In fact, I am alive, as well is friend Alanna, who is here in
Yesterday we went to the Glyfada area of
Right now, Alanna is in the Plaka area of
Don’t worry, I did not forget about my 5-day trip to the
…With hope of updates and pictures to be more frequent,
MANNY OUT!
Well, I’m back in
I believe that that is all for now! Kalo sabbatokyriako (have a good weekend)!
Over this past weekend I visited
Back in
I’ve finalized my Spring Break plans (March 7 through 16)!! I will be traveling to Italy (Rome, Naples) and visiting with my friend Carrie from U of Michigan who is actually studying abroad in Florence, Italy for the year, but is taking a weekend trip out to Naples and I’m meeting up with her and her friends, and then I will be traveling to France (Marseilles, Paris) for the 2nd half of my Spring Break to visit Hayley, my other friend from Michigan who is studying abroad in Marseilles for the year. It will be cool trying to remember 4 years of studying French in high school! Hopefully this immersion of Greek won’t block my brain too much… although I’ve tried to practice a little bit of French the other day, and I said “Je veux na paei sto…” …crap… half French, half Greek. I guess we’ll see what happens, come the 2nd week of March :) Tomorrow, all I have to do is purchase my reserved plane tickets at the travel agency in
My new Greek class has commenced as of Monday afternoon – it is with the same teacher, and the same two other guys, plus one more new guy who is from
On another note, tonight I went bowling again with the same other 5 guys that I did last week (Matt, Sasha, Kurt, and the 2 Pats), but this time we didn’t go to Glyfada—we found another better, cheaper bowling alley in Athens. It’s actually part of a complex that connects with a movie theater, a karaoke place, and a bunch of restaurants. Exciting! I bought some movie theater popcorn…… mmmmmmm….. the first REAL popcorn I’ve eaten since I’ve left the States. I bowled significantly better this time… We bowled 4 games-- I bowled a 94 and an 80. I don’t really feel like mentioning the other two scores at this time. !!
Anywho, time to do some reading, and then go to sleep!
MANNY OUT
Earlier today my class and I went to the Byzantine Museum of Athens with our Byzantine History professor. It was the first time I’ve been there (seeing as how it was closed when Mike and I tried to visit in 2005), and it was one of the best museums I’ve ever been to! …basically because I don’t normally enjoy going to museums, but this time I was career-interested in most of the artifacts. They had some pieces of old churches from the Byzantine Empire, lots of iconography, altar tables, seals for Holy Bread, some pottery, and garments that the common people and the priests wore. I will post the links to the pictures in my next blog entry as soon as the internet is available long enough for uploading…
Oooo today we finally got our passports back! The Athens Centre (the program I’m studying abroad) took all of our passports a couple of weeks ago so they could extend our visas for studying in
My Greek class is coming to an end. …what’s that, you say? You thought I just started taking it like 2 weeks ago? You would be correct! I started taking the 5-day-a-week class one week after it commenced, and this Friday is the last day. Actually, I won’t even be able to go to it on Thursday or Friday because on Thursday our Archaeology professor is taking our class to the Ancient Agora (we’ve already been, but he’s taking us for different reasons than the Philosophy prof did) during the same time as my Greek class, and Friday we are departing for our second weekend trip… to the Argolid! (when I find out more about it, I will post the info! So far all I know is that we’re taking a long bus ride there—not a boat this time). The moral of the story is that my last class for Greek is tomorrow: Wednesday, 5 February, 2008! …fear not, a new session of the same class (but possibly a different teacher and other new students) will start up on Monday, 11 February so I will still be able to improve my Greek communication skills….. hopefully :)
So apparently the University of Michigan hockey team has not been doing so hot as of late, losing and tying to the Spartans, and tying twice to Northern Michigan… what the heck! Maybe I should come back home and re-motivate them how a #1 team plays!! D’oh…. I miss
OH! ANYBODY NOTICE HOW THE PATRIOTS SOMEHOW LOST THE SUPER BOWL ON SUNDAY?!!?! DID SOMEBODY FORGET TO TELL THEM THAT THE FIRST 18 GAMES OF THE SEASON WERE NOT QUITE AS IMPORTANT AS THE VERY LAST ONE, AND THEREFORE SHOULD HAVE PLAYED THEIR HARDEST DURING THAT LAST ONE—YOU KNOW, THE SUPER BOWL!?!? I watched the game at the bar with 6 other guys from my program, and a bunch of other random American study abroaders found this bar for the game, too, so we all watched it until 5:15am… I must say, the game was most excellent. Despite the outcome, I’m still happy I stayed up for it because it was very exciting… Patriots winning for the majority of the game, with under two minutes in the game the Giants drive into the end zone to take the lead and hold on for the Super Bowl win as Brady didn’t have enough magic in the tank for his usual “time to shine” during the Patriots absolutely last drive of their “perfect” season. Either way, it was fun…. Watching the game on the satellite channel “Super Sports 5” was kind of weird—it wasn’t the FOX feed, they used the NFL Network feed… except they didn’t have the normal broadcasters, they had GREEK-speaking broadcasters (during the other NFL Playoff games we’ve watched on the Super Sports channels, they had the regular Americans doing the commentating), AND we didn’t see any American commercials during the broadcast. The next day I found them online and watched a couple of ‘em… We WERE able to watch the halftime show (surprisingly), but actually this other guy Pat and I went to get some food and missed most of it—I saw part of Tom Petty’s performance. While we watched the game, most of the other guys in our group were Giants fans, and there was only one other Patriot fan besides me (like I alluded to in my previous blog entry, I’m more a Michigan-alum-Tom-Brady fan—the NFL is not my favorite sport) and they were practically crying when the Patriots had just scored their final points, because they didn’t have too much faith that their Giants and Manning could successfully drive in a final touchdown and win (one guy Sasha said, “Well, it was a good season…”). Actually I’m not too pissed that the Giants won, because now I don’t have to listen to most of the guys whine for the next week about how the Patriots cheated and won the Super Bowl…. sadly :(
Time to do my last Greek assignment before “the new term” begins….
Kalinixta…
After that, we took the Tram back to downtown
Today we had a first (of hopefully many!) potluck dinner gathering at the girls’ place. Mmmmmmmm soooo much foooood…… everybody made something amazing! And I had a little bit of everything! On a side note, I think I’ve gained somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds already on this study abroad experience, and I’ve only been here a month! It stinks not being able to work out… I will try and play some soccer with everyone when we get a bunch o’ people together, and maybe I should start doing sit-ups. Poor chubby Manny :(
Right now it is 11:40pm, and tonight, at 1:30am is the Super Bowl! I’m trying to stay awake, although I’m contemplating taking a nap before the game, seeing as it won’t be over until around 5:00, 5:30am most likely… I did my readings for our first class tomorrow (which luckily isn’t until 1pm), and I’m going to finish my Greek homework… oh what to do… I’ve finished my Season 9 DVD set of Everybody Loves Raymond…. sad :( luckily I still have an unwatched DVD set remaining of the Simpsons – season 8! Woooo! I’ll have to start re-watching the Simpsons seasons that I brought (seasons 5, 6, 7, and 8) soon, along with watching the Simpsons Movie multiple upon multiple times!!!
My friend from Fraser & U. of
And, now to sum up the latest installment of my randomly-organized blog entry, GO TOM BRADY & THE PATRIOTS!!!!!!!! DO
An update on the passing of the Bishop… on Wednesday after class, I walked down to
The next day (Thursday) was the Funeral, which took place at the cemetery, which is directly behind my apartment complex. We indeed had classes, as they were not cancelled. Instead, I had my Greek class even earlier than usual – 9:00am – which was hard to wake up for, but I did. After Greek, I had a free hour before my next class, so I tried to walk down to where the funeral was taking place, but the police had the streets roped off, and I could not walk any further. There were a lot of people EVERYWHERE, so many extra cars in places that they should not be parked, and a helicopter flying overhead (probably doing the news), but by 3:00pm, everything was back to normal.
Let’s see…. what else is going on? Not really too much else. I’ve been watching a lot of The Simpsons DVDs and Everybody Loves Raymond DVDs that I brought on the trip with me, as are my roommates. It’s nice to have brought a little something from home to remind me where I’m from… :)
Oh yeah, on Tuesday we went to the
Also, this weekend is Super Bowl weekend (as I’m sure everybody knows). We will be able to watch it at this one bar that we frequent, as the owner has Satellite TV, and the Super Sports channel that we need to watch it (we have been able to watch all the NFL Playoff games there too on the SS channels). It’s going to be fun watching it in a different country… our group is planning on having a potluck-type dinner Sunday evening, and then we’ll all take naps afterwards and wake up in time to watch the game which will start at 1:30AM Monday morning. WOOO!
MANNY OUT!
