dis n dat

i've been meaning to update this for a while, but things have been crazy. midterms are sort of over? hard to say, as a lot of papers have been pushed back... greeks are pretty chill about deadlines and getting things done. it's physically hurting the type 'a' psycho in me, but pretty handy when it comes to traveling and athenian clowning.

i finally got new computadori... it is the prettiest thing in the world. unfortunately it is a law-abiding mac book and refuses to pick up the stolen internet in the apartment. i'll let it slide.

we went to hydra this past weekend (see facebook for photos) which was about a two hour hydrofoil ride. we only ended up running around the island for about 5 hours, but it was a perfect day... amazing weather, greek island, those are really the only two ingredients needed. i cannot wait to get to paros and mykonos next week. i have a total of 4 school days left in march. hilarious.

i'm leaving tomorrow morning at 8am for a field trip to olympia and delphi. as previously expressed, field trips are not my favorite, but i'm actually looking forward to this one. beej has been telling me to get my ass to delphi since i first mentioned maybe studying abroad in greece. doin' it.

academic center is about to kick me out for the night, will update after the f-teezy.

love,

kg

amurrica!

wow, importante, i totally forgot to mention that a few friends and i had a lovely evening at tgifriday's last thursday. i love trife american culture abroad, i've decided. our server openly hated us, clearly dismissing us as unadventurous tourists rather than mildly homesick students, there for the irony. the ever-classy decor was the same, except do they have live bands in fridays in the states? i don't think i've actually been inside a friday's since high school... it's not what one might call vegan-friendly.
in keeping with our amurrica theme, we went to see "he's just not that into you" afterward. greek movie previews are completely perfect in every way. also i brought shame to my country again and embarrassed everyone affiliated with me during a commercial for god knows what, featuring a charging midget in viking gear... i lost it, in a completely silent theater. god i'm tight.
it was nice to see ben affleck in a movie role that didn't make me want to punch him in the forehead, but it was hard to find any merit in a movie that only reinforces the relationship/dating myths it claims to be above in the end. and ginnifer goodwin, i hate you so hard. get your ass back to "big love" and stop assaulting my eyes with implausible and irritating cuteness.
while on the subject of dating (jeez, check the flow of this blog) the paper i am half-working on right now is the end result of weeks of interviewing greeks about the characteristics their ideal mates absolutely have to posess... and by "weeks of interviewing" i mean "weeks of venturing out to cafes, becoming too intimidated to be productive and leaving after overpaying for tea and wasting an hour." our optimistic professor had us thinking greeks would be totally down to clown in answering our questions... not so, say the athenians. i started entirely too many conversations ("parakalo, xerete anglika?") only to be shot down either because the potential interviewee did not in fact xerei anglika, or because they just did not feel like talking to a silly amurrican girl. rough. i ended up going into pharmakeios and bakeries and forcing them to answer my questions in exchange for buying something... the suitemates were more than happy to take the guilt-fueled purchases of chocolate off my hands. i ended up with only about 10 usable interviews, so i'm about to make some damn broad generalizations in this bidness.
ooh also i think solo adventure might be cancelled this weekend... cover letters and writing samples are taking up the front burner for a while it seems. bummer jams, but we might do a day trip to an island though... i will never say no to a greek island.

love,
kg

all things considered.

it's midterms. i should be writing a paper or working on a massive study guide for my myth test. what a splendid time to blerg instead...

- typical of march, all things that can go wrong, have in the last several days. i have never before had such a ridiculously off week in my life. on the bright side, things can only go up, yea?

- i got my hurr did on thursday, and it. is. blonde. like BAM! blonde. the greeks are all bout the dark roots platinum strands look, one i was hoping to avoid... oh well, maybe i'll blend in better this way? chyea right.

- sometimes i'm sort of bummed i'm not living with a greek family. the immersion element is defintely missing. greek is a fly language and i'd like to be semi-fluent in it, but we speak anglika all the time, so there's not much chance of that happening here. but hot damn am i good at asking people if they know english...

- i've been running several times a week here, which is lovely for the most part. the streets and sidewalks of athens provide many an obstacle to keep the hour lively. i have learned, however, that it is not advisable to go for a yog when i'm tired, as all people-weaving skills of my carefully honed craft go out the window, and i run into athenians... a lot of athenians. luckily i have not injured anyone or myself, though i have had my fair share of near-death experiences with sneaky snake taxis. also, for real athenians, how are you that bewildered by what i'm doing? or, at the very least, how does it not occur to you to get the hell out of the way when someone is running AT YOU, panting "parakalo"? figure it out, goddamn...

- i can't believe i'm almost halfway through with greece... that's completely insane.

- on friday i went on another field trip to brauron and sounion, and surprisingly, had a great time. i chalk this up to three major factors: first, it was a day trip, not a 4-day excursion like nauplion. second, i had my roommate megan with me to keep me interested in ancient greek bidness. third, the professor in charge of my group was GERMAN, and therefore, captivating. his name is wolfgang drecker (ok.) and he looks like he very easily was involved with some dirty under the table black market dealings in berlin before joining the witness protection program and becoming a prof of ancient greek athletics for cya. except i think if you were in hiding, you would probably consider a less conspicuous name... also poseidon's temple was pretty amazing the second time around. add it to the reccomendations list.

i should probably pretend that this is real school and get crackalackin on these scholarly endeavors.

love,
kg

not constantinople.

[actually, according to mod greek prof eleni, greeks still call it constantinople... typical of a lot of greek things we've encountered, it's difficult to say for sure whether this is traditional or just archaeic]
ooh this is bout to be a biggie.
i'm totally gay for istanbul, to put it nicely. i was not a fan of turkey during the 2006 trip, but we only visited ephesus, and while i would not trade the experience of having the turkish tony danza as a tour guide for the world, istanbul 2009 kicked that trip's ass.
we (katie, blonde karen and i) left the apartment friday at 4:20 am, booking it to syntagma to catch the X95 bus to the airport. we arrived in istanbul around 9am, and got into a number of wrong lines while trying to pay the 15 euro visa fee. karen's almost-stepmom arranged for a van to pick us up and take us to the hotel empress zoe (i know. this was not at all the dirty grungy hostel stay of yesterday's study abroader, but this hotel was super fly. i wasn't mad.) we dropped our stuff off and set out to have our adventure, but not before a brief mid-morning snack in the ultra quaint dining area. our hotel ended up being incredibly close to both hagia sophia and the blue mosque, and walking between these two massive entities, watching european tourists milling around, trying and failing to ignore the persistent shouting vendors, while the call to prayer blasted all over the city was like stepping on a cultural landmine. unbelievable. we also made the observation that both the blue mosque and hagia sofia look like palaces straight out of the newer (suckier) star wars movies... we're on to you, lucas.
hagia sofia was definitely my favorite of the two. in it, i had my first of many awkward interactions with turkish men, generally characterized by nervous laughter, high fives and probably sexual tension? it's hard to say. in any case, i swear to god this guard was telling me to put my foot in a certain spot on this pillar inside, but apparently not... i still don't understand that exchange, and i probably never will. so be it.
hagia sofia is truly breathtaking, and the history of it all blows my mind, that they just took a church and decided it would be a mosque. what? how does that happen? inside there was a wishing... hole? i don't really know what to call it. but you stick your thumb in it and turn your outstretched hand all the way around to make your wish come true. as far as i can tell, normal human joints can't do this. thank god for my freakish swimmer/rower shoulders.
after sofia we stopped for our first of many tea breaks. i wish i could adequately put into words how perfect and delicious apple tea is. we ended up having a lot of time to kill during our trip, as the grand bazaar/spice market were physically and mentally (and fiscally...) exhausting after a while and it was a whopping 35 degrees outside... for the most part, though, it was hard to get too upset about losing the feeling in our toes while stomping around istanbul.
we were exhausted by friday evening, opting for an early dinner and smoking shisha afterward (it's legal beej, keep your shirt on)... we actually finished out most of our evenings this way, but sunday night was particularly good. we met a charming man from south africa named darren, whose profession we never quite figured out. we spent a lot of time talking about "the big lebowski" and road trips, two of my favorite things in the whole world. i can't express how much i love meeting people while traveling, especially if they are also foreigners. ooh, next time you are at a hookah bar, ask for apple and mint combined, which the bar owner reccomended to us. it is the tastiest.
i forced katie and karen to go to a sufi whirling dervish ceremony on saturday night, which was clearly a tourist affair, but still really rad to see. that mevlana, he knows what's up. and how can you resist something that utilizes the tag line "800 years of LOVE"? i mean... come on.
another major highlight of saturday was finally finding HUMMUS. it is also apparently not a turkish food. what is wrong with me? how do i keep picking these places that don't understand the beauty and goodness of hummus? in any case, it wasn't that tight, but mama got her fix.
sunday we went to topkapi palace, which featured hilarious sultan attire and completely ridiculous jewels, and later crossed the bridge to asia, no big deal i walked to asia don't worry about it.
monday i was determined to go to the turkish baths, which ended up being a little more expensive than we thought, so that quickly turned into a solo excursion, which was for the best, considering i was the only one who was actually excited about it... little did i know. steamy, sweaty, old-ass turkish ladies, completely naked. i'll let you simmer in that mental image for a while. it was a lot louder (and NAKEDER) than i had anticipated, but i'd say it was worth it. consider it reccomended.
we tooled around for the rest of the afternoon, eating our bodyweights in turkish delight samples at the markets and walking along the shoreline in the rain, before getting picked up for the airport.
our trip back went smoothly, excluding the scuffle at security when karen's souvenir dagger got me into mad trouble (the upswing? the fact that the official asked "is there a dagger in your bag?" not knife. dagger, specifically. i love turkey.) once it became clear that this was just a souvenir and was inside of a bag that would be checked, they let us go, but not before taking down my passport information... ruh roh.
so now i'm back in athens, where the weather has come back around the bend to 65 and sunny. this computer thing is becoming more of a hassle as midterms draw near and the internship search continues. the academic center internet is embarrassingly slow, and our stolen greek internet in the apartment is unreliable at best... but i can't complain.
i have a god forsaken field trip to brauron and sounion (i haven't the slightest idea what or where these are... oh actually poseidon's temple is in sounion... seen't.) on friday, said midterms the following week, and then i'm planning a kg-only trip for the following weekend... destination tbd. we'll see.

love,
kg

moment of truth.

kg is tuberculosis-free. i know you were all very concerned...
on another far more irritating note, my macbook pro died. computer whiz roommate karen thinks it's the hard drive, which i thought i had replaced a year ago, but maybe they just repaired it. damn you, genius bar. it could be way worse, and could have happened at a much more inconvenient time, but it's still a huge pain in the ass that i have to deal with this while in a non-english speaking country. i have a greek apple phone number to call... i'm just praying one of their reps is fluent in anglika.
i have my second modern greek test in an hour, so i must be off. roommates katie, other karen and i are heading to istanbul on thursday. i don't think they know what they're in for once we find hummus... they're about to see something special.

love,
kg

carnival in greece

is sort of a let down, to be totally honest. this is probably because we as a suite are missing the BIGGIE carnival weekend, as half of us will be in istanbul (holla.) and the other half will be in cairo (bomb blast killed a 17-year-old french tourist in hussein square yesterday... we are concerned, to put it mildly) this friday through monday. 

thursday was tsikopempti, which everyone calls 'meat thursday' to save time; tsiko actually means "the smoky smell that rises up when you grill meat" so the entire city has reeked of grilled meat since thursday. i wouldn't have it any other way. this falls into the sympathetic magic category of ritualistic practices; it's thought that if you eat meat on this day, you will have meat available to you for the next year, meaning you're making bank. it marks the official beginning of carnival season, which leads up to lent, though there have been babies running around in costume since the weekend. they get to go to baby discos and have parties. i'm down with anything that incorporates small pirates into my daily routine. 

carnival is the european grandaddy of mardi gras; it's characterized by excess and drank. my modern greek teacher eleni, whom i love, made a point of telling us that all babies in greece are born 9 months after carnival... jeez. public revelry is expected, including drankin in the streets, singing dirty songs, and mackin on strangers in masks. 

practices vary from place to place in greece. i'd love to see how it is in a smaller greek village, but alas, hummus awaits in turkey (priority). 

this weekend we did our damnedest to take full advantage of the festivities, but nothing really blew my mind. we went to a taverna in plaka on thursday so everyone could eat meat and be joyful. on friday we chilled, saturday we wore our masks over to a friend's apartment for clownin and then went to pangrati square, not knowing that we would need reservations to actually go into a bar. this shouldn't have been a surprise; when we visited mike's irish pub a few weeks ago for karaoke and beer (and creepy 45 year old men named giannis. they are all named giannis) even the bar stools were reserved. thank god the stage was free, right? 

we also went to a parade yesterday. it was gray and freezing out, but a lot of fun, minus the mouth-breathing old men pressing up against us. i don't want to talk about it. 

so this weekend is the big blow out, which we are missing, and then it's clean monday and the city shuts down so everyone can repent and start their lent bidness. i guess the following 40 days are a good time to be vegan in greece. dietary restrictions according to the greek orthodox church include abstaining from anything that has blood (for some reason this doesn't include squid... i'm pretty sure they have blood though. right? whateva.) some super orthodox badasses take this to the vegan level by not eating dairy and eggs, and monks also stop using olive oil; for the average greek joe though, it's just 40 days without meat. rough life, yea?

i have to go to a visa extension doctor's appointment to get an xray and a tb test. this is the only type of shot i have ever tolerated, i think, and also the only disease i have never convinced myself of having. [edit: except for that time junior year of high school. whenever i coughed i checked my hand for blood. i'm tight.] but i'll let you know how it turns out, fingers crossed!

love, 

kg

update: that was the sketchiest hospital i have ever been in. also it was not a cute scratch tb test, it was a straight injection in my forearm. i'm upset. and lastly, i hope all monday mornings from now on include getting topless with a strange greek man... n't!

it's always sunny in nauplion.

no. false. leave it to cya to schedule a field trip the one weekend it is 40 degrees and rainy in greece. 

this past weekend all 170 of us traveled to nauplion and saw some old stuff, to put it as eloquently as possible. i think i have a physical aversion to field trips, most likely caused by my nine year tenure at sycamore school for the gifted. any trace of ADD in my blood worms its way up like a ptsd 'nam flashback to the countless museum trips from the ages of 5-14. i ultimately miss out on any chance of enrichment while on these mind-numbing excursions. i cannot listen to save my life. i mean, i saw the lion's gate at mycenae but i couldn't tell you a thing about it besides "it's big. there were two lions, i think." this is a serious affliction. i can guarantee that if i had gone to these sites with just my suitemates, i would have gotten way more out of the experience, publishing an informative and enlightening blog and subsequently not disappointing my parents... this says something both about my apparent problems with organized learning, and about the overwhelming combined knowledge of my smarty-pants roommies.

anyway, the classics nerds (in the nicest way possible) of my program were all hot and bothered, but i was mostly cold and pissed. i did get some dece pics, but i will probably not put them up on facebook. i know from experience that scenery pictures from friends' travels abroad have a fairly short half-life in terms of intrigue for the rest of us. since i was barely interested and i was actually there, i can't imagine why anyone else would want to look through them. 

according to my planner (since i blocked most of this from memory), we went to the following between thursday and saturday: corinth (seen't. going to see it again for the bungee jumping), heraion, mycenae, the argos museum, tiryns, epidaurus and the castle of palamadi (walked down the 999 steps, it was rad. calf muscles were doing the jitter bug by the end, which is endlessly hilarious and fascinating to me.) we also had ample time to wander around nauplion, which is a hot spot for buying the worry beads old men all over greece use as stress release. it was a cute town, but we were over it by the time we had to leave saturday afternoon. 

i have another field trip this week to brauron and sounion with the same professor who showed us around this last weekend. she is hilarious, primarily because she resembles professor trelawney of harry potter fame. also she tells us stories about her childhood that closely shadow roald dahl's "matilda." hopefully i'll be able to actually get something out of this one...

love, 

kg