A Much Needed Break

Over the past three weeks, I've been spending nearly twelve hours a day at CYA, in class and in the computer lab working on my essays for Art & Archeology and Byzantine History, both of which were due yesterday. I can't say how glad I was to get those both finished last week and have a relaxing Thanksgiving and weekend away.

For Thanksgiving we managed to get most of the group together in one of the guy's apartments, where Maddie and Helana spent all day cooking and set up a long table out of the guy's desks. Everyone who came brought a dish (I brought some Hot Buttered Rum for desert)and everything was delicious. Many thanks to Maddie for all of her hard work, trying to make dinner for so many people. All went splendidly and everyone was in good cheer.

After dinner, we all hopped the metro to a theater in Athens where we went to see a performance of Aescylus' Prometheus Bound with our theater professor. To be honest, I slept through most of the play (that's how exhausted I've been) but from what I did see, it was a pretty nifty production.

The next day Chris and I headed to the airport to catch our plane to the island of Santorini. It's that island that you always see photos of with the white and blue houses hanging off of the cliffside. It truly is a beautiful and picturesqe place. We stayed in a hostel that turned out to be as nice as a hotel in a suburb of Fira, the largest town on the island. In the summertime, the place is swamped with tourists, but in late November, hardly anyone was there. The first day we spent relaxing and reading in our hotel room and exploring the town of Fira. On Sunday we went on a boat tour that went to the active volcano in the center of the islands (Santorini is actually a group of four islands created by the explosion of the volcano in prehistoric times) which is still puffing a bit of sulfur smelling smoke and to a hot springs off of one of the other islands.

When I say hot springs, what I really mean is "luke-warm springs". What happened is that the boat pulls up to this cove and they put a ladder over the side. The way it works is that you jump into the (freezing cold) sea and swim about 100 feet over to the smaller cove with the hot springs. Half of the people on the boat didn't even bother to go in, but Chris and I did. When we got to the "hot springs" we realized that they weren't all that hot at all, and then we had to swim back through the cold sea water to the boat. I thought the whole thing was quite funny and had a great time, regardless.

That evening we took a boat up to Oia (pronounced Ia) to watch their famous sunset. It was beautiful, but I think I've seen sunsets out in Eastern Oregon over the desert that could easily rival it. We realized after it had gotten dark that there weren't anymore buses running that evening and our chance of finding a cab in an abandoned town was pretty unlikely. Fortunately we did happen to grab the only cab in Oia which we shared with a few med students from the east coast and made it back to our hostel in the end.

On Monday morning, the owner of the hostel drove us to the airport to catch our flight back to Athens. We made it into town a few hours before out Attic Tragedy class and had to take the metro into Athens and then stop by at our apartments to grab our school stuff. We made it back to class in just the nick of time.

Overall, it was a really nice and relaxing weekend. Unfortunately, the second we arrived back in Athens we were plunged back into the chaos of essays and play performances. But we only have two more weeks until the end of the semester and then it's off on an adventure in Europe.

So I think I have a solid plan at this point for travel after the program ends. Chris and I will be traveling together. We're leaving Athens on the 8th of December and flying to Rome. Then we're taking the train through Pisa to Florence, then to Sienna and Venice. After that we're going north to Switzerland where we'll be in Zurich for a few days and then Basel, a smaller town in northern Switzerland. After that we're taking the train up to Strausbourg in France where we'll meet my friend Melanie (who we traveled with in Istanbul and Crete). From Strausbourg we'll take the train to Paris and on Christmas day we'll travel from Paris to Amsterdam. We'll be in Amsterdam for a few days, then Chris leaves for the states and Mel and I and a few of her friends from France are going to Prague for New Years. After that, Mel and I will probably be going to Vienna for a few days. Then she heads back home and I'll be off to Spain for the next four months (hopefully).

I'm sending in the final application for Spain tomorrow, so hopefully I'll find out soon if they have a placement for me. I'll keep you posted about it.

I'm really excited for my mini tour of Europe. It should be amazing. But for now, It's back to essay writing.