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Published: March 25th 2009
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I can't believe it has been nearly a month since I last posted! I have been keeping very busy and life has certainly been pretty hectic. As usual, Greece has been a lot of fun!
On the sixth of March my program took us on a tour of Brauron and Sounion. Brauron used to be a Temple to Artemis and Iphigenia and Sounion was a Temple to Poseidon with a smaller Temple to Athena across the way. The weather was a bit dreary due to a sandstorm blowing over Greece from the Sahara, but all in all it was a great day of touring and both sites were amazing!
Midterm exams were the week of the 9th to the 12th. My week wasn't too bad, just one exam and one paper. I also had a presentation, but that just happened to be bad timing. The presentation was actually pretty fun, though. I had to spend twenty minutes in my Archaeology class teaching everyone about the grave monuments in the Kerameikos, while we on site!
On Sunday the 15th, we had a few visitors in town, so we did some of the basic Athens site seeing with them. It
acting at the theater of Dionysus
fainting, crying, laughing, surprised! was a gorgeous day and we walked around Plaka (a pretty touristy area), went to the Sunday Monastoraki flee market, went up the Acropolis (and gave a bit of a tour), and paid a visit to the poet sandal maker again. For lunch we enjoyed a rooftop cafe.
But the best things I've done this month were just last week when we went to Olympia and Delphi with the program.
On our way to Olympia we stopped in Corinth and Nemea and visited the sites of the ancient games that were held there every two years. In Nemea we even enjoyed our own little race! Then we finally made it to Olympia, which was PHENOMENAL. The site was HUGE and we spent five to six hours touring it with our professors. The Temple of Zeus was MASSIVE. There really is no other way of describing it. I could lie across a single column drum, and there was more space on both sides of me... Also, that was where the gold and ivory statue of Zeus (one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world) used to be held. Then, when we went into the stadium of THE ORIGINAL
Olympic games, we again had a race.
Yes, you did read that correctly. I RAN IN THE ORIGINAL OLYMPIC STADIUM! And I didn't come in last place either!
The first night we were in Olympia a few friends and I went walking around the VERY small town (much smaller than Grinnell...) and ended up wandering into this bookstore. The bookstore owner asked us if we were students of Wolfgang Decker, which we (well technically my two friends) are! Decker is actually a leading expert on ancient sport, so Olympia is a pretty big site for him. Anyway, the bookstore owner is friends with him, so he showed us a few of Decker's books that he had in the store (though they were all in German). As we kept browsing through the store, the owner (Apostolos) brought out wine glasses and shared a bottle of red wine with us! He also pulled out modern Greek poetry (in English translation) and pointed out his favorite poems for us to read. Then he gave me a notebook filled with essays that he has been writing. It was an amazing experience. Especially because the entire time he was watching a Greek soccer
game and (along with another guy who came in) was getting very worked up about the playing.
After an extensive visit to the site and three of the four museums in Olympia, we continued on to Delphi. We stopped along the coast for lunch where my friends and I enjoyed one of our picnic lunches on a pebbly beach. After eating, Anouska and I went for a bit of a walk along the water and found a drying fish fin!
It is hard to say which was more impressive, Olympia or Delphi. But Delphi was definitely more of a natural beauty. The site is built in the mountains so the views are all phenomenal! Lynette and I were lucky enough to have a room with an excellent view of the mountainous region around us. So Lynette, Hilary, Anouska and I decided that it was absolutely necessary for us to go out and buy a bottle of wine, some crackers, and some good cheese to enjoy on the balcony as we watched the sun set. It was perfect.
We saw the site of Delphi the next morning, again very phenomenal. While there, Decker site read an inscription in
Inside Phidieas' workshop where the statue of Zeus was created
The workshop was built to be the same interior layout and size of the Temple of Zeus and was preserved because it was later turned into a church. ancient Greek (it had a digamma in it!) that stood just outside the stadium (which we couldn't go into because of the danger of falling rocks). The inscription declared that wine was not allowed to be brought into the stadium. We all found it funny because you see signs with the same message on modern complexes sometimes as well!
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