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…
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