Orientation weekend

We are finally starting to settle in.  Anna and I moved into our apartment to find that the kitchen is not fully stocked like we anticipated...we immediately set out to fix that. We brought a pen and paper and walked about a mile down the street stopping in every store that had kitchen utensils/appliances and writing down the prices of each.  Then when we turned around we went back to the cheapest place we found.  You could say we are professional bargain shoppers.

The markets here are different from Crete.  More vegetables, less spices, and no souvenir shops.  The Crete markets seem to be targeted for the tourists as well as the locals whereas the markets here seen to be the main food supply for the people of the city.  In terms of produce Anna and I have already noticed and decided we are going to miss avocados and spinach.  I'm sure the list will continue but pomegranate, eggplant, cheap watermelon, peaches and fruits and veggies I don't even know the name of will quickly replace them all.

first day of school with Vanessa!!

To get to ACT we took a 20 minute bus ride. Breakfast was waiting for us when we arrived; greek yogurt, honey, nutella, chocolate corn flakes, scrambled eggs and triangle spanakopita (greek spinach pie).  In typical greek charlara fashion, breakfast was scheduled for an hour, compared to the 15 minutes we would probably get in the states.  Charlara means to take your time and enjoy the process, Greeks live by it.  After our long slow breakfast we got a tour of the campus and then sat through a couple information sessions. The first was on courses and academic guidelines.  We are allowed to miss a days of classes to travel and plan trips of our own.  Then we learned the activities, clubs, trips and athletic events and workshops available.  There will be basketball, volleyball, soccer and tennis club teams.  There is a track and gym available but the gym is only open from 4-9, luckily those hours work okay with my schedule. Last we talked about financial needs, tech support, and health and safety.

There are 40 students in our program. In the main building where the eatery is located there are license plates of where everyone is from. Many midwest people, a few from Texas, and 3 others who either live and go to school in Rhode Island!  Allie is from Barrington, RI and goes to URI, Margaret is from Narragansett, RI and also goes to URI, and Vanessa lives in Newport, RI and goes to Salve Regina.  Also, Sam's little sister is a freshmen at Brown this Fall. It's a small world after all.

And of course there was dessert each day after lunch.

Later that night after dinner we
used what we learned!

The second day of orientation we had a crash 101 Greek language session, aka the hardest language ever.  I now know how to say hello, thank you, you're welcome and how to order a cup of greek coffee.  I didn't bother trying to learn how to say how much something is to use at the market because I'll have no idea what the answer is when they reply in Greek.  I'll wait until I learn numbers in my Greek class. By the end of our day full of information sessions one after the other we were exhausted, but we had yet to learn how to greek dance! We spent an hour with an instructor teaching us the steps of various traditional greek dances.


On Saturday we went to the beach! The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot that we couldn't bear not to be either be in the water or in the shade but just right where we wanted to go in the water just once, and that we did as soon as we got there.  They served us lunch which consisted of 'toast' aka grilled cheese sandwich, BBQ chips and a frappe.  I played some volleyball, fell asleep on the beach, got sunburnt, woke up, took some shots of vodka then walked along the beach.  It was a great day.

tomb Phillip II

Saturday night was the first night we experienced the "greek nightlife." Jo, our RA, took us to dinner and then to the most popular bars for young people.  The streets were packed with people hopping from one bar to the next.  The next morning we took a 2 hr bus ride to Vergina to visit the Multicenter Museum of Aigai.

On our way home we stopped and enjoyed the view of Thessaloniki.  Walls used to surround the entire city but more than half were destroyed so the city could expand.  2 of the towers still remain, the Triangle Tower (above) and the White Tower.