Finals!!

Hello everyone! Hope you are all doing well! I hear mostly everyone got some snow this past week! YAY!!! This up coming week are finals for me...yay. But on a bright note my dad will be coming out to see me on Wednesday and we will be going to France on Friday until the 23rd. So sadly enough this will probably be my last blog because I will be without computer access.

This past weekend was mostly studying, but with a few highlights. On Thursday for history class we got to go to the British Archeological School and got to actually touch the artifacts! It was a lot of fun, there were cycladic pieces, amphora handles, cups still decorated with Herakles and other designs, and even a spartan helmet and spear head. We had fun to say the least. That night we had our group toga Christmas party which was a fun 30mins. of my life. Then I just hung out with other people for the rest of the night.

Friday I studied all day. At night we went to the Christmas tree lighting. It was cool they had fireworks! I sort of have a video, my camera hates to focus. Then after the lighting they had a free concert which was pretty good. They sung contemporary music from U2, Micheal Jackson, Kings of Leon, Aba. We were dancing and singing and got video taped by a tv camera. (we probably looked like stupid Americans..oh well)


Saturday I decided to get out and went to Sounion where the Temple of Poseidon is. Right when we got on the bus to go it started raining, but we thought it would stop because it was a 2 hour bus ride. Oh no, it got heavier. It was still fun, but we only stayed roughly 10mins on the site before we had to go find some warmth. Naturally right as we are ready to leave it stops raining. It figures, but it was starting to get dark and cold so we had enough.

Sunday is another study day before my art final tomorrow followed by my history final on Tuesday. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I hope everyone back home is hanging in there with their finals and all. Can't wait to see everyone only a few more weeks and I will be home! Miss you and love you!

'Ello Luv!

Hello everyone! Hope everyone is doing well, and getting ready for a wonderful Christmas!!! This past week/weekend I went to London, England! I decided to travel a little bit out of my Greece and Italy area. We left Wednesday night and spent the rest of the week there and left on Sunday morning.


Thursday we went to the London tower which is the picture above. It was really neat to see inside, plus we got a tour which helped. We went into the Royal Jewels museum which showed the magnificent jewels the royalty wore, such as their crowns, scepters, rings, etc. The jewels were massive, I almost didn't believe they were real because they looked almost fake. We also went in a museum that was about Henry VIII which had a bunch of his armor and warfare artifacts. We then crossed the London Tower Bridge to go see the London Bridge (Which is not falling down.) The London Tower Bridge is really cool and the London Bridge is a little disappointing, but still cool to see. We were very cold that day so we went back to warm up. That night we went to a pub which was nice and chill and relaxing.

Friday we went on a walking tower to see all the major attractions. We saw the clock tower, West Minster, Parliament, Buckingham Palace. And at Buckingham Palace when we were there, they had the changing of the guard which was really cool. The queen nor the princes were home, but that is okay. After the tour we went to get fish and chips at a pub which is the picture above. And for not being a fish person it was amazing! I ate it all up. Right as we were walking back to the flat with our full bellies, the girls we stayed with told us to turn around because we were going shopping. We went to this huge market place. It was massive! They had everything from touristy things, to homemade trinkets, to tattoos and piercings. It was a sight to see. Once it started to close we decided to head back. We all were going to go out to a club, but one of the girls didn't want to go so I stayed back to hang out with her. Naturally after 15min of playing cards, I was so tired. I went straight to sleep.

Saturday was our day to go see a play or musical. We wanted to see Les Misrables, but the tickets were sold out. So we settled for Chicago. It was amazing!! The performance was phenominal and the singing was excellent! I loved it so much! Earlier that day we went to Platform 9 3/4 which was a disappointment, but oh well. We then went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is the church of England. It was really pretty and massive. You could also climb the dome like in St. Peter's, but we didn't. After Chicago, we packed up and got some sleep before our flight.

Sunday we flew back to Athens which took a big chunk of our day. All I did when I got back was some homework, unpacked, and went to bed. I'm still recouping even though it is Tuesday. But I only have a few papers and I will be close to done with the semester, which is sad, but happy to be done with classes. Can't wait to see everyone soon, have a wonderful rest of the week! Love you and miss you!

Thanksgiving Break!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving break with lots of turkey and pie! We had a lovely Thanksgiving Break traveling around the Peloponnese. We started our journey on Thanksgiving day and went to the Corinth Canal, where you could bungy jump off of, unfortunately it was closed when we were there. We then stopped at the Epidavros theater and saw the temple of the god of medicine, Asclepius, along with the stadium. The theater was pretty cool with acoustics that can be heard all the way to the top of the theater. We did test this by dropping a coin. We ended our day with Nafpoli, it was a really quaint little town. I didn't go swimming b/c it was a bit cold, but I did climb the fortress/castle on the top of the acropolis. It had an amazing view, especially during sunset(pic). We had our Thanksgiving meal that night at the hotel. They made three turkeys for us, but the meat was a bit dry and the stuffing inside was rice and ground beef which looked kinda gross. We had Greek salad, potatoes, and then flan for dessert. Some of us weren't that satisfied so we went to a Gelateri for gelato which was amazing and made up for the dessert at least.

Friday we were back on the bus heading to Mycenae for the morning. It is an ancient city of ruins of the Mycenaean people. It had a graves inside its walls, along with a palace in the center. It was very neat to see and learn. We did go into the museum they had and saw some of the replica items that were buried with the dead and some other pots and inscriptions. We were back on the bus after an hour or so and headed to Sparta. (This is Sparta!!) There really isn't much in Sparta, not even paraphernalia of the movie 300. But Robert, history prof., took us to where he is excavating, the theater(pic.) which was really cool to see and the view was spectacular. However, the Spartans were obsessed with training males and sending them to war that they had little time to reproduce so they ceased to exist b/c they forgot to keep reproducing, which I thought was kind of funny. From Sparta we headed up to Olympia for dinner and the night. Dinner did make up for Thanksgiving, it was really good. We stayed in and watched movies because we don't have tvs in Athens.

Saturday was an exploring of Olympia. First we went to an Olympic museum that described the first Olympics that existed. It was very interesting. We then went to the ruins, where we saw the Temple of Hera, some treasuries, the stadium, the Temple of Zeus, and the gymnasium. The temple of Zeus (pic) was huge, or at least what was left of it. We did go to the museum which had some statues and artifacts found at the site. We were free for the day after the museum and a few of us went to a jewelry place that had 50% off items (score). Most of us just chilled and did homework until dinner. After dinner in our room we had a Harry Potter party with 13 people on 3 beds. It was almost half of our group. It was a blast, we watched Harry Potter IV until our tv cut out towards the end of the movie.

Sunday was a long day on a bus, driving back to Athens. It took 5 hours, which wasn't that long compared to the 7 hours I'm used to in order to get to Minnesota or the 8 hours to Aurora, IL. Now I am just getting some odds and ends done before I go for my trip to London on Wednesday! I can't believe December is two days away, but I can't wait to see you all soon! Miss you and love you all! Keep well!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAH!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOAH-MAN!!! This post is dedicated to my little nephew Noah, who turns one year old today! I wish I could've been at his party in Omaha, but from what I heard he had a great time with family and friends. And made his mommy feed him his cake like a little prince! (I wish I could have seen that, I bet he was so cute!) I know he will have a fabulous day seeing his family in New Ulm for Thanksgiving and will have a grand time eating the big turkey feast! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with family and friends! Love you all with many thanks and blessings!!

A weekend in Athens

So hopefully everyone had a wonderful weekend and ready for the big turkey day!! I wish I could have turkey, but hey I'm in Greece so I really can't complain. hehe. I at least want to hear what everyone did for Thanksgiving when you get the chance.

This past weekend, I stayed in Athens. We have already seen most of the museums and acropolis for our classes, so we decided to see the shopping aspect of Athens! ;) On Thursday a group of us went to New Moon, which was good, and I will not trail on with it since most don't want to hear it or are big fans and want to discuss. So on Friday we went shopping and I got a custom made pair of sandals that actually fit!! Imagine that, and they were not too expensive which was nice. That was my big purchase on Friday.

On Saturday a small group of us went to a Christmas festival, which was really exciting when we heard about it. But it was a little anti-climatic when it was mostly based for kids aging 10 and under, and I know I didn't fit in that age class anymore. So we wandered around there for a bit, looked at the shops and the quickly melting ice skating rink(pic above), while listening to Greek Christmas music. It was enjoyable. Although, I think the best part was on the walk to find it we past this park that had a jungle gym and a grass area to play soccer, like a regular park. But then off to the side were tanks, fighter planes, and helicopters that kids were climbing on.(pics below) It was quite a contrast, but was pretty awesome! I almost joined the kids climbing on it, again it was the age thing that stopped me. :)

On our way back we met with our directors randomly and they took us to a champagne and sparkling wine tasting convention. It was in a nice fancy hotel and we had to have a secret password to get our glasses. Once we went around it was so much fun! However, some people were kind of mad we were there because they knew we were not going to buy anything and were just there for the drinks. But they were good drinks and all I need was 5 tastes before I was tipsy. (Don't worry I didn't do anything completely embarrassing.)

Sunday was a homework day, and I had to attend a Greek Orthodox service for my Theology class. It was interesting, a lot of sitting, standing, sitting, and standing again. But was very interesting to attend.

So far school sucks with all the homework and projects, but they are slowly getting crossed off the list. I hope school is going well for all that are still attending. And I hope that everyone has a blessed and thankful Thanksgiving Day celebrated with family, friends, and loved ones. Happy Thanksgiving!! (save some pumpkin pie for me!!)

Delphi

I hope everyone had a great weekend and so far a fabulous week. School is going as well as it can, homework is of course a pain when all you want to do is go and explore Greece. But I am almost done with some classes and I am getting super excited for Thanksgiving!!!

This past weekend we went to Delphi. We left early on Saturday for a three hour bus ride, which was not that horrible. We arrived in Delphi around noon and had lunch. From the picture above you can see that there is no town around the ruins. The town is off to the right about a mile or so and is named Delphi. However, archeologists are told that there was a town built somewhere near the ruins which is the true town of Delphi, but because of the mountains and the terrain it does not seem possible. But Robert our history professor took us to the lower sanctuary, which in the picture is off to the left and lower. There they had treasuries, temple of Athena, and a gymnasium. All were really cool to see even though there was not much left. We called it a day by 2:30pm and went to our hotel, which had an amazing view, and decided to walk around the town. Sadly, everything was closed so we didn't wander for too long. I did some homework and took a nap until dinner and then played some games after dinner and then called it a night.

On Sunday, was when we climbed up to the higher sanctuary where the temple of Apollo resided, the Athenian treasury was there, some other treasuries, a theatre, and the stadium was at the very top. I nearly died hiking up it, but what else is new. The view was spectacular, and the picture above is on the hike back down from the stadium with the theatre in the foreground, then the temple of Apollo behind it, and the Athenian treasury is the small square building. The mountains everywhere just added to the gloriousness.

We went to the museum there which had a lot of artifacts from the sanctuaries. We then started making the trip home, but we stopped at a monastery, St. Luke (not the famous St. Luke), which was built with the most beautiful scenery. Honestly, these monks sure no how to pick'em. One of my classmates said she wouldn't mind becoming a monk with view a like that. We made it back to Athens by 4pm so we had plenty of time to make a cake for my roommate, Brita, who's birthday it was. We made her dinner and bought a bottle of wine for her, so I think she had a good birthday.

Like I said this week has been filled with homework and busyness. However, tomorrow I am planning on seeing New Moon (twilight) with some friends and before that ordering pizza. So it will be a relaxing start for the weekend. Hope you all are doing well and getting better if you have been sick or hurt. I miss you all so much, especially during this time of year. I love you all!!

Videos

Here are some videos!! One is from the marathon that I posted earlier and the other is some soldiers that are marching, training to be guards that where the funny looking outfits with the puff balls on the shoes and tights and kilt-ish skirts. I'm sorry the camera work is not that steady or great, but I was very tired when I took these videos. Hope you enjoy!