DAY 1 - the Acropolis

Aight so...
I got back really late last night and was extremely exhausted since my body was freakin out not knowing what time zone to follow at all. It was 1:30am Greece time - by the way I'm 7 hours ahead of east coast time so right now I'm writing this entry at 11:30 pm when its really like 4:30 pm in VA. So yeah, I got back with Julie and Steph (two girls I'm living with) and we get to the front door to our apartment and we pull out our keys to try to open the door. Our freakin door sucks by the way. First of all you have to put two keys into the door for two different locks. Second of all you have to figure out if you do the bottom lock first or the top lock first - it's bottom and then top by the way. Third of all you don't turn the key once to open both locks. You turn the bottom one twice and the top one 4 times to open. One good thing out of this is that there is no freakin way someone is breakin into our place because we're basically pad-locked inside. Now to get out you gotta use the keys again and I think you basically do the same thing. Man I sware it takes us each like 10 minutes to open and lock the door.
So we get inside and I just go straight back to my room and crash on my bed - literally. And I didn't wake up until I heard someone beat on my door at 7:55am. When I heard this I kinda paniced because I thought for a second that my alarm didn't go off and we were supposed to be in class in like 5 minutes. But I had time. I set my alarm for 8:00am so she beat me to my alarm. And class/the day started at 8:30.

Today we went to the Acropolis. It's basically like the top tourist attraction here in Athens. We learned today that the Acropolis was a place to worship the goddess Athena (zeus created her out of his head - yeah she basically popped out according to the myths), a place where the Greeks stored their wealth and also a place of gathering from danger. It was amazing! I'm gonna post pictures on facebook where you can actually see where I'm coming from here. Inside the Acropolis are 3 main monuments: Propylaia, Erechtheum, and the Parthenon. Man guys, the Parthenon is so freakin sweet! Everything was being renovated which kinda brought the beauty away from it but I've never seen so many Greek columns in my life! Most of these monuments you had to use your imagination and visualize what they used to look like. Basically you had to put yourself in a 5th century Greek's shoes. So I put myself in the shoes of Zeus and shot thunderbolts down at everyone - no i didn't, just kidding. But that would be pretty sweet. Each side of the Parthenon symbolized who the Gods fought against to protect the Greeks during times of danger. The four corners were giants, trojans, amazons, and centaures. Pretty interesting I thought.

So after learning about the Acropolis, we hiked up to the top of it. It wasn't too bad of a walk but the heat made it hard. I would say the weather is really similar to Richmond. It definitely ain't no Blacksburg. It's about 76F during the day and mid to lower 60s at night. NO WIND. I was a typical tourist today. Everywhere I turned I took a picture because everywhere I turned it was amazing. I really wish our teacher could have explained a little more about what we were looking at but she's kinda hard to understand. She's nice though. After spending quite a while on the Acropolis we made our way down to the Agora which was known as the civic center.

The civic center was where the citizens of Greece hung out. At that time period, the citizens of Greece were only men. Women, slaves and foreigners were not allowed to be citizens of Greece. Dude, talk about discrimination...man. We learned that Greece was mainly a democracy and voting was a privledge for the citizens. Basically any citizen of Athens could propose a law to be voted on. To vote, citizens met every ten days and in order for a law to be passed 6,000 people had to be in favor of it. That means at least 6,000 people had to gather in the Agora, which was actually really big, and vote. Another interesting fact I learned. While in the Agora I got to see the sacraficed alter of Zeus - man I don't think I would be able to stand before this alter and kill a sheep for someone even if it was almighty Zeus. I mean, poor sheep.

Well, after that we headed back to Arcadia where we had our orientation. The last thing I remember hearing about was "we're going to talk about safety and health procedures." Then I think I feel asleep. Or I was just dozing in and out. I felt bad because I was sitting right in front of the woman who was speaking but I'm hoping she understood because I'm still jet-lagged like wo.

After orientation we went to the super market and I stacked up on some groceries for the apartment. I saw cereal and I was like "dude, sweet! I'm getting that!" They had the typical cherrios and corn flakes and other brands which just looked too expensive so I stuck with the standard corn flakes. I got some yogurts and bananas and pasta and detergent for washing clothes. I also bought a little can of lemon flavored ice tea just because they looked so cute. So I get to the register and the woman is like you have to weigh the bananas. I was like "what" even though she flat out told me to weigh the bananas in English. She explained to me what you had to do with fruit and I got the picture. So we left the store and went back to the apartment and I took a shower for the first time in like 2 or 3 days - man that's gross. I just want everyone to know that I would have showered earlier but I seriously didn't have time- seriously.

After the shower I explored the town a little. I convinced Jess to go out and about with me. Christine wanted to stay in which was perfectly fine. Julie and Steph were out hitting the beach. So Jess and I went exploring. We saw and stuck to a lot of the main roads. We hit the hoppin' spot which I guess was considered downtown after walking around and playing in a random park for a while. They were blasting all kinds of American music as we walked by the bars/cafes. I know I heard Rhianna's Please Don't Stop the Music and Timbaland's The Way I Are. Everytime we walked through I wanted to dance but I refrained to save Jess the embarrasment. We eventually found this place and I got a Gyro with chicken cabob. By the way Gyro is pronounced kind of like "yearo." So far I've learned "yesso" is hello and "eucharisteo" is thank you. I get so nervous when it comes to communicating with people because I know they know that I'm American and I probably sound completely rediculous. I'll try it eventually. After dinner I basically met up with some other girls and we went to get gelato - I sware it's almost like I'm in Italy again! Gelato is so freakin good! I got yogurt di fragola - basically strawberry flavored frozen yogurt - that jank was dank, haha.

And then I basically headed back to the apartment and called it a night. I found out again that we have class at 8:30am and will be traveling a lot tomorrow. And then we have class at 5:00pm. Gosh another busy day for tomorrow. Well I'm out guys. later.