Archbishop of Greece has died

From the article http://news.ert.gr/en/c/1/30473.asp:

Late Archbishop Christodoulos, who breathed his last on Monday dawn after a seven-month battle with cancer, will receive a funeral befitting a head of state at Athens’ First Cemetery on coming Thursday. Church bells have been tolling since early in the morning, while flags in public buildings and schools have been flying at half mast throughout Greece. Christodoulos’ mortal remains have been lying in state at the Athens Cathedral. A joint ministerial decision singed by the Ministers of Interior, Finance, Health, Education and National Defence, declared a four-day period of national mourning, while the day of his funeral all public agencies and schools will remain closed. A vote will take place on Thursday, 7 February to decide on Christodoulos’ succession.

I will try to go to the funeral, if possible. Most likely our classes will be canceled that day, as every place of business in Greece will be shut down because of this sad occasion. The cemetery where he will rest is actually right behind our apartment, across the street. For now, the body is being laid out for viewing at the church in Syntagma Square (a 15 minute or so walk from my place).

The Greek Orthodox Church

I had my first experience of a Greek Orthodox church service IN GREECE this morning. (Mike and I were not able to go at all when we were here in 2005 due to unforeseen complications that arose....; I didn't go the first weekend I was here because someone told me service was at 6:30am [which it wasn't]; and this past weekend I was in Santorini [where we were actually supposed to visit a Monastery, but that got canceled because the monks were not on the island]) Aside from all of my excuses, I truly enjoyed the church experience here in Greece. I went to a relatively big church, which was very beautiful! The service started at 10:15am (and I showed up around 10:30... like a typical Greek). I walked in, kissed an icon and the Gospel, lit a candle, and sat down at the left side of the church. About halfway through the service, I was looking around and wondering why there seemed to be not too many men in church. I was sitting around all women (young and old) and I didn't see any men (except those who were with their families). But then, I noticed on the RIGHT side of the church (across the center aisle) that that is where all the men were sitting. Apparently the men are supposed to sit on the right side and the women on the left, but I didn't know that! It's not like that in America, as much as my experiences have shown me... The only time I've noticed the two genders split on either side is when I visited the monastery in Port Huron, MI, so I guess it wasn't that surprising--I was just not expecting it. I was going to go up and receive Communion when it was time, but I saw only some parents going up there with their young children, nobody else went up to receive, and Communion was over. I was confused. Next week I will try either to sneak up at the end, or try out another ekklisia (church) to experience as many different Greek Orthodox churches as possible!

After church, I stopped by a mini-market and bought some eggs and butter, and made myself some scrambled eggs with ham and cheese for brunch, along with an apple, banana, bread and jelly, orange juice, and chocolate milk. It was the most American thing I've eaten so far (usually eating souvlaki, gyros, spanakopita [spinach pie], tyropita [cheese pie], and zambonotyropita [ham and cheese pie]), and I've been craving eating eggs ever since I left the States. I suppose another "American" food I've had here in Greece is pizza, but Greeks eat pizza, so it's ok. :) We all found this really awesome pizza place.... soooo gooood... soo cheesey.... I've also been craving smoothies... something I so dearly miss drinking, like I used to 2-3 times a week.

Yesterday, I met up with my friend Ariste from the University of Michigan, who is also studying in Athens this semester (she is in Greece from Sept. '07 until May '08). It was so nice seeing here and catching up! We met up by the Olympic Stadium, and walked to a nice café and got some good (expensive) hot chocolate and talked for like 3 hours. Then we met up with my 3 roommates at this really nice (inexpensive) taverna, called Kosta's. That place is soooo good. They have excellent chicken, beef, meatballs, spaghetti, fries, bread, wine... I love it. A bunch of us go there like every 3 or so days. After dinner, I ended up back at Ariste's place and we watched some episodes of The Office, Season 2 on DVD... hehe... poli thavma!

I got sick this weekend.... I am starting to feel better, as my partial cold is starting to go away. It only started late Friday because I was walking around outside all day and the temperature was pretty cold. So Friday night I stayed in instead of going out to the bar/club with all my fellow study abroad-ers, and slept for 11 hours. I woke up feeling better, and today I'm taking it easy... staying in, doing some Greek homework, and doing some reading for my other classes.

MANNY OUT!

Greek has begun!

1.26.08 – Saturday

Life has been good here in Greece…. This week back in Athens after the Santorini trip has been fun! We’ve had a good amount of classes to attend, and finally my new Greek class started! It is the Third Level of Accelerated Greek, and it fits my needs perfectly. In the class consists of me, 2 other guys, and the teacher. The 2 other guys are actually Catholic priests from Poland studying Greek because their bishop has them serving in a church on the Greek island of Crete starting after Pascha this year. The class is taught only in Greek (the teacher doesn’t speak English at all, unless I completely don’t understand something, or if she herself cannot describe a Greek word with other Greek words) and one of the Polish priests does not speak any English, only Polish and a little bit of Greek, and the other Polish priest speaks a decent amount of English, Polish, and Greek a little better than I do. The Athens Centre director helped me find a class, so I joined it (but it had already started a week beforehand). The teacher is pretty laid-back; she is even helping me work this class’s schedule around my other classes. This class is supposed to meet everyday Monday through Friday for 3 hours, but my other schedule doesn’t allow me to meet for all 3 hours any day except for Friday. I’ve only had the class for 3 days as of now, and I already feel myself speaking better. It helps a lot being completely immersed in the language for 3 straight hours!

My other classes are pretty good so far… my Byzantine history teacher, John, is pretty awesome; he’s a very interesting speaker. He reminds me a lot of my 10^th grade American History teacher, Mr. George, in that he knows a heck of a lot about the subject he teaches, he presents it in a way that keeps you interested (even though you may not necessarily care about the subject), and he has a lot of “catch phrases”, i.e. “simply put”, “interestingly enough”, “at the end of the day”…. where as Mr. George would say things like “guys”, “actually”, “literally”… they both say these things an incredibly ridiculous amount of times during their lecture periods, both as much for tally-mark proportions. John also showed us a clip of the movie Gladiator the other day because he was talking about the Roman Empire and their war techniques… pretty awesome! My Archaeology class is good, and the instructor isn’t too bland, but I’m just not that interested in archaeology. Either way, it’s not a bad class. Finally my two philosophy classes (each taught by the same professor) are probably going to get better, but as of now, the prof likes to talk in circles and forget what he’s talking about, or forget the main point of the days lecture sometimes. He’s very smart though—knows a lot about philosophy. I feel that I will learn a lot from him – if he gets his act straightened up.

Yesterday (Friday), none of my fellow students had any class except me, because of that new Greek class I’m taking, at 11am. So I woke up relatively early and went to the farmer’s market (laiki agora) that’s just passed the square where my apartment is. Got some cheap apples and bananas…. mmmmmmmm good stuff. After class me and this other guy Pat ventured into the “downtown” area of Athens via the bus system, and we checked out the University of Athens. Pretty cool stuff. We also found this awesome Gelato place. Did you know that the Pizza Hut we found in Greece is actually really nice—like a fancy Italian restaurant??? It really surprised us; people were wearing suits and nice clothes! We’ll have to go eat there some day. Anyway, that’s enough update for now…

MANNY OUT

Santorini

I've returned to Athens from a 3.5 day weekend on the island of Santorini. It was amazing! It's actually the 2nd time that I've been there, and the 1st time I got to see the sun while I was there! We stayed in Fira, went to the Red Beach and Black Beach, visited the ancient city of Thira, swam in the Aegina, swam in the hot springs, visited the central Santorinian Volcano, taste-tested some wine at two wineries, and went to a couple museums (one in place of seeing Akrotiri because that site is currently closed to do the excavators' roof collapsing).

In all, it was very beautiful, and an amazing trip.

I've uploaded pictures of the trip, too:

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2332048&l=d3797&id=2232176

KODAK GALLERY: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.85wbrxz9&x=0&y=-2atj5k


I also added some more photos from when we visited the Stoa and Ancient Agora in Athens last week......

FACEBOOK: http://umichigan.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2333636&l=8d0ef&id=2232176

KODAK GALLERY (I added the pics to the original Athens album): http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.5ditwdol&x=0&y=psvg9u

***PLEASE TAKE NOTE WHEN COPYING AND PASTING THE LINK.... The link may extend passed what you can see... so you keep highlighting to the right as far as possible before copying***

upcoming weekend trip!

That intensive Greek class that I wanted to take will not exist now, apparently. There were only 2 people who signed up for it (I was one of them) and I guess they just did not find a teacher for it. The next step now is to talk to the Athens Centre director and see if there is anything else I can do, but I'll do that when we get back from our Santorini trip.

Speaking of which, we leave for this trip tomorrow at 6:15AM (which i'm not too happy about) on a bus, and then we're going on a ferry boat trip which takes 7 hours... but I'll probably be sleeping! But the trip sounds amazing.... even the hotels we're staying in sounds most excellent :) We're there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We'll be getting back a little after midnight, late Monday night/early Tuesday morning via ferry again.

I just woke up from a mandated-by-Greek-Law siesta that was most amazing.... I love this country! :)

Time for a shower, dinner, and class.

- Manny

Classes have started!

So, classes have started and are now in full swing! The 5 classes I am taking are: Arts & Archaeology, Byzantine History, 2 Philosophy classes, and Modern Greek Language & Culture. They all seem really interesting, and so far the professors seem not too shabby. My Greek language course is actually a "101" beginners class that all the 24 students in my group are in. It is great for 22 of them, but me and another girl (Safia, from U-M) need to take a more advanced class (she has only taken 1 semester of Greek at Michigan, and I have taken 5). Right now, we don't know if we'll be able to take one because the Athens Centre doesn't know who is going to teach it yet (I'm planning on taking the Intensive Level III class), and class is supposed to start tomorrow. So who knows! I want to take a more advanced class so I can improve my Greek communication skills! That's one of my biggest goals as I am studying and living in Greece for these 4 months... (besides eating like a Greek, sleeping like a Greek, and basically living like a Greek!)

The weather has been relatively decent (for this part of the world, of course).... it's usually between the mid-40s and mid-50s Fahrenheit during daylight hours, and about 5-8 degrees cooler at night. It hasn't really been too windy, except 1 or 2 days. Yesterday it rained for like 45 minutes around 10AM and it was relatively cold, but today it is 61F and barely no clouds... most excellent.

The sunsets are amazing here, too... We have a pretty good view from our apartment. I'll try and get some pics up when I take some more!!


Kalispera for now!

here are two PICTURES links!

I will have to sources of websites for pictures: Facebook.com and Kodak Gallery

I will post the links of any new albums on this blog :)

FACEBOOK: http://umichigan.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2329079&l=3ba98&id=2232176

KODAK GALLERY:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.5ditwdol&x=0&y=psvg9u


***PLEASE TAKE NOTE WHEN COPYING AND PASTING THE LINK.... The link may extend passed what you can see... so you keep highlighting to the right as far as possible before copying***


-Manny

2 days of trekking in Athens...

Thursday, January 10, 2008 – 2:57AM

Now that I’ve settled into my Athenian apartment and such, I’ve been able to do some sight seeing within the Athens city limits. My study abroad program buddies and I walked around these past two days and saw some crazy things—like the pack of stray dogs that followed us home… and the young boy who played accordion and little girl who swung a slimy toy rat around and asked for money and in return gave us packages of Kleenex tissues… and the ridiculous-driving cars and mopeds/motorcycles who clearly obey no traffic laws (if there even ARE any traffic laws in this city!).

One (possibly unfortunate, for you) thing is that I did not take any pictures of anything these past two days as we trekked around Athens. My reason for that is what I saw reminded me 100% of what my brother Mike and I discovered nearly 3 years ago when he and I traveled to Athens and other parts of Greece for Spring Break of my senior year of high school. So if you would like to see Athens through pictures that I (or my bro) took, check out his website at KotsisSkiClub.com and click on Other Pics & Videos, Pics, 2005, and find the Greece trip! Honestly, the city looks exactly the same as I’ve seen it on January 10, 2008 as I did on March 27, 2005, with the sole exception of seeing random Christmas or Xristouyenna decorations around the Syntagma area that are in the process of being taken down. Classic slow Greeks, eh? It was cool walking around and noting all the landmarks that I’ve personally seen before, such as Hotel Omega which Mike and I stayed at in 2005, the farmer’s market, the Temple of Zeus, the Parliament Building, the National Gardens, the Olympic Stadium, Pangrati, Monasteraki, Plaka, Syntagma, Mets, among others. Later on the trip for our classes, we will be going to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon and also to the Archaeological Museum (which Mike and I both did, but I will take my camera with me and theoretically remember more things that they teach us, and caption the pictures).

For our group, we are all staying in 3 different apartment buildings. Four guys are in one room in an apartment on Stillponos Street (mine), all the girls are in 4 rooms in an apartment a little farther up on Stillponos Street and closer to the Athens Centre (where our classes will be), and the remaining four guys are in another apartment that is relatively a lot farther away on Eufranoros Street. Yesterday we stopped by the other guys’ apartment, and it is freakin AMAZING, compared to our apartment room and what the girls say theirs is like. The other guys have a TV, a living room, couches, chairs, a kitchen table, other chairs, and they are able to steal wireless internet from within their apartment! None of the other apartments our group is in has ANY of these things! They got lucky, and we all got the shaft :( Either way, I am posting pictures of my (shabby?) apartment building and of the Athens Centre sometime today.

Later today we will be having our first classes of the term: Modern Greek Culture & Language at 3:15PM followed by Byzantine History at 5:30PM. They should be interesting… I’ll report on that another day; for now, I sleep!

MANNY OUT

Manny has arrived in Greece!

Tuesday, January 08, 2008 – 12:23AM (Athens time—7 hours later than Eastern Time)

So, I’ve made it to Greece, in one piece, with both of my suitcases AND my carryon! Hurray! The first flight at 3:45PM EST on Sunday went well (I got lucky and was in the Emergency Exit row [extra leg space] AND a window seat!!), but I don’t remember it much because I was passed out for about 6 of the 7 hours of it (not sleeping much the night before paid off, considering I’m now well adjusted to the Athens time zone) …I don’t remember everything from that first flight experience …except the stupid security at Detroit’s Metro Airport decided to confiscate my Simpsons Duff “Beer” Energy Drink that I had in my carryon bag because you can’t bring liquids with you, and I was upset because I had just stuck it in there between getting out of the car after being dropped off by Mom, Dad, & Elaine and going through security. And what else REALLY irked me was the fact that the guy who confiscated it was like “Where did you get this?! It’s really cool!” and proceeded to laugh among his fellow security guys, and probably ended up drinking it…. that little………! But eating a Hani and cheese fries at the National Coney Island at the McNamara Terminal at DTW somewhat made things better :)

…so then I arrived at the Frankfurt, Germany airport at 11:10PM EST (5:10AM on Monday Germany time). I had to go through security again before I could connect to my Athens flight. Guess what happened THIS time! Well, you don’t have to guess because I am telling you NOW---stupid Manny forgot that he kept his Swiss Army Pocket knife in his carryon bag… and they confiscated it. They said they won’t give it back either, because he won’t be back at that airport in under 6 weeks (I WILL be back at that airport, but not for 4 months). So I had a 3 hour layover, which was actually pretty tough to stay awake for… I watched an episode of the Simpsons on my laptop… and then I saw some drink at a store in the airport that had a picture of an apple on it, and I thought (through my feeble attempts to decipher the German language) that this yellow drink was indeed apple juice. In fact, I was wrong. Either that, or it was just really really expired….. *shifty eyes*… I’ve learned not to like Germany.

Finally I got on the plane (on which I was sitting in the very last row, in an aisle seat) that was headed for Athens, Greece. I passed out again for the 2 hour and 45 min flight (arrived 1:10PM Athens time), barely remembering taking off and landing. I found my baggage on the carousel relatively fast, and went to go call for a taxi to head for my study abroad program’s apartments. About 5 minutes into the ride (of a total trip of about 20 min), the taxi cab drive was already flicking off some slow driver the way Greeks flick off others—by pushing their hand out palm first with all fingers stretched out in a “punching” motion. I laughed in the backseat, and he noticed, and smirked himself. He was kind of a weird guy, but I knew maybe a little bit more Greek than he knew English, so it made communication just possible enough to get me to the apartment.

The apartment is pretty nice! I’m living with 3 other guys… it’s basically a 2 bedroom apartment (2 beds in each room) with a kitchen (with dishes, silverware, pots, pans, fridge, microwave, and mini-oven) and bathroom. I’ll post pictures of the apartment later this week, most likely. The other guys seem pretty cool, from what I’ve gathered of them so far. In total, there are 23 people (including me) in the study abroad program. 7 of us are of the male gender.

Yes, that is right.

There are 16 females to the 7 guys on this trip… and, apparently, one of the other guys has a girlfriend from back home, which would actually bring the ratio to 6 guys per 16 koritsia :)

I do NOT have regular internet access in my apartment, though there is wireless internet in my program building that is only 5 minutes away from here (and I have my laptop with me, so it should be fine).

Although, a great part of our trip will be the CLASSES! And the fact that no class starts EARLIER THAN 11:00AM---and most are in the afternoon/evening (like 1pm, 3:30pm, 5:30pm, 8pm, etc.) is BRILLIANT! How did they know I’m not a morning person? :) ALSO, NO FRIDAY CLASSES EVER! (except for when we’re on field trips with the program… so they won’t technically be “classes”)

And for my Spring Break (2^nd week of March), I am still planning on visiting France and Italy for the 8-day trip (I’m looking YOUR way, Hayley and Carrie!)

Anyway, it’s 1:00AM early Tuesday morning now, and I should probably pass out so I can wake up for that 10am orientation session in the morning…… woo!

*passes out*

Manny en route!

Here I am, typing this blog entry, sitting on my bed at home in Clinton Township, MI, USA for one last time... until April 29th, 2008! It's kind of a weird feeling... knowing this is the last time I'll be sleeping in a familiar room in a familiar place for four months. But it's ok... I'll be sleeping IN ATHENS, GREECE in about 48 hours! I'm so excited! I've just finished getting everything together and packing up all my things... tomorrow I will be going to church at 9:00am, leaving at 11:30am for the airport, and finally, my flight will be taking off at 3:25pm. The layover is in Frankfurt, Germany for approximately 5 hours, and then I will be in Athens by 12:45pm (local time) on Monday, January 7th, 2008.

That's it for now, I'll be posting pictures on the Kodak website and also on Facebook once I get to Greece and figure out the internet connection.... and find things to take pictures of! :)

*flies away*