the final countdown.

it's done. i sent in my last philosophy paper, a thrown-together slapdash discussion of the "parable of the cave" in plato's republic which will probably earn me an A- if my last 3 thrown-together slapdash essays in this class are any indication, and my work for the semester is finished. i am a senior in college, a position in life i can only associate with the following images: short-haircut felicitaaay talking into a tape recorder, all-nighters working on thesis while inexplicably wearing unflattering and uncomfortable turtleneck sweaters,  and either a calm understanding that i'm supposed to actually BE grown this time or sheer panic and confusion when i'm booted out of bates college come may 2010, finally faced with reality, rent and dating outside of frye street house parties. 

i keep coming face-to-face with reminders of indianapolis, things like discovering the publisher of my copy of republic is in the one and only naptown (largest non-port city, represent!) also i've been downloading the series "parks and recreation" for a number of reasons, most of them centered around amy poehler and aziz ansari, but also because the show manages to create humor in one of the most mundane jobs imaginable, the department of parks and recreation in pawnee, indiana. coincidentally, it also mirrors my last summer, though mine was composed of far fewer madcap hijinx and a much higher level of disgust with bureaucracy, local government, and the rednecks i called co-workers/superiors. 

i've also been having dreams that i'm already home, though it is usually a mashup of maine and indiana, with my house now part farm. it's jarring to wake up to athens, but relieving in some sense; i haven't wasted my chance, i still have time to absorb as much as i can from just being here. i know i'll be sad to leave greece, regardless of how much i get done in these last five days, but there's so much at home that i can't wait to do again. even just driving around indianapolis sounds comforting. it will be nice to have a few days in the green house before embarking on the next phase, living and working in new york. 

i think what worries me most about leaving school next year is eventually running out of things to be this excited about, running out of opportunities like this and getting bored. i don't think this is an uncommon or unique fear among near-graduates, but that isn't much of a comfort to be perfectly honest. all i can do is keep pushing myself, embracing the changes that come and taking full advantage of my youth as it dwindles. that or give up and learn to play golf (sorry frank. seriously, consider another hobby. golf blows.) 

love, 

kg.

green ladies do crete.

so sorry for the delay in updating; i could pretend i'm very busy and important but really it's just laziness and sunshine-induced procrastination. 

i officially leave greece in nine days. what. is. that. right now i'm in a lull of school work between end of the semester insanity with papers and presentations, and the dreaded finals period... which actually won't be that bad: oral/written modern greek test friday, myth test on saturday, 5 page philosophy paper due wednesday. business.

in the meantime though i've been making lists of things i have to do before i go. i definitely want to check out the 2004 olympic stadium... we've been living pretty much on top of the marble stadium, but athens worked its booty off to get the other one ready for the olympics (typical of greece, they were still working on it two weeks before the opening ceremonies... hilarious)... also i think it's funny that they insist on continuing to hock olympics-related souvenirs at outrageous prices, so this needs to happen.

there are a number of lasts to take care of, like the last taverna dinner, last run through athens, last frappe from cute old man in the kafenio across the street... things i have categorized as "sorority girl shit" as we have all found ourselves whining "you guyyys, this is the last time we'll ever [insert mundane activity] in aaaaathens" which just screams sorority girl to me, even more so than VS PINK sweatsuits coupled with uggs and walk-of-shame hair.

on another note, it was a dream having beej and big megs here over the weekend... beej, i still don't know how you're going to fully justify a spontaneous four-day trip to GREECE, but i support you in that endeavor. after a long day of travel, both safely arrived in athens on thursday. maria and anna, you'll be pleased to know they both stayed at the HOTEL ELECTRA (i just lost.) we left for crete friday morning and pretty much spent our time there eating, drinking wine and shopping, which i think we can all agree is an ideal vacation. i made them try a number of amazing greek foods and raki, the aftermeal liquor served in crete... they were big, big fans.... n't! 

on sunday we wandered around athens, accidentally ending up at the acropolis. beej and meghan were both troopers when it came to hiking up to the top, and both agreed it was worth the trek. on monday meghan flew off to stuttgart to start work there for the summer and beej headed home, with an extra bag full of crap i didn't feel like dealing with come next saturday. aaaah next saturday! i can't believe that.

i am still in the process of finding an apartment in nyc for this summer, which is a pain, but an exciting pain... i just hope i can work something out soon and maybe not live on the street this summer? sounds like a plan.

love,

kg

i still can't believe i did this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzv5bvXTgBA

i wasn't the good kind of nervous until we actually got to the corinth canal. the people at zulu bungy were completely amazing... it's clear they've been doing this for a long time. they knew exactly how to talk to us and what to say. in the video you can see me chatting with one of the women about studying in greece but the camera cuts away before i ask her "so... do people get hurt a lot doing this?" girlfriend was mad anxious. in any case, i'm so glad i did it. i knew i would, it was just a matter of whether it would be the last thing i did or not. 

and no, i wasn't supposed to touch the water. 

love,

kg

spring break, the abridged version

the task of blerging about the last ten days right now seems almost as exhausting as my spring break was. so we're about to break out the bulleted list format to squeeze it all in. ready, go:

- left apartment in athens for plane to rome at 4:30 am, friday the 10th

- ran around the city for the rest of the day, meeting up with other katie's friends from unh to see the trevi fountain, (the outside of) the coliseum, and later, the spanish steps; all sites were madhouses given the holiday

- pub crawl round 1; saw the pope pre-crawl; did our part to improve morale among the troops when we met and clowned with a group of army guys stationed in germany

- sightseeing throughout the next day; dinner at a completely out of the way vegetarian restaurant... cab fare was almost as much as our meals. hilarious, roma

- early morning train to florence, stumbled upon the scoppio del carro (literal translation: explosion of the cart) which involved a seemingly endless parade of people in medieval attire leading two huge white oxen pulling an enormous, elaborately decorated "cart"... more like tank, armed to the teeth with fireworks; square outside of the church was packed with people, waiting for a dove rocket to set the cart off at the moment of resurrection... see facebook for pictures

- wandered around florence; rode a carousel... subsequently relived my childhood; walked along the old bridge, window shopped and haggled; waited in line to see michelangelo's david... fell in love a little bit? pub crawl round two, this time with air force dudes... we are nothing if not patriotic.

- after maybe 24 hours in flo, train to venice the next morning; wandered the streets/canals, walked through the piazza san marco, took an ill-advised nap at 7:30pm, rallied for tea and wine along the grand canal

- mini boat trip to murano with other katie to see the glass-blowing furnaces; demonstration, narrated in italian, was fascinating nonetheless; after much deliberation, group decision to spring for a gondola ride; loved life.

- loitered in pub for as long as possible before moseying to the train station at 11pm; snuggled on floor; snuggled on a different part of floor when we discovered we had attracted the attention/affections of a v. creepy italian gentleman; kicked out of train station at 1am; group decision to spring for a hotel; discovered i was broke; naptime before jumping on 5am train to cinque terre

- 4 hour train ride to riomaggiore; lunch then began beautiful trek to corniglia, the middle town; minor clowning then dinner and wine to prepare ourselves for the nighttime walk back to our hostel; next day, walked down to the beach in riomaggiore before almost missing our (again, 4 hour) train back to rome; 9pm flight to athens; stayed up all night, packed and unpacked, showered and hopped on 7am ferry to santorini with 10 friends

- cozy (read: packed with pushy, loud greeks), semi-sleepless 8 hour ferry ride to santorini; upon arrival, remembered why i chose to study in greece. 

- briefly attended megalo friday church service in perissa beach; left upon realizing how out of place and inappropriate we were; relocated to del mare bar and restaurant, the greatest establishment on the planet

- next morning, rented atvs for 15 euro a pop; rode to fira to goof with tourists and donkeys; climbed down to the port for picnic lunch; rode said donkeys back up; atvs to oia on the other tip of the island to watch the sunset; rode to pyrgos for candle lighting service; midnight, priest says "christos anesti" to declare that christ has officially risen and greeks lose their minds; feared for our lives as fireworks were shot off around us/at us... very cold ride back to perissa beach

- easter morning, walked along the beach, saw too many lambs roasting on spits -- heads, eyeballs and all... felt ok about being vegan.

- monday morning, drove to lighthouse on tip of the island; walked along the beach one last time, ate at del mare one last time, bid santorini a proper farewell; 8 hour ferry ride back to athens, arrived back in apartment at 12:30am this morning.

decidedly the greatest spring break i have ever had.

love,

kg

hot damn, i'm cultured.

two museums, two days, AND out of my own free will. new record for kg. i demand the proper recognition.

the suitemates took a trip to thessaloniki this weekend... i politely declined because i was mad stressed with intern business last week (consider me employed. or unpaid-interned. www.pgfusa.org. count it!) and riding a midnight bus on friday night, returning 5am monday morning sounded like the opposite of good. instead, i have spent my time doing an inexcusable amount of yoga in the middle of the empty apartment and paying my cultural dues by visiting the national archeological museum yesterday and the benaki museum today with my dude rob, an art history major and therefore handy as hell. besides a stalking incident (i was the stalkee, not the stalker... just to clear things up) on saturday in omonia aka trifesville junkietown, it was a pretty nice weekend of educational excursions. i actually enjoyed myself. is this what maturity feels like? it's cold and weird. 

there are these horrifying posters up all over town of a pale naked woman with her head thrown back and blood pouring from various orifices. just to up the graphic description ante, it is literally like being raped in the eye everyday on your walk to school... truly goddawful. and it's to promote some nerdy 15-member orchestra band, like the michael jenkins band or some other westernized name along those lines. people have tried to cover them up with flyers and graffiti tags (well, those are probably unrelated and not altogether altruistic) but the image is burned into our minds, and now probably yours too. enjoy sharing our pain. 

there was a general strike last week, temporarily shutting down all public transportation among other things. striking is different in greece; they tend to do it in scheduled 2 hour intervals on a previously announced date when it's something that affects everyone so as to avoid sheer chaos... they also don't keep it up until changes are made. they just make their statement and head home. how this actually works to change anything continues to baffle me. i don't understand why greek government pays attention to these tame demonstrations, or how the demonstrators themselves don't see that full-blown apocalyptic chaos would be way more badass and legendary. but i'm probably just mad because i'm pretty sure it's affected the mail system, and girlfriend wants her expected package.

i just sent in my thesis proposal form to skr, advisor extrarodinaire. ask me how psyched i am to start planning the most hellish project i will ever undertake in life, 5 months in advance, while still living in greece where it is beautiful and tight like erraday. 

so psyched.

love, 

kg

remember the boat times?

i feel like college professors should know better than to assign description papers. i can't even imagine how to write a paper without an argument. in an act of protest, i'm going to blerg instead of writing a pointless paper on adonis. it's the athenian way.

in the past, i have expressed ambitious hopes of rocking the pr industry in new york and being a fly-as-hell business lady. clowning on paros and mykonos this weekend maybe convinced me that living on a boat, sailing from greek island to greek island, selling fish or kitschy tourist shit might be an ok option, too. i could have a pink pelican (see below) named stan as a sidekick. you look me in the eye and tell me that doesn't sound like a phenomenal lifestyle. CAN'T.

karen k, megan, katie and her visiting boyfriend derek and i hopped on a ferry to paros wednesday morning; someone had the spectacular foresight to buy deck seats when the temperature was topping out in the 40s, but after about half an hour we sneaky snaked into some of the lux numbered seats inside to snuggle during the four hour trip. paros was beautiful, despite the chill, and our hostel owners were adorable. it's one of the lesser advertised islands, but i recommend it for sure. 

we've noticed that traveling during the off-season has its pros and cons... the pros include fewer douchebag tourists, lower prices, street cred. cons: COMPLETELY DESERTED ISLAND. there was a bad news thunderstorm the night we spent on paros, and an anonymous menacing fisherman with a hook for a hand stalking us in our every move would not have been terribly surprising. horrifying, but not surprising. 

during the day we stomped around the hood, taking a bus to naoussa, a fishing village nearby. oh, also we stumbled onto a half-submerged venetian fortress, no big deal. dericious taverna meals were starting to take their toll fiscally, so we had a picnic lunch on a bridge. after the bus back, we wandered into the church of 100 doors, watched the sunset from a bar and caught the ferry to mykonos, arriving on the island around 11 that night. again, super cute hostel owners. this one picked us up at the port, somehow cramming all of us, some greeks and a canadian couple into her hilarious awkwardly sized van. we somehow booked sort of an apartment living situation, which was perfect, minus the treacherous stairs leading to our front door which posed a serious problem for a temporarily handicapped derek; poor guy got into a serious snowboarding accident the day before his flight overseas. greece is a terrible place to be on crutches, but he was a trooper. 

mykonos was also deserted for the most part, and though it was sort of a bummer to discover most of the restaurants and bars were closed, it was neat to see them all in renovation mode, getting ready for the tourist season. mykonos was breathtaking in general... i'll never get over watching sunsets on the aegean. probably the greatest part of the island, however, were the pink pelicans loitering around the fish markets. they were huge, no, HUGE, with super soft feathers. they were also borderline domesticated. i guess they must be used to a ton of people milling around the island. i love them and seriously considered taking one home if it would have me.

there was talk of secretly renting mopeds, but ultimately we just ran around the tiny narrow streets near the seaside and little venice for our two days on mykonos. the 5 hour ferry ride back was fairly uneventful, ooh except i learned how to play texas hold em, betting with torn up bits of paper... like i said, we poor. 

i feel like this is not an adequate representation of the past 4 amazing days, but it's now 9pm and i have not a sentence done on my paper, so i should probably get to it, for the sake of keeping up the "study" facade of study abroad. 

love,

kg

the final excursion.

i've found that calling them "excursions" as opposed to "field trips" keeps me way more interested and excited. humor me, please.

this particular excursion to delphi and olympia, our last of the semester, had all the makings for a goddawful weekend, but ended up being surprisingly dece in practice. first off, there were our leaders: our professor was named kriga, and it is putting it delicately to say she could easily be the lost greek hunchback of the acropolis... 'stache, perma-pregnant belly, janked up teeth and all. i would feel bad about saying this if she had demonstrated any proficiency in teaching or leading students in any way. i could not have learned less about each site if i stayed home, in indiana, under a rock, in a self-induced coma, and these were things i was actually interested in learning about. essentially, we showed up to each site, were lead around by kriga, who often supplied proven false information, to maybe 48% of the significant bits, told to look around on our own for 10 minutes [note: i don't know if you've ever tried to sprint up a mountain in skinny jeans that have gotten too baggy, but i tell you what, it is exactly as uncomfortable as the mental image you have right now might suggest... i almost mooned many a tourist/ruin... but i saw the stadium at delphi. boom] and got back on the bus generally an hour and a half ahead of time. 

if we had been staying in super fly locales such as santorini, this unexpected free time would have been a dream. olympia is no santorini. to be fair, our first night spent in delphi was pretty nice: amazing view from a cozy hotel, good company, and an appropriate amount of time to appreciate what was essentially a one-street town. the next two days and nights spent in olympia were borderline madness-inducing. it is worrisome when a 5 hour nap in a trife hotel on a bed constructed of sofa cushions seems more appealing than exploring greece. 

i should also mention our other leader, maria, an administrator for cya. greece has never known a snarkier woman, and after spending 2 months getting mean-mugged by every woman between the ages of 9 and 65, that is saying something. but i can appreciate a little snark... what i can't handle is legitimately THE most patronizing tirade i have ever been subjected to, at 7:30 am, one-on-one in the hotel dining room, about how unnatural it is to be vegan and how i am going against evolution in doing so. oh bitch no you didn't. all i said was no i don't want a goddamn hard-boiled egg, coffee is fine thanks. step off. we are now mortal enemies, a fact she may or may not be aware of.

our final day, we checked out of olympia and headed further into the mountains and had a weirdly refreshing experience with snow? i sort of miss maine? we stopped for literally 8 minutes to learn a little more nothing at an open air museum about water power, which in no way relates to anything any of us have ever studied... ever. at this point, my fairly small group of 18 had so firmly bonded in our unified hate of so, so many things that the trip in retrospect was pretty fun in social terms. i'm actually totally okay with suffering under less than stellar circumstances as long as the clowning is above par.

i have two days of classes this week, and we leave for paros and mykonos on wednesday morning. i checked the semi-reliable weather report, which says it will be a high of 60... but i'll be damned if i don't get in the sea again and wear an inappropriate sun dress. i am deeply committed in my idealistic romantic standards. 

love,

kg