let the games begin!

hello friends! today we toured olympia, and saw where the first olympics were held! it was amazing to think how intense the competitions must have been back then, centuries before the birth of Christ. Everything we've done has been such a grand experience! Including walking around at night and taking in all that the Greek culture has to offer us! I have feel in love with the wonderful tomatoes here in Greece ( my grandmother wouldn't believe i am finally eating tomatoes!!) I can't wait to share the experiences we've had with you guys through my pictures when we return home. I constantly find myself thinking how amazing it is that every single day God's beauty surrounds us! Also being gone from home this long has taught me to appreciate God's beauty there too! Much love always! ~Kelly

Olympia!

We are now in Olympia, Greece. We left from Tolo Greece today and it was so beautiful there. The hotel was about 4 feet from the beach and it was sandy too!! I have had the best time and tomorrow we will be touring the ancient grounds from where the olympics first originated. I must go, but I am very excited about going home and sharing my 1000 pictures with all you guys! I sure ya'll are excited!! love you all talk to you soon!

taking a breather in Tolo

Our hotel is quite literally on the waterfront, and one of the nicest we've stayed at. Today was our last free day (tomorrow is Mycenae and Epidaurus, thence to Olympia)and some of us went and tasted lovely Greek wines from the Agiorgitiko grape this morning while others hung out on the beach reading Aeschylus, with wonderful high-mindedness, or perhaps desperation, for the next class tomorrow. The view from our balcony is stunning - clear blue water, rugged hills and fishing boats. I will miss Greece very much when we have to leave. It's really my favourite place in the world bar none.

and another thing

A group of 5 of us - me, Jessi, George, Claire and Jenny - went by cab to the Dictaean cave at Psychro on the Lassithi plain, which is a beautiful, fertile plain full of agriculture and domestic animals and windmills, surrounded by mountains several thousand feet high. The drive was dramatic as we went up into the mountains and were covered in thick, drifting mist. I asked the driver if it was always like this with the mist and he said not, but in my broken Greek, I called it a nephos (whcih I knew wasn't quite right but was all I could think of at the time) and he corrected me to omichle, a word that I am pretty sure exists in Homer and means just the same thing. How many other languages have words exactly the same that have been in use for almost 3000 years? (And nephos, as I discovered later to my slight embarrassment, means smog as well as cloud, so no wonder he wanted to set the record straight!)

going west

With a big sigh of relief, we left Iraklion yesterday morning by the bus to Chania. I am such a philhellene, I make Lord Byron look like a lightweight, but even I have to admit that it just isn't a terribly nice place, although our hotel was very nice and the staff were lovely, one spending ahlf an hour on the phone for me trying to find out when the Dictaean cave (where Zeus was born) was open, Even so, it is so good to be in Chania, a very picturesque town whose original centre is a semi-circular waterfront harbour. It belonged to the Venetians at one time and as a result is full of semi-ruined venetian buildings - extremely romantic in their decrepitude.

It is a free day for us and almost everyone has gone off to hike the Samaria gorge. I was tempted but I'm not hugely outdoorsy and this is our only full day in Chania, one of my favourite cities in the world. But I am sure they are having a great time too and I look forward to seeing their pictures of the beauties of nature. Even so, I am a firm believer in the superiority of culture over nature!

Herakles' city

Otherwise known as Iraklion, Crete and the Castello hotel, which is a lovely hotel but stands at the junction of about 5 roads and Cretan motor-cyclists are very, very loud. Today was a fairly quiet day after the Greek tragedy class. Everyone seemed a little tired and we mostly flopped around the hotel waiting to cach our taxis to the airport where our days of taking everything on to the plane came to an end as they made us check our bags, but everyone got theirs back, and quickly after the flight The plane was more of a planelet, about the size of the puddle-jumpers from CLT to AVL (which I think they have now discontinued!) and caused some slight consternation, especially as it was propeller-driven and not in its first flush of youth, but it got us there without incident and we dispersed to our rooms once we reached the hotel. I had an interesting meal in a place where the menu was all in Greek and which clearly doesn't get many foreigners (and to be honest, doesn't seem as though it terribly wants to repeat the experience, since they were polite but not as thrilled to see me as I felt they rightly should be!)Tomorrow we head for Knossos.

Rhodes

I'm sure there's lots of puns to be made on Rhodes and roads but I am too tired after a vast and Epicurean meal which Jane and Tom and I had at Ta Koupia, said by the London Guardian to be one of the world's top 10 restaurants. I have never eaten so much in my life and I have totally negated all the exercise I got from climbing up the Acropolis of Rhodes this morning and the clock tower this afternoon...We ate outside in a lovely garden next to a pond which emitted recorded frog-noises every half hour or so - decidedly strange, since everything else was very elegant.

Yesterday we visited Patmos for a morning to see the Cave of the Apocalypse where St John had his REvelation, thence to Rhodes by catamaran which was fun and fast and not good for those who suffer from motion sickness. Rhodes is a pretty place but quite full of English tourists who embarrass me but don't seem to make an impression on anyone else in our group, so I'm learning to live with it. I'm going to waddle up the stairs to bed now...

Patmos and Rhodes beckon

tomorrow early, oh woe, since I for one have become very used to laid-back island life on Samos and like it very much indeed. Today was rather amazing as we went to see Eupalinus' tunnel and I ran in to my former ancient history tutor from my undergraduate days in Oxford and her husband, so we got a nice picture of the 3 academic "generations" of Miriam, myself and my students. Then in the afternoon I got the bus to the temple of Hera, which was absolutely massive - I'm not surprised that Herodotus was so impressed by it because even in ruins, it's vast and you can get a good sense of the sheer ambition that went into creating it.

Samos seems even fuller of cats than the other islands. At our hotel there is a charming tabby whose leg was evidently broken at some point and healed all crooked, but it has really been a good career move for him since everyone goes out of their way to give him a little something from their plates and he is notably more prosperous than any of his fellows.

XAIPETE from Samos

We are in Pythagoreio, birthplace of the theorem man, and it is a very pretty little seaside town full of cats, which pleases me very much, although they are rather fond of fighting and it is very loud at times. I have just returned from a very fun cruise round the bay where they fed us pork chops, fish, Greek salad, octopus and - most exotically - sea urchin and played us Greek music and someone somwhere has a rather embarrassing video of me trying to dance Greekly...

farewell to Chios

Writing in haste some 30 minutes before we must gather our ever-expanding luggage and head from the hotel down to the port to catch the boat to Samos this evening.In a supremely Hellenic display, the departure time of the ferry has gone in 2 days from 3 to 5 to 6 pm, so Zeus only knows when it really will set sail tonight. Hoever, if the voyage was as lovely as that from Lesbos to Chios it will be no hardship to sail by moonlight to the nextisland.

Prayers of thanks to Asclepius (the god of healing)and to the splendid and apparently free Greek health care system (socialised medicine RULES!) today as several of our number were a little sick - nothing at all out of the ordinary for this part of the world - but thanks to a kindly English-speaking doctor have been given medicine and will be absolutely fine, so let no one worry about this!

Not sure I can stand the Greek rap in here a moment longer, so kallispera for now.

love from chios!

hello everyone!! wow! we are currently enjoying island hopping around Greece!! we are in chios, which is similar to lesvos, the island we were just on, but has it's own charm as well! i have learned several things since only being gone a very short time. here they go....cars do NOT yield to people here!! watch out when you step in the road!!! greece has the best food ever!! one of the best things in life is to watch the sun set over the aegean sea!! clean water should not be taken for granted! also..i may really be greek...they have no set times, they say they will be somewhere at five, and it may be five or 5:30 or later...just whenever they get around to it! also..they look cheese and wine! hahaha....and fresh fish!!...also i have brown eyes and hair just as they do! haha....but the group is having a great time, we've all been happy to take some time to rest in between our grand adventures and just learn as much as we can soak in about the culture and Greek people! I will end short, since we are in an extremely social internet cafe, which they all seem to be here, so it's kind of hard to think! Lastly, what I have learned so far is that God's beauty is so apparent in this part of the world, just as it is in the simple things in life back at home, such as all my loved ones I so dearly miss!! love to you all!!

Chios!

Hey everyone!
Today were on the island of Chios, in the city of Chios in Greece. We got here yesterday night by ferry and experienced some culture on the boat! We encountered gypsys and they almost stole my purse and kelly's camera! yikeeess! It was the scariest thing that has happened to me in a long time. It was very sad though because when Kelly and I were looking through her pictures, Ally yelled our names and I looked over and saw this little boy, literally, 2 inches away from me. He was so scary! He was extremely quiet and I did not even hear him creep up. Ally said he had been there for awhile. He ran away once I grabbed for my purse though. That was quite a shock and my sense of security is GONE! At least for now anyway. Today in Chios, we got to see two old churches which was pretty cool and listen to 70's/80 music on the public bus on the way back to the town from the churches. We also almost missed the last bus going back to chios of the day after the churches! We ordered three pizzas from a restaurant with Gus as the owner. He was really great and spoke great english. The bus was scheduled to leave in 3 minutes after we received our 2 large pizzas. I ran down the hill with water in one hand and my pizza in the other while pizza was flying all over my white shirt. (That one will be thrown away mom. lol!)It was really fun and quite hecktic. I always say it's better to be rushed and have a story than not a story at all. Or maybe I just made that up.. not sure but it sounds good to me. Everyone in our group is getting sick and I feel soo bad for them. I really hope they feel better soon because I miss having our whole group. Tomorrow we will be leaving Chios and going to Samos! talk to you guys soon! love you all!

Lesbos, Greece

Kalispera!
That means good evening. Its about 8:45pm here and about 1:45pm in NC. I still think that's crazy. Anyway yesterday we arrived in Mytilini, Lesbos, Greece from Canakkale, Turkey by public ferry. Yesterday we got to see Pergamon, the first hospital ever, and the first brick building ever(a temple for the egyptian gods). It was really fascinating. Today we had a free day here and it was very relaxing. We got up a little late and went to eat at this beautiful restaurant outside overlooking the Aegean sea for lunch. I feel so spoiled. Sarah and Kelly and I tried to go shopping and buy some greek clothes, but apparently the whole town shuts down from 2-5pm for a siesta. They never opened back up!! We walked around a bit and practiced our Greek. I know thank-you, please, hello and goodbye in Greek already. I am really picking up these different languages quickly. One of the challenges here is the completely different alphabet. In Turkey at least they had the same letters! The scenery is so breathtaking here. One of my favorite things about this area is that it is a tiny town. Most of the streets are cobblestone streets and the houses look like they are from an old movie. This area is so enchanting and I really love it. I do miss everyone at home a LOT though. I can't wait to come back to NC and see everyone. I have been able to get some great presents. Shopping is great here. Even though I never doubted it wouldn't be. Although you can't barter in Greece like you can in Turkey, it seems as if the clothes and items are cheaper here. I have yet to drink some ouzo, but I am sure it will be an experience when I do. Another great thing here and in Turkey too is the animals! I have seen SO many cats and dogs running around. I guess they are homeless but they are so friendly. Many of them are skinny and it is sad to see that but Kelly, Sarah and I have been able to sneak some food to them recently. We have been naming the dogs because we see the same ones running around the streets of Lesbos. I think I have more pictures of dogs and cats than I do of Troy and the Blue Mosque! haha. Not just kidding. I must get going to work some more in my journal and read some of my math homework tomorrow. Tomorrow evening we will be going to another island by ferry in Greece called Chios. I have a feeling that this location will be just as beautiful. Talk to you soon! I love you all!

Sapphotastic!

Hooray for Greek keyboards which have Greek but under the English letters and are much easier to negotiate.

I am typing in a cafe some 20 yards from the sea on the harbour of Mytilene in Lesbos. Lots of hotels/squares/shops called after Sappho, which is only right and proper - so far Alcaeus and Pittacus have only got slightly manky streets named after them! In an hour's time I am off to Skala Eressos to explore Sappho's birthplace and see how the tradition lives on. I am slightly nervous because there is only one bus and I will have to return tomorrow morning at 6.15 am (!) and I hope very much that all will be well with our group during their much-needed day off. We are generally well but tired and I for one am happy to have a couple of days off from classwork, much as I love it. Yesterday I taught a class on Greek lyric poetry on the ferry which I managed, but it was not ideal!

It is very good to be back in Greece. More soon.

Last night in İstanbul

And much as İ love Greece İ am going to be really sad when we leave Turkey on Tuesday evening - it really has been a great start to the trip. Highlight of today was definitely going to a 300-year old hamam (Turkish bath)where the women and men were borne off ın separate directions and we went into a huge marble-lined room full of arches and steam - I could see neither with my glasses on or off - and we were squeezed and pummelled and slid all over the slıppery marble floors and doused with hot and cold water alternately. We emerged pink and gleaming and wıth a great sense of well-being. Tomorrow to Troy...

Saturday nıght

And some Turkısh football team is very triumphant and very loud. After a whole lot of messing around and occasional cursing İ managed to get into this account via an ancient keyboard half of whose letters are rubbed away and some of whose letters do not exist ın English but no matter. İstanbul is a wonderful city, part western part Muslim, and full of interesting sights and people. Hearıng the call to prayer 5X a day really makes you feel that you are ın a foreign country. I was last here over 20 years ago and ıt has become much bigger and more prosperous but still surprisıngly friendly for a big city. Highlights of the day for me were - in high culture - seeing the remains of a bear 400000 years old and the bits and pieces Schliemann found and Troy and left in Turkey rather than distributing round his friends and in slightly less high culture buying a beautiful sleek black reversible suede/leather jacket in the grand bazaar. Nikole if you are reading this, you will like it very much...

In Turkeyyyy!!!!

It ıs now day 3 ın Istanbul and Kelly and Amanda (me) are bloggıng together, just so you know. We went to the Basilica Cıstern, the Egyptian Market, and Istanbul Archeological Museum, and the Grand Bazaar. The Cıstern was so amazıng. It was buılt ın 1450 BC and ıs now deep under ground. It was very cold down there! The Egyptian Market was very busy. We sat on tıny stools on the street and ate lamb kabobs for lunch. We then saw skeletons of ancıent people at the Museum. We fınıshed today's adventures by barganıng at the 4000 shops ın the Grand Bazaar. Kelly dıd a great job wıth her poker face! haha. They had beautıful sılk and cashmere pashmına scarfs. Our roommate (sarah) and Amanda (me) got some beautıful ones. They had theır fırst epıc class and ıt was very ınterestıng. We are now lookıng forward to the turkısh bath (wıth a possıbılıty of a massage :)) and the prıvate cruıse boat tomorrow! Love to you all!!! Amanda and Kelly!xoxox

Arrived in Istanbul

Well, we have arrived safely in Istanbul and had our first full day of sight-seeing. We visited the hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Aya Sofia this morning. After lunch, we went to the Topkapl Palace. We got back to the hotel around 5:30 pm and had our History of Science and Math class until dinner time at 7:30. Everyone is now enjoying free time until curfew at midnight.

We have a little trouble with using the internet here. It seems even my blogpage directions are automatically translated into Turkish and I can't figure out how to change them. So, I may not be able to upload pictures yet, but will keep trying. Hope everyone is well back home!

On not knowing (modern) Greek

Note the Virginia Woolf reference - clearly I have way too many literary pretensions! Seriously, though, I have been resurrecting my modern Greek vocabulary, slowly and painfully, and sincerely hope that it will come back to me the moment I set foot on Greek soil. It's the romance of fragments, I guess - that just as somehow the Parthenon looks romantic and impressive, all bare and part-ruined, and we'd probably be appalled at the gaudy, excessively painted building that the 5th century Athenians created and saw every day, the same is true of mapping ancient Greek onto modern Greek - that somehow communication just wouldn't be as fun if I had a really sound knowledge of modern Greek syntax...

I am longing to be gone now - I have acquired my first digital camera, a cell phone and an MP3 player - never have I been so hi-tech on a trip, being a rather primitive sort of traveller by inclination, so this is quite a new departure for me in many ways...

All ready to go!

I am so excited about heading over seas! I have gotten a new backpack that will be perfect for a carry on and I am still able to stay under the weight limit with my other suit case. At first, I have to admit it thought it would be impossible for me, personally, to stay under the weight limit, but with a little compression, I was able to fit in all the stuff I need. The liquid requirements are a little difficult, but I guess I will be able to manage. I can't wait to see new buildings and take tons of pictures and have fun with this great group of people. My camera is ready. Two more days!!!

Anyone need answers to travel questions?

Hi all,
I am looking forward to traveling with the group. Jane (Professor Hartsfield) and I have some experiences traveling in Europe. If I/we can answer any questions please do not hesitate to ask.
It should be fun!

Getting ready to leave

I am setting up a blog for the faculty and students to use to record thoughts, feelings, and pictures about the trip. If you want to participate, please email me (Jane Hartsfield) and I will add you as an author.