Day 8

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Day 8

I skyped my family and boyfriend at 7am this morning, went back to sleep for an hour and got ready to start my first full day of school in Greece. We started the day by all meeting for class at our building, about 5 mins walking distance away. Our prof distributed archeological notebooks to keep with us at the dig site and went through archeological excavation basics to help us get through this term. We all started to get excited as he showed us a powerpoint presentation, after our watermelon break (it’s nearing the end of watermelon season here), of the past few years’ digs, sites and findings.

We broke around 12noon for lunch and a free afternoon; we all went to go eat at the cheap gyros place. For only $2 I was stuffed silly with gyro meat (the one that gets carved off the turning meat heater), tomatoes, cucumber, tzatziki and fries (like they make it in Paris!). Then a few of us walked back to our rooms to drop off our books and put on our swim suits. Once we were sunscreened up and ready to leave, we headed to the beach. We spent about 2 hours there; cooling off in the water and heating up in the sun on our towels. At 5pm we had another meeting in the classroom to review some Greek language things for the week; we went over the Greek alphabet (which reminds me a lot of the linguistics stuff I learned a few semesters ago) and looked over the syllabus for what to expect and what is expected of us this term. At about 6pm we were let out, headed back to our rooms, showered off the salt water and got ready for dinner. I washed a few plates and cutlery, so I brought up my own dishes for dinner tonight. The chef in our group made spaghetti Bolognese and we all helped to prepare the Greek salad. A girl in our group cut herself from a knife with the veggies, but she’s healing up now and we all enjoyed our dinner. It’s about 9:30pm, the earliest I’ve ever been back and ready for bed! We start early tomorrow so I’ve got to get up by 6:45 or 7am. I’m getting a little less homesick today; I think the group dinners are a great way to build a little community and I feel less alone. It’s tough getting used to the idea of living here for 3 months, not that I’m not enjoying the beaches and warm weather, but it’s definitely a something to get used to. I’m not complaining, far from it, I can’t believe I get to stay here for 3 months!! But I really miss being able to talk to people whenever I’m bored, living in the same time zone and having the luxury of being able to call up my boyfriend whenever I get lonely and tell him I love him! I’m sure he knows, as does my family and friends, but it’s tough not being able to physically be back home. Anyway, it’s an early day tomorrow so that’s it for me tonight. Don’t worry I’m not getting too emo, just a little homesick.

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