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Published: February 14th 2009
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my friends!
from left to right: Sarah, Tori, Anouska, Hilary, and Lynette Before telling everyone about the absolutely amazing trip CYA took to the Argolid, I am going to fulfill a request from one of my sisters to include some more personal information about my friends and life here in Athens!
So... I have five really good friends here Lynette, Tori, Hilary, Anouska, and Sarah. Lynette is from Singapore originally and goes to school in California. Tori is from the Chicago area. Sarah is from Virgina and goes to school at Smith (and has never been further West in the US than Pennsylvania which makes me sad). Hilary and Anouska both go to Vassar (but did not know each other before this semester). Lynette, Tori and Hilary all live in the same apartment as me (and sometimes we think Anouska might as well live here too). We are all like a little family. We take turns cooking dinners and we tend to eat together (in addition to hanging out and stuff).
My apartment is in a really amazing location. We are in the middle of a square literally above a grocery store. There are two bakeries within a block as well as two fruit/vegetable stores, a confectionery, a butcher, a couple
of cafes (one of which is also a bar), and more! We are a five minute walk to the academic building. And best of all, we are in the middle of Athens! We are about a fifteen minute walk to the Acropolis and if you have thirty to forty-five minutes (or less) you can walk to just about every museum in Athens. It is indescribably amazing!
Now. On to our trip!!!
The program took all of the spring semester students (the full years went somewhere else) to the Argolid for the weekend! We stayed in Nafplion which is an adorable seaside town in the Peloponnese. Nafplion is right on the water and is surrounded by mountains! It made for many many excellent photographs! On the way down we stopped at Eluesis (the cult temple structure to Demeter), made a quick stop at the Isthmos of Corinth (an amazing canal), and then continued to the ancient site of Epidaurus. Epidaurus was really amazing! The theater there has the best acoustics in the ancient world! Even in the rain we could hear people talking (in normal voices mind you) on the stage... and we were standing at the highest up
seats! Epidaurus was a place people would go for their health when they were ill. It had everything: a stadium, a theater, a guesthouse for visitors, dormitories for the ill, a temple, a gymnasium, etc.! Apparently in the dormitories for the ill people would be left to sleep through the night with a room full of snakes (non poisonous) which were meant to cause dreams. The dreams were the interpreted as signs from the gods to determine how the person was supposed to overcome their afflictions.
The second day we went first to the Argive Heraion. This was an absolutely beautiful tiered temple structure. The uppermost tier was the first temple made with a stone floor, though none of the rest of the temple remains as it was made of wood. The structure is in the hills and therefore has beautiful scenery! After that we returned to Nafplion and went up to the Fortress Palamidi on one of the hills around Nafplion. The Venetian (originally) fortress was an amazing site and some friends and I opted to walk down the stairs instead of taking the bus back. It was a lovely 860 stairs, though a few of my friends
were scared of the fact that we were walking down the side of the cliffs via very old stairs... Then in the evening we had a walking tour of Nafplion which was fun and informative.
The last of the trip we went to Mycenae. We stopped first at the Treasury of Atreus. IT WAS SO COOL!!!! I would try and describe it, but words (and pictures) just fail to depict how amazing it is! Then we went through the Lions' Gate and into the Citadel of Mycenae. I had so much fun getting to walk all over Mycenae and see the remains of the palace structure! We got to walk into the cistern, which was very terrifying. We did not have many flashlights between our very large group and ended up trying to rely on flashes of cameras to see through the pitch black and not trip over the stairs on the way down or up... We all managed just fine, thankfully. However, on my way towards the Museum of Mycenae, I was maybe just a little too excited by everything and I had a pretty spectacular stumble which elicited a yell of OOOMPA from an older Greek man
who was right behind me.
In an effort to save a few euros on our trip, my friends (Anouska, Tori, Lynette, Hilary and I) bought food in Athens that we took to the Argolid with us. We put together some GORP (with some of the best raisins I've ever had!) and we brought plenty of picnic food as well. So on Friday (lunch was provided on Thursday) we found a nice bench to sit on and prepare our lunch! We felt pretty awesome sitting there eating out chicken, cheese, tomato, and cucumber sandwiches along with our cookies and oregano chips while everyone else in the program was out spending money on their lunches! On Saturday, we took bread and cheese from the free breakfast at the hotel to make our sandwiches and finished the rest of our goodies!
Thursday night we went to a Taverna for dinner. It was a lot of fun, except we ended up paying much more than we wanted to. We stopped to look at the menu of a taverna (while on our way to a different place) and before we knew it we had been ushered inside by the owner. He sat us
down and before giving us time to think or a menu to look at told us that he would bring us a good traditional Greek meal. He mentioned meatballs and chicken and some cooked spinach. We responded by saying it was too much to which he said not to worry and that we would be surprised by the cost. He walked away and we immediately knew that we were about to be taken advantage of, but it was just a little too late to do anything about it! We enjoyed the meal, which was incredibly tasty! It was a shame though because we were charged a foot and a leg because he gave us individual plates instead of serving us family style. He also brought us fish, which was too much food and something that many in our group of seven didn't really want to eat anyway... But the house wine, a nice rosette, was tasty and all in all, it was still worth it!
And to end my friends and I have been trying to better understand when it is that you use OOMPA! We have thus far noted the following uses:
While dancing, especially if you
are spinning or jumping
When extraordinarily happy
When the wind blows
When you trip over rocks
Hopefully the list will grow as the semester continues!
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