Excursions

I'm afraid I have to excuse myself once again for not posting in such a long time. Every time I sit down at my computer, I barely have time to check my e-mail before I'm up and doing something else. We have been all OVER the place recently. I'm afraid I've lost track of what happened on what day, but I'll try to recap the main events since my last post.

AUTUMN has settled on Greece, something none of us was expecting! I remember when we first got here how we couldn't stand the incessant heat of Athens, and now I find myself wearing my fleece jacket to bed at night. (One day this week I took a nap, wrapped up in 5 thick blankets, which was the warmest I've felt in a while.) I only brought the one jacket to Lesbos, and a few long-sleeved blouses, but that's it for warm clothes. Fortunately I've been able to take this opportunity to do a little long-sleeve-shirt shopping these past couple of days, so don't worry, I'm warm and comfortable. Sunday morning was really really really cold and rainy, but I managed to drag myself out of bed and go to a church here in Thermi to see a Greek Orthodox service, along with Professor Kugler and a few other students. The liturgy was in modern Greek, so we couldn't understand it. (Kugler could've translated if it were in ancient Greek, but unfortunately it's almost a completely different language.) We tried our best to blend in and observe the rituals that the people who lived in the village were doing (lighting candles, kissing icons and bibles, etc.) but we soon realized that this was futile. We left before taking communion, because none of us knew for sure whether the non-Orthodox could take communion or not. The rest of Sunday was spent indoors. I went into Mytilini with Alex, Wendy and Amanda to play Monopoly at our new favorite cafe, Musiko Kafeneion (Music Cafe, in English.) The Monopoly set was in Greek, so for Chance and Community Chest cards we just said we'd have to put whatever amount it said on the card into the middle. All the streets were from Athens so we kind of knew what was what, but we gave up on utilities because none of us could remember the rules for those. It was a grand old time, and we got way hyped-up on coffee and pastry and laughed at each other trying to pronounce street names in Greek, while the rain fell outside. Alex won with hotels on the equivalents of Broadway and Park Place, but we all went out for ice cream afterwards (I had Keimaki, the most disgusting gelato you'll ever have... it tasted kind of like pine sap.)

Monday was fun too; we went to an archaeology lab (yes, we're still "helping" at dig sites) where they cleaned up metal artifacts to display in museums. I was given a formless, bent, twisted slab of bronze to scrape dirt off of, and we spent the time just talking and pretending the pieces we were working with were of any value whatsoever. ("Oh look, I can just make out a face... is that Agamemnon? I think it is. And he's performing some sort of ritual? Cool! Hahaha... NOT.") Later that night a bunch of the guys got together to play poker. It was Colin, David, Daniel (a guy who works at the hotel), Alex, Chris Smith and myself, and everyone put in 3 Euro and we played no-limit Texas Hold 'em with chips. At about midnight Spiros, one of the Greek guys who works here at the hotel, kept buying everybody shots, so the game got pretty silly. At the end it was between Colin and I, and we weren't getting anywhere, so we split the pot fifty-fifty. So I came away 5 Euro richer, hoop dee doo.

On Tuesday we went on a hiking excursion to see the remains of the Roman aqueduct here on Lesbos. It's amazing how HUGE they had to build it, in order to channel water efficiently throughout the island. We drove to the aqueduct in the town of Moria, close to Thermi, and then we drove towards the center of the island and hiked into the mountains to see another set of remains. The hike was fun, kind of a "middle of nowhere" thing with lots of olive trees and little creeks. At one point we emerged out of the trees and into a little village street lined with cafes! We stopped for Greek coffee, and realized we were right by the road (which our teacher Sofia had known all along of course.) Then we drove to a little "secret" taverna by the sea for an amazing dinner. We had to make two trips to get everyone there, so I and a few others had to stand around for a long time in the cold, but singing songs and dancing always helps pass the time. The taverna was tiny and cute, warmed by a wood stove in the center. Some of us made merry with the folk instruments that lined the wall around us, and lazily stroked the many cats that were lounging around nearby. Needless to say, I slept like a log that night. This "wait until 10 then eat until you pass out" dinner thing really agrees with me, I think.

On Wednesday we went to the "rescue site," a recently-excavated spot of land from Roman times, where someone was trying to build a hotel. The Greek government requires any and all construction projects to cease immediately if they find something ancient, so there we were, taking apart a Roman wall and putting the ceramic pieces we found into plastic bags. It felt weird to be destroying a two thousand year old wall, I'm not sure how my morals allowed me to continue, but we did it. Later that day we went on a fishing trip around the bay, with the intention of catching a lot of fish and bringing them to a taverna for them to fry up for us. The catch, however, was lackluster; two palm-sized striped fish were all we managed to get, but fortunately a fishing boat passed by and the fishermen were friends with Iannis, our hotel owner! They laughed at our pathetic catch and passed us a basket of fresh iced fish, which a few of us gutted on the boat. The taverna dinner was fantastic, supplemented with kalamari and tzatziki. We also had some gelato when we returned to the harbor. Later we sat around my room and played guitar with Alex.

Then in case we hadn't had enough fun yet, Thursday, yesterday, was purely fun. We spent most of the morning sitting in cafes playing games and drinking hot chocolate, and some of it shopping around Ermou, the main shopping street in Mytilini. (I bought a "United Colors of Benneton" shirt in the hopes that it would help me make hundreds of European friends because now I'll fit in with them... that's the theory at least.) There are these two cafes, Musiko Kafeneon where we played Monopoly and House of Tea, this place with big beanbag chairs and cool decorations made out of graphic logos and lots of fancy teas and really good spicy hot chocolate. House of Tea also has a Jenga set, so we sat around playing Jenga there for a while. Then back at the hotel some of us made burritos for dinner, and baked apples with cinnamon. Later that night we had a party in our hotel room. I swear I'm gonna feel SOOOOO bad when I get my grades for this semester and there's just this massive column of "A"s down the page, which I haven't earned at all but which are just being handed to me on a silver platter. It's bizarre. November is going to be really hard though, probably three months worth of hard work in the form of four extremely difficult papers I haven't started writing yet, so I'll make up for all this slacking off later. For now I'm going to go into Mytilini and interview some high school students for my capstone paper, so that counts as work, right? Right. That's all for now, seeya!