Ya sas, matera que patera!

I'm writing to you now from an internet cafe in modern-day downtown

Delphi.  The downtown area used to be a few miles in another direction

but then archeologists found the anceint city buried under it, so they

moved the entire town to whre I'm sitting now!  That is dedication!

We haven't consulted the oracle because we've only gotten here a few

hours ago.. I'm not really sure what we are doing tomorrow morning,

though.  This morning we went to the ancient site of the Olympics in

Olympia where we spent the night last night.  The site is mostly in

ruins, but it was incredible.  The site is many many buildings, all

related to the ancient games somehow--guestrooms, sport arenas,

athletic preparation rooms--and temples to Zeus and his father, the sun

God Cronos.  Some people from our class even sprinted on the running

track in the blazing heat where the very first Olympic champions

trained and won.  It was quite an experience! 

Speaking of blazing heat, I got my fill of it yeaterday, which is one

of the main reasons I wouldn't have even though about racing today

under the sun; we visited the Palace in Nafplion yesterday afternoon. 

On the way there Viau gave the busses an announcement that although the

original plan was to visit the castle on the mountain the temperature

was already 100 degrees farenheit and still rising, so they were making

the trip optional.  If people felt healthy - and most importantly

hydrated - enough, they could choose to visit the palace and walk down

the 1,000 stairs to the city, but if not people were urged to stay at

the bottom and go shopping in modern-day Nafplion (which is highly

recommended by Jeremy's girlfriend).  I chose the palace, even though

the rest of my entourage chose the shade and ice-cream of tourist shops.

The bus drove us to the top of the mountain and let us out and we were

let loose.  This palace was built from 1400-1700, so its one of teh

more modern sites we'll visit this trip, but its also the most intact

because of that.  Walls, tunnels, floors, doorways, etc were all still

very much intact.  We were allowed to clamber around this ruin from as

long as we wanted to, so I spent quite some time crawling up steirs and

down walls and through a tunnel and standing on very steep precipices

(don't worry, I'm still alive) and I took some AMAZING pictures.  I

finally got pretty tired though, and realized that I was the last

student still on top with one professor, so we decided to head down. 

It took us 25 MINUTES to walk to the bottom of those 1,000 ancient

stairs.  It was insanely hot and there was almost no shade the whole

way down.  My legs were shaking after only 1/2 of the trek, but we

finally made it and my face was the color of a tomato. I drank 1.5

liters of water and doused my face and hair in the sink before heading

toward the bus.  Needless to say when we got to the hotel that night I

passed out VERY quickly (with a pillow on my head to shut out the

sounds of the drunken imbeciles in the hall).

It was an AWESOME day.  I can't wait to get home and show you all the

pictures I've been taking, especially from that trip... but really I

don't think I could take any pictures that TRULY depict the majesty of

that place, standing on top of a hill impossible to reach looking out

over the seas to the mountains on the other side... its amazing.

There are so many other places to write about, but I just don't have

enough time and it seems impossible to get to computeres.  Hopefully it

will become easier as we get closer to our final destination.  I tried

to call you yesterday afternoon, I believe, but you were out.  From

here until Thessaloniki we'll be in one hotel a night, and by "night" I

mean we arrive in time for LATE dinner (usually ending around 10:30),

sleep, and check out by 8:30am the following morning.

I'll contact you again as soon as possible... maybe even when we get

back to the hotel if I'm awake enough.  If I don't though, don't

worry.. I've made plenty of friends who wont let anything happen to me!

 :)

I love you VERY MUCH and hope your having 1/5 as much fun as me in

Macon!

Love,

-faira

Thessaloniki

Mom & Dad,

I just found a little "internet room" in our hotel where internet is

FREE!  Unfortunately for the majority of the group the room only

consists of empty plugs and internet cables, but no actual computers...

we have to bring our laptops down here and plug up to the internet. 

I'm glad we decided in the end to pack mine!  Also, when I first got

into this room I heard a number of students fussing about mailing

things to this hotel... turns out the itenerary and whatnot they gave

us at orientation is wrong - the phone number to this hotel (Olympia

Hotel, 011-30-2310235421) is correct, but the address is wrong, so in

case you need it:

65, Olympou Str., 546 31 Thessaloniki - Greece

And lastly, I'm in room 510 (which a pretty cool view of the busy

street, apartments, the old theater under rennovation we're hoping to

perform Oedipus in, and a University housing complex that's completely

COVERED in anarchy symbols and flags and phrases like, "Border

Control."  I don't really understand.  Supposedly the anarchy flags

have something to do with student protests going on around Greece right

now about improper funding... I can't find the whole story anywhere, do

you know anything about it?

In other news - today was the first day of actual classes in the actual

university building with our permenant schedule.  I had to wake up at

6:55am, get ready, eat breakfast, grab my books, leave the hotel with

the group at 7:30am, walk 20-25 minutes to University Aristotle for my

theater class at 8am-9:30am, walk 20 mins back here for 2nd breakfast

(I'm turning into a Hobbit), shower, walk back to the University for 20

mins for my 11:20-12:50 travel writing class, and now I'm back in the

hotel waiting for 2-3pm lunch... which should be about now.

It was a little rough, but I think I'll get used to it quickly enough,

because I have afternoons free for possible naps or wandering around.

The royal pentagon (Christina, Cassie, Daniel, Michael, and I) are

planning on going shopping after lunch for notebooks, alarm clocks, etc

that they forgot.  I have everything I need, but I'm going with them

for kicks.

Alright, I guess its time for lunch now, but hopefully I'll ba able to

write more later because this e-mail wasn't quite as fun as the others,

haha - sorry!

You should listen to Shelley, I'm definitely perfectly alright here. 

My legs are a little tired, but I'm taking very good care of myself

(hiking down 1,000 stairs not included).  We've been going to bed

earlier than the rest of our group, and I've been going to bed earlier

than Christina every night.

I love you, and will try to write more ASAP.

Love,

-faira

Hello!

I am really tired, so I don't know how coherant this e-mail will be,

but I thought I would try to stay awake until dinner, which is in 40

minutes, by writing to you. 

Every Wednesday from today until the end our entire group will be going

on group trips instead of our classes.  Today we went to a number of

places, some of which I'm still not sure what they were… our group

seems to be very bad at communicating important information to more

than 10% of the group the past couple of days.  We woke up this morning

and got on the bus for an unknown time/destination, which turned out to

be about an hour drive to the underground tombs I told you a bit about

yesterday.  That site was really incredible!

The site, Vergina, is actually a collection of tombs all buried

underground around 300BC.  The tombs were originally buried under a

smaller amount of earth, but they still got robbed by grave looters

twice, so a later king had a higher hill built up over them, which

amounted to 36 feet of earth above the tombs.  One of them is

speculated to be Philip the 2nd, and another is one of Alexander the

Great's sons.  One of the smaller unknown tombs had a very well-intact

fresco on it portraying Persephone being kidnapped by Pluto and carried

to the underworld.. it was a pretty awesome fresco.  The gold crowns

were the most amazing though - the bones of the dead were washed in wine

and placed in gold boxes with extremely intricate golden crowns placed

in the box on top of the bones.  These crowns, we saw 3 of them, were

solid gold and as intricate as lace in places.  One of Philip the 2nd's

wives' crowns in particular was so fine that parts of it were supposed

to move in the air to make it seem more magestic.  It really was

incredible.  It was flowers and leaves and vines curving into tiny

spirals, and some of the flowers even had minute little flies and bugs

made of gold perching on them.  I had no idea people could make such

intricate and delicate things out of nothing but gold.  Oh, and the

entire site was lit very dramatically to resemble and envoke the

feeling of walking down into Hades, which was very impressive.  Somehow

the entire place was black and very well insulated from sound, and kind

of cool and damp, so we really felt as though we were inside a hill

deep underground, and only the artifacts were lit at all.  It really

was an art piece in lights.  The tombs themselves have not been moves

at all, and are still partially buried, so guests look down on the

tombs where they were originally built deep in the ground, and the dirt

is still around them.  You definitely would have appreciated the

overall presentation very much.  (Especially if you were with our tour

guide who's first statement under there was,
"Welcome to Hades! ... Ok, moving on")

After that site we hopped back on the bud for another 30 minute drive

further away from Thessaloniki to visit (drumroll)  The original

school of Aristotle!  This wasn't a museum or monument or even ruins of

any sort, it was just caves, trees, a river, wilderness in general, BUT

it was the wilderness in which Aristotle actually held his lessons with

Alexander the Great, etc.  It was close to emotionally overwhelming.

Unfortunately we were rushed off to leave while I was still exploring

one of the caves - we almost got left behind by the buses.  (That was

another communication problem - no one ever said what time to meet back

or that we were heading back to the buses or anything.)  It made me

really sad (and a bit angry) to be rushed away so quickly from a site

that was having such an impact on so many of us in a deeper way than

just standing around looking at ruins while someone yaps away about

what it means.  The positive aspects of that visit greatly outweighed

the negative though - its definitely a 30-45 minute time span that will

stick with me forever.

Ok, we have 10 minutes to dinner now, so I'm going to head up to the

room and do some people-watching before heading down again.  I hope you

had a wonderful 4th of July yesterday, and I hope to hear from you soon!

I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!

-faira

Mom + Dad,

Those pictures from the theater are really wonderful!  I especially

like the costume shop composite, it makes me miss the theater alot. 

Tell everyone hello for me yet again, and give Jenny a hug!

Last night Cassie, Christina and I made new local friends!!  Kostas

just left to go holiday-ing around Greece yesterday, so last night

after I got off the phone with you we were planning on just going to

bed early... but we went across the street for late pizza and ended up

talking to the take-out guy with dreadlocks (one of the first

Thessaloniki characters we started watching upon arrival at the hotel).

 He was a suprisingly fun and entertaining guy to talk to after

watching him sit silently by himself and drive off looking too cool for

us delivering pizzas every night. 

When the pizza place closed at 1:30am he invited us to join him and his friends a few blocks away to

have a few drinks and talk, so of course we decided to go... "for a few minutes."

Well once we got to the bar and started talking to his friends we were

hooked.  Some of the main people were as follows:

Kristos - the dreadlocked pizza deliver guy who is actually another

anarchist-squatter, but he doesn't relate himself to the "extremists"

across the street, the building he squats in is closer to the

university and is an abandoned factory - the poster I took off a wall

the other day is about his group, not the one across the way.  He loves

reggae music from all countries, gave me a high 5 when I told him I

listened to Pin Floyd's "Echoes" while flying over the Atlantic, and is

one of the 2 Greek guys I've met in this country who hates smoking cigs.

Mario - one of Kristos' best friends.  His mother is Swedish and his

father is Greek so he's grown up speaking those 2 languages in his home

equally but is also fluent in English and knows alot of French and

Spanish.  He just got back to Greece this week after studying

multi-media education techniques in Sweden for 3 years.  He is obsessed

with Tom Waits and can do a perfect imitation of Ewan McGregor's

character in Trainspotting - one of my favorite quotes, in fact.

Markela - a Greek girl who went to Circus school in Germany where she

met her boyfriend (I can't remember his name).  They are both

professional jugglers and very jovial characters.  She hardly speaks

German and he hardly speaks Greek so in their relationship they mostly

speak to each other in a strange combination of English and Spanish. 

She has long blonde dreadlocks also and was wearing a patchwork skirt,

laughing with merriment all night long.  She played with one of the

stray dogs for a while, running around and laughing with it, and even

sat on the grund with it for a while, feeding it sausage - this is the

first Greek I've ever seen be anything more than apathetic to a stray

dog.  Markela and her boyfriend played all kinds of music from their

mp3 player for us, and I fell in love with a Russian gypsy brass band

www.fanfare-ciocarlia.com then they told me this band is playing 2

hours away tomorrow night!!

Most of the friends from last night are considering going to this

concert, Markela and her boyfriend especially, so Markela gave me her

phone number to call so she can help us get there if we want to go.

 I talked to Dr. Bourdouvalis about it this afternoon over lunch and he

thinks its a wonderful idea, so then I decided to research the concert

a bit more and this is what I found:

ITS AN ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS FESTIVAL!!  Go to the website, I simply

cannot type enough to describe the awesomeness of this festival, you

have to read it for yourselves.  Just now when I found the site my

theater professor was in the computer room and he looked at the site

and said it sounded amazing and was absolutely entranced by the idea. 

I told him I needed to e-mail the site "to my parents" and he said,
country!  :D

-faira