Hello everyone! I just wanted you all to know that I already typed this whole blog out, and it did not save it! So this one will probably be short and sweet.
This past weekend I was in Athens for a volleyball tournament! It was really fun! If you do not count my team losing every game we played, it was a good weekend! The only team that brought home metals, was the girls soccer team. They took second, out of two teams! The boys basketball team should have taken the gold, but they had some very unfair refs! That was probably the most disappointing loss of the weekend. Besides the sports, I went out one night while we were there! We first went downtown to the Parliament building and saw the Parthenon from afar. It is amazing no matter what distance you see it from! We got home at about 6am, and I had to catch the bus at 9:30. It was tough, but I made it through the game. The only thing that was missing were my knee pads. I will need to buy some since I still have huge bruises all over my knees!
Right before I left on the Athens trip, I did one of the most impulsive things of my life: I booked a trip to Santorini with my roommate Alfredo. We booked flights and our hostel in one hour. Now we are changing everything! We have more people coming with so we changed the hostel, and now we decided to take a train and ferry. It will take much longer, but we will save alot of money! We are going the last weekend in May and I can not wait! It seems like it will never come, but I should be staying busy, especially starting next week!
Spring break is in one week from tomorrow! We are flying to Rome to see the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and the Spanish Steps. Then we are off to Florence to see the famous sculpture of David and eat some world famous gelato. If you are not sure what gelato is, it is like ice cream but much better! After Florence, we are off to Venice to take as many gondola rides as possible! From Venice, we fly to Paris! I can not wait to see everything there!! The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, the Champs Elysses, and the Louvre. After Paris, we fly back to Thessaloniki to spend Easter in Greece. We will still have another week to spend exploring whatever we want! Its going to be a crazy two weeks.
I posted some new pictures for you to look at today! I hope you like them! I am slowly collecting pictures from other people so they will probably be in random order. Sorry for the confusion! But enjoy them like I do! Have a great week, and I will tell you all about my trip when I get back! Bye!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Paris and melted plastic
Hi everyone! I hope all is well back in the states! I will be updating my pictures soon, but I need to get some from the other roommates before I add more! Soon enough you will be able to see some more of my adventures in Greece! I have a few things to report this entry....
First of all, I am very excited to tell you that we have figured out our spring break plans! We will be visiting the cities of Rome, Florence, Venice and Paris!! We will be spending 2 days in all of the cities! We booked our hostels and hotels last week, and now we just have to be patient until the 29th when we leave for Rome! I am so excited to see these cities that I can barely wait! I predict that Paris will be my favorite. I keep pretending that I will get to France and be able to communicate with the French people, but I am assuming that I will be able to speak choppy sentances and say a few key phrases! Whatever happens, I can not wait to see Paris! When we get home from our tour of Italy and Paris, we hope to visit a Greek island. We will see if we have enough energy to make it down there. I'm sure we will when the time comes! After spring break, I will not have many weekends left free. I will be going on school trips, like climbing Mount Olympus one weekend, visiting Athens and going to some islands! Of course, I have already researved some weekends to visit the local beaches! The next 3 months are going to fly by!!
Second of all, I want to make you all a little jealous. The weather is beautiful. I have not worn a coat since last week. It has been in the 60's and it is only getting warmer. Soon I will not need to wear sweatshirts! I am very excited for it to get warm! However, I am not too excited for it to get to about 90 degrees. A girl told me that we should expect that weather before we leave. At least that will be amazing beach weather! We are only about 30 minutes from Halkidiki, which is known for its beautiful beaches. Ok..I am done making you freezing people jealous! (for a while)
Volleyball is going well. I have practice in about 30 minutes. We are getting ready for our international tournament next week in Athens. We played the high school team last week and it was pretty interesting. I thought that we were going to get beat pretty badly, but we held our own. We even won a match. I felt awesome about that since the team consists of about 9 girls who have not played volleyball in a long time. I hope that Athens leaves us with the same accomplished feeling! I find that I still love volleyball as much as I did in the past, and I love playing it. I picked up my uniform today..I am number 5. I am going to try keep it. (Dont tell the school..I am supposed to give it back!)
Here is my in depth thought of the week: I was thinking about Greek culture and how everyone in Greece seems deeply rooted in their past. Then I started thinking about how in America, it is rare to find a group of people like this. I understand that it is much easier since Greek people are surrounded with their culture, and people in America who are for example German are a whole world away from their culture. I just think that when I get home I will be spending some time getting to know where I came from. In the future, I want to be able to tell my kids where they came from and know exactly what to tell them. I do not want my culture to get lost. I will not let it!
I will leave you with a funny story. Last night, some peope in my building decided to bake some cookies! They figured out the ingredients, which were not easy to do, and then they were ready to start baking. As I helped by mixing the dough, they made a cookie sheet out of some tin foil, unsing a cutting board as a model. I left the room while they baked the cookies, and soon enough I heard a sort of scream laugh. I went into the room to see burnt cookies. And then I looked at the oven. There was an oven full of melted plastic. You guessed it: the cutting board. It was hilarious! It took some time, but they got the plastic cleaned out and left us all with laughs for the rest of the night!!!
Goodbye for now! Have a good weekend! Keep in touch everyone!!
First of all, I am very excited to tell you that we have figured out our spring break plans! We will be visiting the cities of Rome, Florence, Venice and Paris!! We will be spending 2 days in all of the cities! We booked our hostels and hotels last week, and now we just have to be patient until the 29th when we leave for Rome! I am so excited to see these cities that I can barely wait! I predict that Paris will be my favorite. I keep pretending that I will get to France and be able to communicate with the French people, but I am assuming that I will be able to speak choppy sentances and say a few key phrases! Whatever happens, I can not wait to see Paris! When we get home from our tour of Italy and Paris, we hope to visit a Greek island. We will see if we have enough energy to make it down there. I'm sure we will when the time comes! After spring break, I will not have many weekends left free. I will be going on school trips, like climbing Mount Olympus one weekend, visiting Athens and going to some islands! Of course, I have already researved some weekends to visit the local beaches! The next 3 months are going to fly by!!
Second of all, I want to make you all a little jealous. The weather is beautiful. I have not worn a coat since last week. It has been in the 60's and it is only getting warmer. Soon I will not need to wear sweatshirts! I am very excited for it to get warm! However, I am not too excited for it to get to about 90 degrees. A girl told me that we should expect that weather before we leave. At least that will be amazing beach weather! We are only about 30 minutes from Halkidiki, which is known for its beautiful beaches. Ok..I am done making you freezing people jealous! (for a while)
Volleyball is going well. I have practice in about 30 minutes. We are getting ready for our international tournament next week in Athens. We played the high school team last week and it was pretty interesting. I thought that we were going to get beat pretty badly, but we held our own. We even won a match. I felt awesome about that since the team consists of about 9 girls who have not played volleyball in a long time. I hope that Athens leaves us with the same accomplished feeling! I find that I still love volleyball as much as I did in the past, and I love playing it. I picked up my uniform today..I am number 5. I am going to try keep it. (Dont tell the school..I am supposed to give it back!)
Here is my in depth thought of the week: I was thinking about Greek culture and how everyone in Greece seems deeply rooted in their past. Then I started thinking about how in America, it is rare to find a group of people like this. I understand that it is much easier since Greek people are surrounded with their culture, and people in America who are for example German are a whole world away from their culture. I just think that when I get home I will be spending some time getting to know where I came from. In the future, I want to be able to tell my kids where they came from and know exactly what to tell them. I do not want my culture to get lost. I will not let it!
I will leave you with a funny story. Last night, some peope in my building decided to bake some cookies! They figured out the ingredients, which were not easy to do, and then they were ready to start baking. As I helped by mixing the dough, they made a cookie sheet out of some tin foil, unsing a cutting board as a model. I left the room while they baked the cookies, and soon enough I heard a sort of scream laugh. I went into the room to see burnt cookies. And then I looked at the oven. There was an oven full of melted plastic. You guessed it: the cutting board. It was hilarious! It took some time, but they got the plastic cleaned out and left us all with laughs for the rest of the night!!!
Goodbye for now! Have a good weekend! Keep in touch everyone!!
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