Truth be told, I'm back home in the United States, and I have been for almost a full month now. I returned on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, and today is Monday, May 26, 2008. I guess coming back to the busy crazy American lifestyle through me WAY off schedule in completing this blog!
The last month of my study abroad experience in Greece was rather bittersweet, but I definitely tried to make the most of it. My study abroad friend (who was also Greek Orthodox) Eric Stearns passed away on April 8 after fighting his internal bleeding and hip injuries in the hospital for a week, after he got hit by a car on April 2. It was an extremely rough time on all of us 23 students studying abroad, and also the ladies who work at the Athens Centre, and Eric’s mother and father who flew to Greece to be with their son in the hospital after the accident. Eric’s younger brother Stephen could not fly to Greece because he had to finish up his freshman year at Penn State. I’d say it took at least a week & a half or so to start having things get more or less back to normal with all of us in Greece, but obviously things will never complete return to normal—I truly believe Eric’s soul will always be within all of us who knew him and of those who prayed for him during that difficult time.
One thing Eric was thinking about doing was traveling to Rome during one of weekend before the end of the program with a couple others. Three other students – Meghan, Carrie, and Jess R. – had made plans to go the weekend of April 12. They bought plane tickets a week beforehand, but the night before they left, another girl Kristina and I decided (around 12:30am) about 7 hours before the flight took off (which was around 9am) to buy tickets online and go with them! I really wanted to go back to Rome because I loved it so much, and this was a perfect opportunity, seeing as when is the next time I’m going to be in Europe, and have such an easy opportunity to just go out and jump on an hour and a half plane flight to Italy?! So, there ya go. Luckily, the ticket prices were only about 20 Euros more than what they were when the other three girls bought their tickets a full week earlier. I had a really fun time on the trip; we got to go to a soccer game… Lazio vs. Sienna. It was a pretty good game--the home team Lazio was winning 1-0 for basically the whole game, right up until the last 2 minutes, when Sienna scored to tie it up, and pissed off a lot of Lazio fans. We also went and did some other touristy things in Rome—I got to go inside of the Pantheon, which is one thing I didn’t get to do when I was here for Spring Break exactly a month previous to this trip. One of the other main reasons for going on the trip was the simple tagline of “We’re doing this for Eric.” We believe that he would have wanted us to go on with our lives, and continue to have the time of our lives in Europe while we still could.
Other highlights of the rest of my Greece experience include the Farewell ceremony/dinner/party on Wednesday, April 23. We had a speech from John Zervos, the man responsible for starting the Athens Centre, and we had certificates presented to us for completing the semester abroad in Athens. After that, we took pictures outside of the group. Then, all the students along with the Athens Centre workers and some of the professors had a dinner in the same restaurant that we had our Welcome Dinner in. It was very nice… I got lamb. mmmmm. Finally we ended up going over the other guys’ apartment and had some fun… played some beer pong and other fun games of the sort. Our Byzantine History professor even came and partied with us! It was pretty awesome.
The next day, about 15 of us traveled to the island called Naxos (which is near the islands of Paros and Santorini) on Thursday morning and returned Saturday evening. Naxos is officially my new favorite island—it was so beautiful… the beaches, the mountains, the churches, the villages, and especially the Good Friday church service! This weekend was Easter weekend in Greece, seeing as Eastern Orthodox Easter (or Pascha) is usually on a different weekend than American, or Western Catholic Easter. So Friday was Good Friday, and in the Orthodox religion, we carry the Epitaphio (funeral casket of Jesus Christ) around the church with the whole congregation and stop 4 times around the church and say some prayers—in America. In Greece, however, they actually do the procession around the entire village, and there are practically thousands of Greeks doing this—just about everybody in the whole country. It was a very different – and amazing – experience for me, who grew up Greek Orthodox in America, where a much smaller percentage of peole are Greek Orthodox—here EVERYBODY (at least 98%) is Orthodox! I had to explain almost everything, though, to my American friends who I was traveling with, because nobody else was Orthodox. Also during the trip in Naxos, during the day on Friday we rented ATVs (4-wheelers) and rode around the island, went to the beaches, and made a bonfire on the beach at night. It was a great time. We returned to Athens Saturday night and a lot of us went to the midnight service for Pascha. It was crazy awesome, again having all the Greeks coming out for the services—the streets were PACKED. They even set off fireworks at midnight in Greece (unlike in America, where they don’t)… it was quite a site!
The next day—Sunday, April 27th, on Holy Pascha, me and three other guys (Kurt, Matt, and Sasha) went over to our friend Phil the bartender’s house for traditional Greek Easter dinner at 2pm. We stayed, ate, and drank until 1am!!! We were there for a long time, and enjoyed every minute of it. They had a whole lamb roasting on a spit on the balcony of their apartment, had some steaks, had some nice homemade tzatziki sauce, and even cracked dyed-red Easter eggs, like the Greek Orthodox people usually traditionally do. We ate, danced, and drank all day/night long. I really enjoyed my authentic Greek Easter IN GREECE experience! Good times, good times…
We spent the last full day, Monday, April 28th, packing and saying goodbye to everyone. It was pretty sad. A lot of us cooked a bunch of our leftover food—stuff we didn’t have enough time to eat before we left Athens—and had an amazing on-the-fly potluck… mmmm potato pancakes with nacho cheese…. also noodles with marinara sauce….. also tyropitas (cheese pies)…… soooo good. Later in the day, we went and bought flowers for some of the people who worked at the Athens Centre and said bye to Athens, temporarily. I’m definitely planning on returning, hopefully sooner rather than later. Maybe even next summer! I might come back and study the Greek language… but we’ll see what happens when the time comes.
After my flight from Athens to Frankfurt at 6:00am Athens time, I, along with Lindsey and Safia (two other girls who go to the University of Michigan who were on the program with me in Athens), had our 8-hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean—once again returning to our beloved North America! When I arrived home back at DTW Airport in Michigan, USA, my mother and sister met me at the airport, and we stopped by Atlas Wholesale Food Co in Detroit on the way home to see my dad and brother and other relatives who work at the family business to say hi, and remind them that I’d be back working there on the upcoming Monday. Then I had my first taste of American food as we stopped at Panera Bread on the way home…. mmmmmmmm soup in a bread bowl…. good times. My plan that night was to watch the Red Wings game vs. the Colorado Avalanche, which started at 10:00pm Eastern Time, but after we ate dinner at home, I told my parents I wanted to take a nap around 8pm and wake up in time for the game, but that didn’t quite happen, as I ended up waking up from my “nap” around 5:00am the next day. Luckily, I set the DVR up to record the game, so I watched the Wings win at 5am!
In all, it probably took me 2 to 3 days to get back on a semi-normal Eastern Time sleeping schedule – a full 8-hour time adjust from Greek time. Also, I’d say it took about 5 days to a week to re-adjust to the American-type lifestyle. Between getting used to US Dollars and driving a car (for the first time in just under 4 months), I eventually de-Greek-ified myself, but not 100%-ly, of course. I still enjoy much of the Greek lifestyle, such as the afternoon siesta, staying up late, taking a really long time to eat dinner, not working a lot, overall a lot more friendly people that you run into, and going to the bars until 4am. It kind of stinks going from being in Greece and not even thinking about ordering a beer or whatever at the bar, or wine at dinner, to coming to the States and not being able to legally drink for a month – my 21st birthday’s on Sunday, June 1st – but it’s just the fact that the attitude of the culture is so different between Europe and the States; in Europe they either don’t have a drinking age or it’s around 16 or 18 years old, and in the States the limit obviously 21 years of age, but I feel like they don’t have as much of an “underage drinking problem” in Europe as compared to the States. In Europe, you don’t have kids having to sneak around to get their alcohol from some other source, which leads to an abuse of alcohol later in life and can definitely lead to that even before one turns 21. ANYWAY… enough of that rant.
Now, I’ve been working at Atlas Wholesale Food with the family, and getting back to the “real life” grind of things, back in the good ole U. S. of A. This summer is going to be pretty great, as I plan to spend a lot of the weekends traveling around and visiting people from my study abroad experience, and also other friends! Huzzah! I’ve visited with Diane, the girl who was in the accident in Greece… she flew home from the program early with her mother, and she’s been going through therapy. She found out she had a fracture in her right foot. She hasn’t been allowed to put any pressure on her foot, so she’s been maneuvering with crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair to get around, mostly. She even graduated from U of M this year, by using her walker to walk across the stage! Later this summer, I’m also going to be going back to MDSC – the Greek Orthodox Summer Camp in Rose City, MI and going to be a counselor again. Good ole Greek camp… good times. For now, I will hopefully ENJOY the rest of the Red Wings’ playoff run, and I would hope that it should most definitely end in another Stanley Cup Championship, but I do not want to jinx it, so don’t take this sentence too wholeheartedly. (GO WINGS!!!!)
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After the picture albums, I have 2 video links posted... one of one of the guys playing guitar during the farewell dinner, and the other of our slide show tribute of Eric Stearns.
My last few albums of pictures...... Enjoy!
KODAK GALLERY:Farewell from Greece Party: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.5y88wz0d&x=0&y=np4vy3&localeid=en_US(The island of) Naxos: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.277bab6l&x=0&y=os7alc&localeid=en_USGood Friday / Pascha (Easter): http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.77578tfh&x=0&y=rj954r&localeid=en_USMANNYtheGREEK: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=99f8smt.4go0xhq5&x=0&y=jr2usv&localeid=en_US
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FACEBOOK:Farewell from Greece Party: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2378012&l=37fc3&id=2232176(The island of) Naxos [1/2]: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2377983&l=432a0&id=2232176Naxos [2/2]: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2378003&l=53a3c&id=2232176Good Friday / Pascha (Easter): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2378014&l=4b60c&id=2232176MANNYtheGREEK [1/2]: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2379395&l=40f5a&id=2232176MANNYtheGREEK [2/2]: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2379412&l=a4bab&id=2232176-------------------------------------------------------------------------
FACEBOOK VIDEOS:
Pat Chung plays guitar & sings the song from "Juno": http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=2232176&k=Y3145YT5UZ6M51L1QD2UXS
Eric Stearns slideshow tribute: http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=2232176&k=Y4C36ZR5TYWM51L1QD2UXSThanks for reading and viewing! I hope you had as much fun as I did :)
Love,
MANNYtheGREEK
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