Spring Break: Location 1

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Hello from the land of the gods!

This is just a quick update to let people know that I am here, and safe. I haven't been to sleep since Thursday morning...so I'm getting the that loopy state. This was because my flight was at 6:50am this morning out of Gatwick. To get there, I caved and did an easybus from around Earl's Court at 3am with my lovely flatmates Jenna Thrash and Leslie Hart. Never again. =)

Anyway, I arrived in Thessaloniki about noon local time. This is a two hour difference from London...so six hour difference from the east coast? From there, it was pretty simple to find the hostel I am staying at for the night. However, if you think the french people are bad about people not being able to speak their language, you have not met a Greek person yet. This is the only really bad thing that I think is going to hinder my spring break fun. I don't speak any Greek and it is so unlike all of the other languages I know, its insulting for me to try to pronounce things...though I will probably try, especially at the train station tomorrow morning. I was looking up details on the train, and apparently I just had to choose the station (granted it's the only one here) that has people behind the counter that will barely ever try to speak any English or help people..joy...I hope this is not true! Or that they have the automatic ticketers....

Anyway, once I got here and got a little settled. I resisted the urge to take a nap knowing that it would be my downfall if I did, I got a map from the front desk and set off to adventure. Luckily, I'm pretty good at being able to find my way back to places I have been, so I wasn't too worried about getting super lost. I ended up finding the "Culture Tour." This is a bus route that, for 2 euros, it takes you to the cultural highlights of the city. Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece and home of some awesome Byzantine architecture. The tour was a great way to get my barings on what I wanted to see and visit. If you just sat on the bus, and didn't get off at all, the tour would take you a little under an hour. I got off at only one point: one of the highest points in the city. I got some pretty awesome pictures of the view from the 'mountain' that Thessaloniki merges onto. After the tour, I roamed around a little and tried to find the train station so I'm not freaking out about it tomorrow. After finding the station, I was hoping to get my ticket, but they didn't have any automatic ticketers open and it was getting super busy, so I decided to wait until tomorrow...hopefully this doesn't bite me in the butt....

When I got back to the hostel a little while ago, the internet is not working with my computer, so I had to wait for the common room one. I updated my facebook, sent an email to the parents, and now I'm updating this! I also looked up that information that has me worried about my lack of Greek...please God let there be a nice person there tomorrow to help me out!

That's about it! It's 9:30 here and I am beat!

Cheers!

PS. I will upload pictures after spring break. I do not have my cable with me to move pictures from my camera to a computer. Expect an update from Athens soon (if I have free internet!)

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