greek coffee = instant coffee?

and it's somehow good... ancient greek sorcery. there's also often a drink on menus called "greek coffee"... i'm assuming it contains a shot of ouzo and some stray doag hair.

i don't know when i became a morning person, but it's unsettling and gross. i don't have class today until hmmm 1.30pm and here i am at 8am. what? cya as a program functions under the assumption/understanding that we're here to run around europe and talk to greek people and have a life experience, so classes are intended to be pretty chill. the workload is a lot lighter and we don't have friday classes so we can leave on thursday night for a weekend adventure if we please. this is amazing because i already have big bright dreams of where i want to go: istanbul, santorini, crete, florence and amsterhotdamn. the suitemates schemed together last night with our friend rob and made plans to get our asses to the corinth canal soon... there may or may not be a long bungee cord involved. we'll see if i actually go through with that one.

we also have a planned program-wide trip to olympia and delphi (control yourself, beej) maybe in march. there are tentative (everything is tentative at this point) plans to go to meteora and mykonos. i think i just agreed to go to spain and italy for spring break. i am wandering like nobody's bidness.

i don't think i actually set up how my life is laid out here. there are two neighborhoods that cya students occupy in apartments ranging from 3-6 people. i live in pangrati which is cute and sort of run down but very close to the cya buildings. the other neighborhood is kolonaki, which is about 20 minutes away and much more upscale (one of the girls on my flight from frankfurt got her housing assignment at the airport and, very pleased about it, cooed "oooh kolonaki, that's the rich one right?"... we don't really hang out much.) i think my neighborhood is more what you would think of if you pictured athens as a city. there's a cafe across the street run by this old couple (i almost wrote "greek couple" but that's sort of assumed, yea?) who make us frappes, and give us the verbal equivalent of "a for effort" when we butcher their language.

there are a lot of great nearby places to walk to should you have a couple hours to kill, which we often do. syntagma square is maybe 10 minutes away, and you pass zeus's temple and the national gardens on the way. anna, maria and big megs -- that's where THE HOTEL ELECTRA is. it's a lot of shopping and not terribly great tourist restaurants, but i think i might stop in the book store there before my class to see if i can find anything in english... the plaka is just up the street from syntagma, and is straight tourism zone, with the kitschy prezzies (note: i have no idea what to buy you people for greek presents... i have yet to find the category of things between triflin, blatantly touristy things, and bottles of mouthwash with greek labels...) and easily excited waiters harassing you into dining in their overpriced establishment... i think we're going there for dinner tonight.

internet is spotty here so i'm going to quit while i'm ahead... 

love, 

kg