Sorry, just had to let that out. I'm a bit stressed. I finished one paper (yessss!! "The Extent To Which the Remains and Objects Found in the Athenian Agora Match the Practices Described in Aristotle's Constitution of the Athens" is complete!" Art & Archaeology - done.) ...but it seems like the fun NEVER ENDS around here when it comes to papers. Now I've got "Icons and the Monastic Tradition" to deal with, and that's going to be a challenge. Also I've got to wrap things up around here in terms of packing, shipping things home, and getting my travel plans for after the trip organized. You all know I'm flying back to the States from Dublin, Ireland, right? Yeah. Well, that ticket's all bought and taken care of... it's GETTING THERE I haven't quite dealt with yet. Travel across the LENGTH AND WIDTH of Europe in 16 days? ...Can't be THAT hard, right? All the same, it's about time I bought my Eurail pass, I think... and figure out what Maddie's plans are. We haven't been getting along very well these past few days, mostly because she's stressing out WAY too much over Thanksgiving dinner. She wants to cook a big dinner, but not TOO big, so there's drama about who's eating where, who's cooking for whom, etc. and it seems like all she does is yell at people and whine about everybody's lack of organization about the whole thing. Yuck. I've stood up to her a few times and told her not to be so unpleasant about what ought to be a fun holiday of togetherness, but that just makes her angrier. I'll be glad when that's over! Other than that life's peachy. I had an adventure with the Registrar's Office this week, trying to sign up for all the classes I need for next semester. After several tries, a couple of REALLY early mornings (around 2 or 3 a.m.) and one long game of e-mail tag with a Communication professor, here's what I got:
Religious Studies 274 Islam in the Modern World (since ca. 1300. With Paul Powers, highly recommended).
Religious Studies 455 Themes in History of Religions (mystery subject to study in-depth in cross-cultural religious history, TBA first day of class! With Alan Cole, mystery professor.)
History 323 Modern European Intellectual History (focused on ethics and philosophy. With Chana Cox, infamously tough professor.)
Communication 303 Relational Communication Theory (in-depth relationship/communication theory and research methods. With Daena Goldsmith, mystery professor.)
...Basically, I'm going to explode my brain. I'm so excited. Chana Cox is going to be hard, and I'm going to work my bum off for the Islam class. On the other hand, "Themes" is only one night per week, and it eliminates Poekoelan from my schedule. (I can still take classes on Wednesday nights if I want, but Mondays and teaching beginners' classes are out.) So, it's going to be a challenging semester. My roommate talked to the Housing office though, and it looks like we're probably going to get a SWEET apartment on campus. Score!
Anyway, back to GREECE! Our group went down to the Peloponnese this week, to see Mycenae (as in, Agamemnon's place), Nafplia (the first capital of the country of Greece after the Ottomans were deposed), and Olympia (where the first Olympic games were held.) It was a good trip, except that it rained every time we went to a historical site. Modern Nafplia was dry but cold, and Saturday and Sunday were both very very wet and cold. Especially because most of us just brought a single change of clothes... or less. I had only brought a change of shirt and pyjamas; so on the bus I was all about the PJs. (Climbing onto the bus with everybody stripping off their wet clothing soon became natural to us. The first few times it was a bit shocking to climb aboard and see my classmates sitting in their seats in their underwear; but nobody wants to sit around in wet jeans for hours at a time!)
The sites themselves (getting back on topic, ahem) were brilliant. On the way to Nafplia we stopped in Epidaurus, which used to be the spot of an ancient Askepion and healing cult sanctuary. FUN. Also, Epidaurus is home to the theatre that has the most perfectly-designed acoustics in the WORLD. Like, you can hear a pin drop from the
way way back nosebleed section, and people's diction is actually IMPROVED when they speak there. That was very exciting. The Epidaurus theatre is also an interesting architectural specimen because the "skene" building, as you can see in the picture, is placed completely behind - tangental to - the "orkestra" (main round part of the stage.) Usually they overlap somewhat, but not in this one; this leads scholars to deduce that in Epidaurus more emphasis was placed on choral movement, music and dance than on drama as we think of it. Hmmmmm.
Friday night and Saturday morning, when we explored Nafplia, featured trips to some awesome structures as the hilltop citadel overlooking the harbor (from where you could see some mountains, beyond which was the harbor out of which the Greek navy sailed under the direction of Agamemnon! Very cool...) and an extremely old mosque (15th century?) that had been converted into a cinema. Also an excellent gyro place. Also our hotel room which was enormous and in which we watched part of "The Rescuers Down Under" in Greek.
way way back nosebleed section, and people's diction is actually IMPROVED when they speak there. That was very exciting. The Epidaurus theatre is also an interesting architectural specimen because the "skene" building, as you can see in the picture, is placed completely behind - tangental to - the "orkestra" (main round part of the stage.) Usually they overlap somewhat, but not in this one; this leads scholars to deduce that in Epidaurus more emphasis was placed on choral movement, music and dance than on drama as we think of it. Hmmmmm.Friday night and Saturday morning, when we explored Nafplia, featured trips to some awesome structures as the hilltop citadel overlooking the harbor (from where you could see some mountains, beyond which was the harbor out of which the Greek navy sailed under the direction of Agamemnon! Very cool...) and an extremely old mosque (15th century?) that had been converted into a cinema. Also an excellent gyro place. Also our hotel room which was enormous and in which we watched part of "The Rescuers Down Under" in Greek.
On Saturday, Mycenae was the first stop. It POURED. We saw all the buildings we'd been study
ing in Archaeology class; the Tholos tomb ,the cave where they'd found the "mask of Agamemnon," the grave shafts, and one deep dark stairway/tunnel thingy where we all slipped and slid down a long marble stairway in pitch darkness just to come to a dead end, but which felt really ancient and mysterious.
(Don't be fooled by this picture, it's all because of the flash! PITCH DARKNESS!) The thunder and lightning was intense that day too, which added to the overall spookiness of that particular excursion.
Saturday night we arrived at Olympia, and we were all completely soaked, so we ordered a bunch of pizzas at our hotel. A few of us played poker (I need to start winning one of these days, dang! Good thing we only play for a couple of Euros) and afterwards we went out to explore modern Olympia. Which involved going to a bar and watching a soccer match between Greece and Malta, and having an awesome conversation with Sam, David, Wendy and Alex, and also a Greek fellow named Bill who later took us to his favorite dance club. There were people dancing traditional Greek dances to the house/techno music there, which was very cool to see.
The site of ancient Olympia was EXPANSIVE. I feel like the sites where ancient sporting events
were held, such as Delphi etc., are the biggest and best-preserved, and I'm always surprised when I see them. Anyway, we saw the hotels where visitors stayed for the games, and we saw the gymnasium where athletes trained. (Fun fact: when the athletes were washed in the "spa" by professional bathers with olive oil and skin-scraping techniques, the "residue" from these full-body exfoliations was then bottled and SOLD to pious Olympics fans who believed that these leftovers had healing properties! Yummy...) We also saw the hilltop where 
women who tried to participate in the games and who were discovered were thrown off of, in punishment. In the arena, we reenacted an Olympic race, one for the boys and one for the girls. The participants had to be barefoot, so naturally I opted to take pictures instead. Oh man, also at the site we saw these amazingly enormous columns that zealous early Christians had somehow managed to topple over in anti-pagan fury. Check out how massive they were! This one's a reconstruction, but it's to exact size measurements. Dang!
The drive back was fun; it involved a long time sitting around in my PJ's, listening to music with Alex and playing 20 Questions with him and Wendy. Somehow, even though I'm super stressed about all these papers and things I have to do before I leave, I always manage to have a lot of fun, most days. Like last night; I accidentally took a 3-hour dinner break with Wendy, Alex, Clariece and Chris, just sitting around on the couches in the student center and talking and eating sandwiches. And last week, when I went down to Psirri a few nights in a row to go dancing. (Why nobody told us about Psirri back in September when we had TONS of time and were always looking for the young people of Athens and never managed to find them, I'll never know.) But hanging out over there with Alex and David is extremely fun, and sitting around at hookah bars and listening to Greek techno music is a great way to wind down after a long day of staring at a computer screen trying to make sense of it all.
ing in Archaeology class; the Tholos tomb ,the cave where they'd found the "mask of Agamemnon," the grave shafts, and one deep dark stairway/tunnel thingy where we all slipped and slid down a long marble stairway in pitch darkness just to come to a dead end, but which felt really ancient and mysterious.(Don't be fooled by this picture, it's all because of the flash! PITCH DARKNESS!) The thunder and lightning was intense that day too, which added to the overall spookiness of that particular excursion.
Saturday night we arrived at Olympia, and we were all completely soaked, so we ordered a bunch of pizzas at our hotel. A few of us played poker (I need to start winning one of these days, dang! Good thing we only play for a couple of Euros) and afterwards we went out to explore modern Olympia. Which involved going to a bar and watching a soccer match between Greece and Malta, and having an awesome conversation with Sam, David, Wendy and Alex, and also a Greek fellow named Bill who later took us to his favorite dance club. There were people dancing traditional Greek dances to the house/techno music there, which was very cool to see.
The site of ancient Olympia was EXPANSIVE. I feel like the sites where ancient sporting events
were held, such as Delphi etc., are the biggest and best-preserved, and I'm always surprised when I see them. Anyway, we saw the hotels where visitors stayed for the games, and we saw the gymnasium where athletes trained. (Fun fact: when the athletes were washed in the "spa" by professional bathers with olive oil and skin-scraping techniques, the "residue" from these full-body exfoliations was then bottled and SOLD to pious Olympics fans who believed that these leftovers had healing properties! Yummy...) We also saw the hilltop where 
women who tried to participate in the games and who were discovered were thrown off of, in punishment. In the arena, we reenacted an Olympic race, one for the boys and one for the girls. The participants had to be barefoot, so naturally I opted to take pictures instead. Oh man, also at the site we saw these amazingly enormous columns that zealous early Christians had somehow managed to topple over in anti-pagan fury. Check out how massive they were! This one's a reconstruction, but it's to exact size measurements. Dang!The drive back was fun; it involved a long time sitting around in my PJ's, listening to music with Alex and playing 20 Questions with him and Wendy. Somehow, even though I'm super stressed about all these papers and things I have to do before I leave, I always manage to have a lot of fun, most days. Like last night; I accidentally took a 3-hour dinner break with Wendy, Alex, Clariece and Chris, just sitting around on the couches in the student center and talking and eating sandwiches. And last week, when I went down to Psirri a few nights in a row to go dancing. (Why nobody told us about Psirri back in September when we had TONS of time and were always looking for the young people of Athens and never managed to find them, I'll never know.) But hanging out over there with Alex and David is extremely fun, and sitting around at hookah bars and listening to Greek techno music is a great way to wind down after a long day of staring at a computer screen trying to make sense of it all.
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