Classes Are Over, Still Have Papers, Still Procrastinating...

The title of this entry pretty much says it all right now. Our last day of class was last Thursday, when we put on our performance of "Kassandrama." (And time's foot... tiptoes?) The show went pretty well, considering there wasn't much pressure on us to succeed. We didn't expect anybody to come, and indeed there weren't very many people there. Iannis and his daughter Lena came, and Kugler and his family, and a couple of faculty exactly 4 students from CYA. Woo hoo. We just had fun with it, and ran through it very casually. It was nice having it finished, though. Afterwards a few of us went outside in front of the Olympic Statium and played frisbee, which was extremely fun. Being out in the semi-cold, playing barefoot on cold smooth marble with the guys and most of us still being in costume was a really good end for the day!

Earlier last week I finished my Karavas paper (on the defenses against iconoclasm, of John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite) and turned it in. Actually, I should say I wrote until I reached the word limit, and having nothing further to say, I concluded it and called it done. It's a weird paper, because it's only half-way complete; after I get back to Portland I'm going to double the length of it, and turn the final product in to Kugler so I can get 300-level credit for the class in the Religious Studies department. This essay that I just turned in to Karavas is, like, the preliminary debut for it--just the "history" stuff--so I didn't really care about the quality of it, and neither did Karavas really, so that's okay. After I fill it in with the theological questions and the implications for Greek Orthodoxy, it'll be super sweet, and since Kugler's the one who will grade the final thing, the end result should be an "A" for my final grade in the class. (Speaking of A's, I just found out I got an "A" on my Attic Tragedy midterm exam, so that class is in the bag. Sweet.)

Now that classes are officially over it's tough to work on my papers. I still have two that are due Wednesday for Attic Tragedy (one essay and one "written reflections" on our show.) So I'll do those tonight and tomorrow. I also have my capstone paper to write, which I'll turn in on the first day of school in January. It's like, we just keep pushing back the dates for our assignments so I never really feel any pressure to do anything!

I've actually been slacking off all weekend... starting right after the play on Thursday, when we played frisbee in front of the stadium. Oh man, it's been an amazingly fun weekend. I'm surprised my brain didn't explode from lack of sleep, smoke, music, etc. After frisbee we went down to Psirri (me, Wendy, Alex, David and Collin) and went to the Beer Academy. That's this groovy little restaurant that serves all these different kinds of beer, some on tap, and it's just a fun place to hang around. I went home and went to bed around 3 or 4. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent at the following places in a repetitive cycle; my apartment, David's apartment, Alex's apartment, Psirri, and Lena's apartment. Friday I hung out with Maddie and did some reading for my paper. Then that night we sat around eating junk food and listening to music, and then went over to David's apartment. David's become, like, my surprise friend; last semester he was the one I knew the least, and this September he got a bad reputation as a mooch when he would always go over to the girls' apartment and sit around and eat all their food. But he's quit doing that, and he's actually a pretty nice guy, and responsible too, in his own way. Plus he's always up for going out, and never says no. Anyway, we all sat around while he rolled his own blend of cigarettes, until it was time to go to the concert we'd been planning to go to for days; Let'z Zep, the band that BBC news says is "the greatest Led Zeppelin cover band of all time." That was a very cool concert; I like Led Zeppelin but I don't know their music very well so I'm not a connaissure, but I thought they put on a great show and of course the music was great. After that, we got some coffee and David, Alex, Lena and I went back to Lena's place and hung around and watched "Lost in Translation." David and Lena went to sleep, and Alex and I stayed up for a long time talking after that. We finally crashed on these mattresses in Iannis' office around 5 or 6, and slept until 4 the following afternoon.

Lena woke us up when she got back from taking a big English exam. We had cereal and sat around, and finished "Lost in Translation." Then David, Alex and I left to go home but ended up calling Lena when we saw a billiards hall and wanted to play, so we called Lena and she came out and we went and played billiards. After that Lena went home and David, Alex and I went back to Kolonaki. After arguing for way too long about whose speakers we would use and whose iPod we would listen to and and whose apartment we should go to, we decided to go to David's apartment and order pizza. I stopped in at my place to change my shirt, and the evening proceeded to be almost a repeat of the previous one; we sat around David's kitchen while he rolled some cigarettes and we listened to music, and then went down to Psirri and went to the Beer Academy. We tried to go dancing but decided to just go back to Lena's instead. We sat around at her apartment eating desserts for a while, and went up to her upstairs balcony and sat wrapped in blankets. David smoked, and we watched Triplettes of Belleville and fell asleep around 4.

Sunday afternoon, yesterday, we got up around 2 ("wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!") but ended up just sitting around at Lena's apartment for a few hours watching TV. We regretted this later, when the sun started going down and we realized that it had been a beautiful day outside, so we rushed out and went to the park for the last few minutes of sunshine. After playing on a giant rock pyramid, we took the train back to Syntagma and walked up to Kolonaki. Alex, ever the coffee-obsessed guy that he is, made us all frappes. (I just realized I've never really explained about Nescafe in this blog; Greeks love instant coffee, and the average day revolves around a schedule of coffee breaks in which Nescafe blended with milk, sugar and ice - aka "frappe" - is a staple.) Anyway, after that I went home to SHOWER for the first time in days, which was really, really nice. Then I made us all, plus Maddie and Wendy, a penne with meat sauce dinner. Afterwards Lena went home, and we hung around our apartment until we went to CYA to get Elder Chris and Collin and go to the Beer Academy. (Having a pasta dinner before going to the Beer Academy is a good idea because then you can try lots of different beers without completely losing your mind.) Going there last night was the most fun I've had since coming back to Athens; we had a great group (Collin, Wendy, Elder Chris, myself, David and Alex) and we had an awesome conversation about music and what artists we thought people would still be listening to 30 years from now. (Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Strokes, and Beck were the only ones we were even remotely unanimous about.) We left there around 1 and went to a hookah bar where we had more awesome conversation (at one point we played this sort of game where we kept going around in a circle and we had to say one nice thing and one mean thing about everybody, which was hilarious.) Then we got some sausage sandwiches and walked up to McDonalds where we got even more food (??) and then took cabs back to David's apartment. He smoked some cigarettes and we sat around eating ice cream (why we ate so much that night I have no idea...) and talking, until gradually everyone went home and it was just me and Alex sitting around, and then he fell asleep on the couch so I left.

By the way, I hope you'll excuse the somewhat juvenile/diary format of these past few entries. They're my final attempt to capture some of the "little things" that happen here in Athens, before we all go back to the States. I'm going to miss this group a lot, and for some reason I feel like I have to record the things we do so I can at least TRY to remember them later.

Anyway yeah, today I'm going to go sell some books at the used book store, and hopefully get close to finishing one of my papers tonight. I'll probably post again before I depart on my Eurail journey with Maddie... did I mention we bought our train passes? We have 8 days of travel (not necessarily consecutive) within Italy, France, and Belgium/Luxembourg/Netherlands. It's going to be pretty intense, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it! Anyway, more later. Cheers!