Week One

Honestly, this first week in Athens has flown by, probably because they've been keeping us so busy. There were a few days in a row when we left our apartment at 8am and got back at 11pm. Besides our regular schedule of 2 3-hour classes a day, we've been doing all sorts of things, including a Survival Greek class (where they taught us how to order food but not how to ask where the bathroom is), a taverna dinner where we met other CYA students and faculty, a dinner at the house of the President of CYA (which I declined to go to) and a multitude of other orientation activities which had us worn out and exhausted by Friday.

And on Friday, we went to Delphi. For those of you who don't know, there was a huge sanctuary at Delphi, in the mountains north of Athens, dedicated to the god Apollo. It is most famous for the Delphic oracle, the most trusted prophetess in ancient Greece. It also has a theater and a stadium where Panhellenic games were held (similar to the Olympic games held in Olympia on the Peloponnese). During the games, war was temporarily put on hold between the Greek city states.

On the way up to Delphi we stopped at the monastary of St. Lucas, which has a great church from the Byzantine era (around 10th century) and a slightly later church. Here are some photos:

This is a group of people from our trip standing around.

A view of the monastery and the hills surrounding it.

Some mosaics on the inside of the Byzantine church.

After that we drove on towards Delphi, where we arrived in the middle of a pretty serious rainstorm. We hung out in the museum there for a little while and saw some of the most amazing things.

These are archaic period statues of two brothers whose story is told in Herodotus' History. Solon the famous lawgiver of Athens told the story to King Croesus of Lydia of two boys who carried their mother up to the sanctuary of Delphi when their donkey went lame. She was so pleased with them when they arrived that she prayed to the gods that they might have the best possible life and at that very moment they died. Point being that the Greeks valued death in youth at a moment of glory over living into one's questionable old age. Hmm...

The museum at Delphi has a great collection of artifacts from the Mycenean Age through the Hellenistic (after the Classical period), but I'll not bore you with photos.

I seem to have lost all of the photos that I took at the temple of Apollo at Delphi (as if you needed to see more pictures of ruins). The rain gave the mountains a beautiful misty atmospheric feeling, and the view from the sanctuary of the green valley below is amazing. The sun came out on our way back down from the sanctuary and it was bright and sunny when we went to the Temple of Athena on the hill below.

Besides spending hours of time in classes (during which we have gotten a chance to go to the Cycladic art museum and the Archeological Museum of Athens, where just about every ancient Greek thing you've ever seen a picture of resides) I've been spending my free time this weekend relaxing and catching up on homework. Last night a whole group of us walked up the hill just behind our neighborhood at sunset to catch the view of Athens which was spectacular. There is a little church on top of the hill and a restaurant. When we had gotten up there we realized that we had walked into a Greek wedding. The bride and groom entered the little church just after we arrived to have the ceremony performed and emerged again just as the sun set to much celebration from the crowd. Fortunately we weren't the only tourists who were caught up in it, there were a few Germans and Japanese people up there, too.

This is the church at the top of the hill.

Here's a photo of the city with the belltower of the church at sunset.

And here's a photo of the city at sunset. From the top of the hill you can see the entire city perfectly, and it's beautiful, though truly sprawling. You can also see the port and the ocean to the southwest and the mountains of the Peloponnese to the west.

It really is marvelous and I am happy to be here. Missing all of you at home and spread out across the planet and hoping that your sunsets are as beautiful.