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!