moment, but because of their life. They had chosen to live a life full of nothingness. They sat up in this high tower on a hill, living as if it was 400 years ago and the world barely knew of their existence but for the people that had attempted to steal their treasures, or conquer the landscape. They had no family to sit with at dinner and laugh around a big table with, no house to decorate with tacky souvenirs from family vacations, and no wedding pictures to display in the front room while friends admire the beautiful couple before a dinner party. Not one of the nuns that we saw roaming the place even once smiled at us or acknowledged our intrusion in their home. What a lonely existence. I suppose that is the price one pays for solitude and complete isolation from the real world. One part of the place that even I might enjoy was outside the building. Right on the left side of the little bridge to the entry was a staircase that led to a small garden. The bright red and yellow blossoms erupted with the happiness and joy of life that had been lacking inside the monastery. Green vines clung and crept over the stone arch at the bottom of the garden where more flowers were organized in patches of color around a square of green grass. It was like the nuns were living vicariously through the blossoms the way they were groomed and taken care of. The scenery was breath-taking to be sure, and quite worth the walk up that mountain in the dead heat, but to live there alone for the rest of my life would be to stop living completely and become just another potted plant looking down on the lively city below.

Ta da! There you go that is what ive learned about how to write here on this trip haha. Anyway so that was the first monastery, then we went to the second and it was simply amazing. It was much bigger and had tons of history and artifacts from the Persian occupation and other great treasures and histories. It was like walking back in time for real! So much to see and so much history to eat right up! I loved it there, the scenery the feeling the devotion just amazing. So there were plaques everywhere saying “we almost h ad our treasures stolen, all the books and scrolls and writing of the ancient monks” blah blah, id say their treasure were the tons of ruby and diamond and other precious stone encrusted crosses they had hidden up there! Shoot you could feed a small country with the riches in that place! But I suppose that’s just my greedy side coming out in me, the other sort of treasure was more fun to look at anyway. There were big cultural exhibits and I had to wonder why we had never learned of the Persiand and the Greeks in school, this was a culture that was completely foreign to me, I didn’t recognize the costumes of the soldiers, the women or any of the cultural history on display. I wonder why not? This culture was so exquisite and beautiful and rich I wish id known more about it. Anyway the Monastery was amazing and Id suggest it to anyone and everyone.
Oh I forgot to tell you about our hilarious tour guide Kostas! He is this little, old white haired man with mangled teeth and a marvy south African accent from his days at University. This man is truly our hero and has been the cause of fits of laughter and boredom all at once. The man has a bit of a hard time speaking English because of a 33 year hiatus, but still insisted on telling us all he could about the sites. Except for one hilarious moment in the Monastery where he walked into the room and in a very serious voice said , “ I have no idea what this is” turned around and walked out. Ahahahah hes awesome. And then of course there is our bus driver Alberto, who speaks no English at all. The poor guy has been called Alfredo, Albert, Alfonso and maybe once Alberto. No one could remember the mans name! Especially the Professors. He can drive that bus! Shoot! The roads in Greece are not like our roads! They are small ledges on giant cliffs and follow several switchbacks and tiny little streets of tiny little cities and he could do it all! I commend him for not killing us, or any pedestrians on several occasions, even in the dark while it was raining from Corinth.
Annyywayysss we quickly learned that we loved Greek food more than Italian. Theres just so much more meat! Gyros of course and lots of fruit for desert and Mousaka and Tszuki and pita and ugh just deliciousness. We spent that first night in Delphi (wow who does that?) and ate a delicious meal at the hotel owned restaurant. They eat in courses and bring our one thing at a time. Greek salads with a giant piece of feta on top and yogurt with cucumber (mousaka) and veal that melts in your mouth and a big plate of watermelon for desert. The next day we saw the ancient ruins at Delphi and were once again taken back by the beauty of Greece. The ruins were situated on a big hill that as you climbed you could see more and more of the valleys and mountains and sprawling water below. Everything is green and lush except of course for the ruins which are in fact...dirt. Aahahha no they were actually amazing. There is a temple on the hill built to Apollo that has most of its columns, then several others that had fallen down and were still looking just like the postcards and pictures in history books I’ve seen since I was little. But to be there and actually see the place was very different, everything is much bigger and grandeur and you can see where everything must have been placed just so that the scenery was made to look just so. All along the road to the top of the ruins were smaller temples and areas where individual cities had come to bring alms and offerings to the Gods. The story Goes that Zeus let two eagles go in separate directions and they met in the middle of Delphi at the nave of the Earth. So there we were at the middle of the earth. At the top of the ruins is the great stadium where the games at Delphi were held, kind of like the Olympics. There was also a huge theater for plays and drama right in the middle of the ruins. Inside the museum there at Delphi there was the Charioteer and the inscription that tells us where Paul was in Delphi around 52 A.D way neato. The whole place was just something out of a story like Hercules, you could almost see Phil his trainer trotting up the steep slopes to the stadium yelling out orders to do a couple more laps around the bleachers. And the broken columns could have been where the muses sang love stories and of course there was the oracle where a priestess sat on a tri-pod on every 7th day of the month and people came to her to hear prophecies about their lives and ask questions pertaining to big decisions and their crops and the like. One time some authority forced her to come prophecy on a different day and she ended up in a terrible fit rolling around and spazzing until she fell limp from all the cursing of the authority. A few days later she died from the fit. Recently it’s been discovered that the place where she prophesied was actually over a break in the earth where noxious gases came out of the ground making the priestess high, so my guess is the death was actually a matter of drug overdose…but that’s just my opinion. On the whole, Delphi delivered.
Then we were back on the bus and on our way to Athens, the hub of Greece. Oh Athens, a dirty city that looks like any other big city, but with a few extra ruins attached. We got there and the first thing we did was get to our hotel, good old hotel Ionis.
This needs its own paragraph. The hotel is in a sketchy side street and actually looks nice when you first walk in to the spacious front room with couches and a few computers. Then you get to the room. Our room holds two twin beds and a bunk bed a tiny tv that we cant get to work, a fridge that isn’t cold, a desk a random chair and a great view of a dirty cement wall and window overflowing with old newspapers. Oh, and did I mention the ants? Oh yes there were ants crawling around and a couple in my bed until I went on a killing spree and asked the front desk for some ant spray, strangely enough they had some…? So I went around spraying it until we thought we might die from the fumes and quickly evacuated for a good hour to let the die in peace. The first time I jumped in the shower I realized it was one of those nozzles you have to hold above your head, but only after id turned the water on and it went crazy spraying everywhere while I laughed hysterically and hopped around until I could find how to turn it off. Oh yes, and it was freezing. Ahahah one of my finer moments really. The one good thing about the hotel is the breakfast, ahh I love free breakfast, and in Greece they do this funny thing and always eat Yogurt with honey and maybe oats or corn flakes instead of milk. Its good! Though by now im sick of it, but its very strange. Oh wait, and then there is also the little sitting room where we once brought tons of baklava from the bakery down the road and a bunch of fruit we got for two euros and blood orange soda into and sat and ate a great lunch after our first night in the Hole (ionis) also a great place to do homework we found out! Ahh Ionis, how we love thee.
So Athens is pretty amazing. The first day here we trecked up to the Acropolis and saw the temple of Athena in all it’s scaffolding glory! Sad story but still an amazing site. How on earth did people get buildings that huge back then? I guess that’s the power of slave labor right? Everything was huge.
Oh dear, side note- in our packet that Kostas gave us on Greece he said “beware of museum staff! They do not like singing or loud voices” ahah like beware of dogs! But he wasn’t kidding! They are killer and have whistles that they blow at anyone who comes near anything of great importance, its truly obnoxious. The packet also says “stray dogs- they are generally completely harmless” and “stray cats- it may be tempting but try to avoid feeding them” words of wisdom from Kosta.
More words of wisdom “there is no butter with your meal.” “test the water before you jump in the shower” “show respect to the statues” “Don’t flush toilette paper, otherwise you may block the water pipes” “the sun in Greece is very bright and strong be careful!” thank you good sir

Back to Athens. Acropolis= fantastic and enormous. The town is actually called Athens because when deciding who the patron God would be of the city there was a contest between the God Poseidon and Athena. Poseidon’s gift was a spring that came out of the ground while Athena’s was an olive tree. The town thought that her gift was the wiser of the two so they chose her as their Protector and city Goddess. Down the hill from Acropolis is Mars hill where paul sat and preached to the people of Greece and ended up failing miserably with only a couple converts but no lasting church. Still you could feel the power there and it was amazing to be in the same place that an original follower of Christ sat and taught the masses. It was really a neat experience.
The next day we went to Corinth and saw the city where paul worked and preached and taught in a little house church, and then the place where he was judged and found not guilty. The ruins there looked like someone had ransacked the place and taken all the good stone for their own buildings. And by now you can imagine that we were a little sick of ruins, but still Paul did walk those streets so it was worth it.
We went to this town called Nafplio which was actually the original capitol of Greece. It was really one of the most beautiful cities we’d visited and of course there was an awesomely huge castle at the top of the hill and we spent most of the rainy morning there taking pictures and exploring the castles rooms and towers. At the very top we just sat and enjoyed the cool breeze coming off the water several hundred feet below. And of course we took saweet senior pics and hilarious dancing pics as well, lets just say that I have not danced in a while ha! Fun stuff. Oh yes and did I mention that on the way down I sure did take a tumble just like charlotte! awesome
H’ok what else have I to say about Greece? Basically gorgeous and wonderful and the men are a lot more attractive, and also a lot more creepy. We have definitely been followed, whistled at and generally stared at. Even by a crazy guy! But then Kostas came out of nowhere and saved us so don’t worry!
Oh yeah did I mention the Corinthian Canal? Been there done that!.....more to come!