Last Second Chances

Little to the knowledge of all you Chasers (that’s what I’ve finally decided to call you due to the lack of other reliable nicknames…get it?  You’re like a chaser during a certain social activity that I’ve never ever partaken in but my blog’s name hints at!), we all went to Crete last weekend, resulting in me once again having no access to internet for four days.  By the time we got back, not only did I gain many experiences to tell you about, but the Twins were only 2 games back, the Gophers and Johnnies had won, and a certain ex-Packer had helped the Vikings do something that I can’t remember them ever doing before in my lifetime: come from behind on the last drive to win a game.  But enough about Brett Favre…after all, you became Chasers to hear about me, not the greatest throw in an over-the-hill QB’s career, right?  That’s right, even though listening to Paul Allen call that play is like the first time I heard the Beatles.

Now that you’re all smiling, or at least my Minnesota readers are, I’ll tell you a little bit about Crete.  The trip started off with all of us catching a night ferry on Thursday.  Unfortunately, the ferry had screwed up our order and we weren’t getting the cabins that we had been promised.  Instead we were forced to spend the night in a small room with many rows of airplane seats.  I think Ryan best described this room when he called it a “floating homeless shelter.”  The smell when we opened the door was horrible.  Think about a mix of all the worst smells you can, mix them together, and you get the scent that we now call “ferry,” (Example: “Did you forget to put deodorant on the last couple days?  You smell like ferry.”).

After a night of little sleep, we arrived at Crete at 5 AM, which was only two hours earlier than expected.  Luckily our bus was already there so we were able to sleep for a while as we rode to Minos’ Palace at Knossos.  For those of you who don’t know, King Minos was a character in Greek mythology (and in real life) that had a large palace on Crete.  This palace was especially famous for it’s labyrinth, in which was kept the Minotaur (a man’s body with a bull’s head) bred from his wife and a bull.  What is left of the palace is mostly a reconstruction, but it’s easy to see just how large it was.  The labyrinth, however, was disappointing.  What remained was just a little bit of rock that formed a semblance of a path that didn’t seem confusing at all.  I guess it’s just proof that Greek myths are never as they seem to be.

After the palace, we went to the museum dedicated to artifacts found at the site, which was pretty cool.  Then, we were off on a three-hour bus ride to our hotel at Chania (pronounced HAN-yah).  By the time we reached our hotel, we had all been sleeping on-and-off in cramped seats for almost a full day, causing most of us to collapse into our beds and sleep some more.  Besides, we had a big day ahead of us.

The next day was the most eventful of the trip.  We all woke up early at 7 to catch a bus that took us to the Samaria Gorge on the south side of the island.  This gorge is essentially a large crack in between the mountains that runs 18 kilometers all the way to the South Coast and the Mediterranean.  The cliffs at some points are over 500 meters high and are straight down.  I tried my best to take pictures of this place, but no one’s camera can truly do justice to the beauty of this national park.  Our hike consisted of sing-alongs, twisted ankles, embarrassing falls, Lord of the Rings quotes, tons of pictures, and finally a swim in the sea at the end.  Though it was a tiring downhill trek (we started at about 10:00 and made it to the coast at 4:00), it was worth every euro cent.  It’s easy to guess that once again we all went back to the hotel and slept (We’re such party animals).

Sunday was a free day, which I chose to utilize by getting a fever and an extremely sore throat.  I was basically out of commission for the day, and the worst part was that we weren’t leaving until 7 on another night ferry.  Awesome.  Since most of us were bored out of our minds, we made our way over to the bus stop (about 150 meters from our hotel) at about 6 and just waited.  This was fine by me because it allowed me to sit around in the front of the line and get a little rest.  By the time the bus came, no one was more ready to leave than I was…unless you count the fact that I had forgotten my duffel bag at the hotel.  Again…awesome. 

It wasn’t until I reached the back of the bus and Matt asked where my bag was that I noticed my fatal flaw.  I tried desperately to get back to the front of the bus while everyone else moved towards me down the isle, but it was hardly any use.  By the time I was at the front there were only 5 more people in line.  I tried to ask the bus driver for my ticket back, but he didn’t understand.  He thought I was asking to buy a ticket and kept telling me it would cost 2 euro.  I soon had to give this up and hopped off the bus.

I now had two choices: either pay two euro for a new bus ticket and catch the next one a half hour later, or sprint back to the hotel, grab my bag, and try and make it back before the bus left.  I chose sprint.  Now I may not be in the same shape that I was back when I was a superstar track athlete, but I can still accelerate like a moped and fly.  Besides, I was a 400-meter runner and this was only 300 (plus the weight of a backpack and later a duffel bag).  Without further ado, I was off.  I ran across the intersection without stopping for the traffic and booked it down the street towards the hotel.  The desk lady looked up at me as I came skidding in, but she probably only saw a blur of red clothing as I deftly maneuvered into the bag room, grabbed my duffel bag, and ran back out. 

As I headed back down the street, I could feel myself losing gas, weighed down by the bags and my feverish symptoms.  I looked up ahead and saw the bus, but to my dismay it was leaving the stop.  I tried to kick it into my last gear, but just as I throttled into 5^th the bus turned to the left, away from me.  That was it.  I had failed and had given myself a huge headache to boot.  I threw my bag in anger and cursed my way down the rest of the street.

After trudging a little farther, I reached the intersection where the bus would have been.  I gave one last hopeless look to my right just in case, and what to my wondrous eyes would appear but the bus stopped at the next stoplight!  This was my last chance.  I took off at a dead sprint with all my remaining energy towards the bus, praying that the light would stay red.  As I got closer I could see all my classmates waving me on from inside the windows, including one who was yelling at the driver to stop.  And what do you know…he did. 

I lumbered onto the bus, smiling feebly at the driver.  As I turned up the stairway, I was met with applause and cheers.  It was a standing ovation (this could’ve been because the bus had no seats left, but my ego says they were standing for me).  One kid proclaimed it the highlight of the weekend watching me run from the bus and back.  From the back I heard someone say, “The kid’s an athlete,” but I was too out of breath to acknowledge the comment.  I collapsed into a seat that opened up for me, heaving heavily.  It was a perfect moment (Unfortunately, I had no idea how much I would later pay for my “moment” on the ferry.  That short 300-meter sprint completely wiped me out and kicked my fever into high gear.  When we arrived back in Athens the next morning at 5 AM, I had maybe gotten 2 hours of sporadic sleep.  Such is life.).

Since this was technically our fall break, we had Monday off to complete the four-day weekend.  The day was spent getting better and studying for our Greek language final (you heard right…our final class of Greek language was on Tuesday), which ended up not being that bad.  As if our schedule isn’t already easy enough, we now only have four classes: one that only meets on Mondays, one that goes to museums every Wednesday, and one that will be done next Tuesday.  I guess this means our time in Greece is winding down.  Boy that went fast.

In other news, we purchased an MLB gameday package that will allow us to watch the remaining Twins games for their final playoff push.  We watched the first part of the double-header yesterday, and will most likely watch the game tonight (actually, tomorrow morning at 2 AM for us) because we don't have class tomorrow until 1:30.  We figure any help the Twins can get, even if it's us watching from Greece, will be beneficial.  Go Twins!

That's about all for now.  We have next weekend off, so I should be able to write a little earlier and not bombard you with a huge post like this one.  However, this will mean that I won't have as many pictures next post, but here's the ones from last weekend to satisfy you for now.

Special Shout-Out of the Day: The Kapke Family.  The Kapke's deserve a shout-out this week because they are my loyal followers from the great state of Wisconsin.  I have no doubt that they are quaking in fear as the Packers get ready to take on the Vikings on Monday Night Football.  Dare I mention that the game is at the Dome and that this time we have that old guy who wears number 4?  Oh my heavens...

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott: 3

Matt: 1

Ryan: 2 - Ryan earned himself another point this week with his "homeless shelter" comment.  Even though his comment was insulting, I don't think any of us could agree with him more.

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Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Temet Nosce

Last weekend, our happy bunch of bumbling Americans headed out to consult the ancient mythological creature that once granted wisdom to all of Greece...the Oracle of Delphi.  First things first:

1.  There is no oracle at Delphi

2.  There is no spoon

3.  None of this stopped us from desperately trying to find the Oracle anyways, some of us nearly getting left behind in the process.

When we arrived at Delphi, we found out why this place was once the heart of Greek wonderment.  The ancient city is built on the side of a mountain, just on top of cliffs which lead into a large valley below and the Ionian Sea.  It's a majestic location that was considered in the ancient world to be the center of the Universe.  This was found out by Zeus himself when he sent two eagles around the universe in opposite directions, only to have them meet here (now, I found a logical fallacy in this story: wouldn't their meeting point be the same as their starting point? Ladies and Gents, that is called outsmarting the gods).  The oracle came to Delphi at a different time.  The story goes that a shepherd was tending to his flock when one of the sheep put his head over a rocky crevice and was struck by a rush of wisdom from deep inside.  The sheep started talking in English and telling the future.  Confused and alarmed that his sheep was a prophet, the shepherd ran down the hill to tell the citizens of Delphi, who immediately built a temple over the crevice and chose a young girl to sit on the crevice and occasionally spew the knowledge that was given to her.  What a job.

What is left now is a whole bunch of ruins.  There are three pillars left of the temple, a bunch of treasuries dedicated to the oracle on the path to the temple, a large theater, and a stadium.  Unfortunately for us, most of this was closed off when we got there because of recently falling rocks that apparently were dangerous.  This was kind of a let down.  But, we still got to see some cool statues in the museum and a couple cool things on the site...and yes, there's pictures of everything at the end.  Patience is a virtue, you know.

After a one night stay in Delphi and a couple of mishaps with getting on the bus (some people just can't read Greek clocks, so it's understandable), we took the long ride back to Athens.  Back here, our most eventful experience (maybe of the trip) happened on Tuesday.  For our Greek Theology class, our professor/priest wanted us to take a bus ride up to his Church in Northern Athens.  He instructed us that we would get on the #10 right outside of the school building and take it to the last stop, get out, and walk straight to the church.  Lastly, he noted that we should be able to get there by 4 if we left right after history (which gets out at 3:30).  Simple, right?

Leave it to us to screw the whole thing up.  Let me clarify that I wasn't the leader of our group (though I should have been), so I am as much at fault for not getting us there as anyone else.  Whoever was leading must've been trustworthy, however, because all 30 of us stuck together.  We stuck together when we didn't go to the bus stop right outside of class.  We stuck together when we walked a half hour to a bus stop past the Acropolis.  We stuck together when we boarded the #10 finally at 4:15.  And lastly, we stuck together when we got off at the end of the line.  The only problem was we went the wrong way.

An hour and 45 minutes later (6:00), we finally got off the bus at the other end of the line.  Keep in mind that this was right about the time that we should've been headed back from our completed tour of the church.  Our professor/priest was waiting there for us, feeling terrible that he didn't give us good enough instructions.  I don't think he really asked that much of us, but that's just me.  We toured the church (which was huge and beautifully painted), learned some stuff about Orthodox mass, and headed back.  Come 9:00 we were finally back at school.  You might think by now that we're expert travelers, seeing as how we made it through London and Paris without any problems, but let this be proof that we still have no idea what we're doing.  Maybe we're just lucky this didn't happen earlier.

In other news, I was approached by the CSB/SJU rivals the other night.  While I was peacefully checking emails and thinking up this blog entry, the Lewis and Clark group was engaging in a Greek cooking class.  One of the Lewis and Clark girls had the nerve to approach me.  I prepared to defend myself from her wicked sorcery but instead she asked me if I would want any of the cooking class' left overs.  I didn't know how to respond at first.  Maybe this was some evil ploy to poison me, thus removing one CSB/SJU student before I could warn the others.  I chose to accept, feeling as if I could withstand any attack, but soon let down my guard as I tried their delicious food.  Maybe, just maybe, they aren't so bad after all.  But for now, I will still be wary.

And for those of you who are still confused by the title of this entry, try watching this scene and see if you can figure out what it means (online translators never tell the truth, don't believe them).  This'll give you an idea of what the Oracle at Delphi was probably like.

Here are the pictures from Delphi, a couple of museums, and a random monastery near Delphi.  Enjoy!

Special Shout-out of the Day:  Matt Melsen.  No one has begged, borrowed, or dealt more than Matt to get a shout-out on this blog, so for his efforts he is finally being rewarded.  I personally didn't know that anyone cared that much to be named by me, but apparently Melsen believes this is some sort of high honor.  Enjoy, Matt.  Start bragging to anyone who actually cares.

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott:3 

Matt: 1

Ryan: 1

I'm getting sick and tired of winning this thing.  It's about time one of the Caballeros steps up and does something about it (Ben Jagger, I'm looking at you to motivate your brother).

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Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Down with the Sickness

Its official…Swine Flu has taken over the group.  I’m just kidding, but seriously we’re all getting sick and have similar symptoms.  At least 5 people (I think it’s actually more like 7, but I’m not positive) have been feeling sick over the last couple of days, prompting a cancelled senior seminar class and some additional siesta time.

Overall, this week has been kind of hectic.  More than half the group arrived back at their apartments from Santorini at about 2 AM, so going to Art History on Monday morning was like going to square dancing night at an old person’s home; everyone knows what they should be doing but no one has the energy to actually participate.  The cancelled class was a definite help, but we scheduled a meeting that night to address the sickness in the group.  Chuck (our director, so actually Professor Rambeck, but we’re all tight so it don’ matta) wanted to put a halt to this as soon as possible, so he ordered all the sickies to skip class so as not to spread their germs.  He also bought a bunch of surgical masks for everyone in case we don’t feel protected enough.

On Tuesday we got up REALLY early (7:30) to walk to the Parliament building at the northwest side of the National Gardens.  While the Parliament building was interesting, the best part of the morning was the walk to the tour.  This was because we gained a new friend in Rufus Scrimgeour (no, not the Minister of Magic, but this description describes our loyal pal as well as the Harry Potter character).  Rufus was a stray dog that we met during our stroll through the gardens.  As soon as he spotted us, he knew that he was born to be our bodyguard.  This dog would circle around our group, walk ahead of us and clear the path, and even run at any oncoming vehicles and scare them away with his sonic bark (It's at the end of the clip).  But his best deed of all was getting rid of the countless annoying pigeons that swarm the gardens. 

As we were nearing the exit on the far side by Parliament, a particularly large group of pigeons sat in front of us, bobbing their heads and pooping all over the place.  It was at our most desperate hour that Rufus split off from us.  We were scared, but we knew that Rufus would return to save us when the time was right.  Just as we were about to hopelessly fight our way through a hoard of cooing birds, Rufus appeared from the East, like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings, charging at the pigeons and scaring them all away.  He even caught one in his mouth for the slightest amount of time, which we all presumed he was hoping to present to us as a trophy.  Our group let out a large cheer and praised the dog as he trotted alongside us up to the steps of Parliament.  We exchanged heartfelt goodbyes as we entered the building and left Rufus forever, but I’m sure that someday I’ll see Rufus again, traveling on the high road.

After the Parliament tour, we were scheduled to have History, but for the third time in three class periods, our teacher didn’t show up.  While the first two were understandable (he has been absent in London because his father died, but we were never told and have waited in the classroom every time), this one was a little ridiculous.  It turns out that he was actually waiting for all of us in a different room, and neither he nor we ever thought to check for each other.  We attempted to reschedule the class for Wednesday, but had to cancel that also because of a CYA group dinner at the President’s house (of CYA, not Greece).

This dinner was actually kind of a waste of time in my opinion.  We all rode on buses for over an hour to a suburb of Athens where the President lives, ate the same thing we would have had here (gyros) and then returned two hours later.  The only cool part was we got to go by the 2004 Olympic Stadium, which is huge, and the entire area around it that was built before the Olympics.  It was clearly the more expensive part of town (the President’s back yard was the first lawn that I’ve seen since coming to Europe).

While the rest of the group was busy battling whatever disease they have, I started battling a different type of sickness for the first time: home sickness.  It’s been a little under a month since we took off from the Humphrey Terminal, and it was about Wednesday that we had an at length discussion about all the things we missed.  Our list included videogames, St. John’s, pets, homes with real food (not just cereal, pop, milk, bread, and Nutella), other friends, sports and competition, easy access to internet, and the absence of just about any activity to do while bored.  I then started thinking about what I would tell people I’ve learned abroad if I came home now and all I could think of were the card games 500, Euchre, and Hearts. 

Later Thursday night, we were sitting in our Greek Language class having a pizza party and discussing the education system in Greece.  Somewhere in between hearing about college entrance exams and picking careers, my mind started to wander.  I thought about why I went abroad, and why I chose here.  Was this the right thing to do?  Am I taking too much of a break from the real world?  Through emails from St. John’s about LSAT practice tests and internship opportunities, I’ve been constantly reminded about what awaits me when I get back.  This is supposed to be the big decision year, and I’ve put it off just one more semester.  While kids here in Greece have to choose their career when they apply to college, I’ve sat on my decision, deciding to major in the language I speak and in the study of thought.  Though the class period was lost on me, I feel as if I went through an important couple hours of thinking.  Maybe it’ll help me in the long run.

On a different note, we have the day off today before we travel to Delphi, the ancient city of the mythological Greek oracle.  Maybe some answers still lay there for me about my future, and hopefully I don’t get any real diseases while riding on a bus with all of my sick counterparts.  After this weekend, we’ll have reached about the midway part of our time in Athens, so we’ve also started to look at flights to Rome and even back home at the end, just to check for prices (Newsflash: they’re expensive).  But that’s a long ways away.

I apologize for waxing poetically about my thoughts and so forth.  It’s out of my system now though, so that won’t happen again.  Besides, there’s no time to feel bad when I’m in Europe, right?

And there's no pictures today, but I'm sure after this weekend I'll have another large slideshow for you all to look at.

Special Shout-Out of the Day:  Sally Twelves.  It was her birthday on the 15^th so this is a little late, but I didn’t write a blog on that day so I couldn’t really do a shout out then.  And yes, I did give her a birthday greeting on the right day, this is just secondary.  Happy Birthday Mom!

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott: 3

Matt: 1

Ryan: 1

We didn’t insult any foreigners in the last couple days, but Bill, Ryan and I did make Matt kind of mad the other day.  He’s been one of the ones feeling sick the last couple days, so we haven’t really seen him.  We invited him over to our apartment for some card games, though, and he accepted cause he was feeling a little better.  However, we were still skeptical and greeted him by all wearing our surgical masks (which we continued to wear for the entire time he was there).

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Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Islands, and Cliffsides, and Volcanoes...Oh My!

Hello fellow “readers!”  Steph, I give you one job and you can’t even follow through; now I have to go another entire blog without a name for my loyal fans.  But anyways, it’s good to be back and writing to you all again.  I say “back” because I have just gone through a long no-internet stint due to my travels to far away islands, which happened to be the first time traveling for the Three Caballeros and I in 2 whole weeks! This time we went to a place that scholars have long maintained is the best island ever (citation needed)…Santorini!  Yep, Santorini: an island of cliffside vistas, beautiful sunsets, black sand beaches, explosive volcanoes, and apparently the occasional rain.  Get ready “readers,” cause this is easily the longest post yet (but I will now lure you all in with the promise of pictures at the end, so keep reading).

Being the intelligent weekend traveler that I am, I brought only a duffel bag with two shirts, a few pair of shorts, and my swimsuit.  What else could I need?  I had a pair of jeans thrown in, but took them out at the last minute because “cold” isn’t in Santorini’s vocabulary (so I thought).  Luckily, I at least grabbed a sweatshirt because we were once again waking up to travel at the early time of 5:30 AM.  We arrived at the Port of Piraeus for our 7:20 AM ferry and boarded along with the rest of the masses.  If you’ve never seen an island ferry, it’s basically a floating parking garage with a couple cabins thrown on the top deck to satisfy the people who don’t want to sit in their cars.  Since we didn’t have cars and also didn’t have cabins (see “angry travel agent” in the last post), we wandered around until we found some good airplane-style seats inside the top deck.  At first these seats seemed as if they’d be fine, but that was until we all woke up every half hour to find that our heads were no longer attached correctly to our necks.  Scott did not have a very good rest on the ferry, and instead was forced to watch every Greek’s favorite midday game show…Human Tetris (which really was quite entertaining).  Walking outside on the deck was useless, too, because of the wind and rain that made it feel as if someone was throwing salt into your face.

8 hours later, we were told to start heading towards the exits of the ferry because we were coming up to the island’s port.  The view awaiting us on the decks outside was unprecedented, even with the heavy cloud cover.  You see, Santorini used to be a large, everyday island that was pretty much a giant circle.  That was until the volcano at the center got very angry and blew up in what is widely considered the largest explosion in history.  More than half the island was thrown into the air countless miles, leaving a crescent moon shaped island with a second island (basically the remains of the volcano, called Nea Kameni) in the middle of it, along with a few other random shards that survived the blast.  What this explosion did do, however, was give Santorini some of the best cliffs ever (I’ve since decided that the whole explosion thingy was done on purpose in order to gain more tourists).  This is called the “caldera” and it looks like one half of the Grand Canyon with a sea hundreds of meters below.  This cliff didn’t stop the Santorinians (?) from still living on the island, though, and it also didn’t stop them from building their houses as close to the edge as possible.  From below, this was one of the most stunning sights I had ever seen.

Since it was already 4 PM and it was still raining, there wasn’t much tourist stuff we could do.  But, like all good Minnesotans, the rain couldn’t stop us from hitting the beach and our hotel swimming pool.  The night ended with me going to my first Greek dance club and of course showing everyone the art of breaking it down.

Saturday was easily the most important day of the weekend, and best of all it was sunny and warm most of the day.  We woke up at 10 AM and took a bus back to the port that we landed at to take an all-inclusive tour of the islands.  We got on a pirate-looking vessel and made our way across the inlet to the volcanic island in the middle.  As our guide pointed out to us, there are two types of volcanoes.  The first is a spewing volcano where lava comes directly out of the top without being blocked (such as in Hawaii).  These may sometimes create small catastrophes, but never anything too big.  The volcano that blew up Santorini, however, is an explosive volcano.  The eight different existing craters are all blocked by large rocks and mud that cause the volcano to slow build up pressure.  Think Mt. Vesuvius or St. Helen’s, but much bigger.  Oh, and this one’s still active (who knew that this blog could be so informative…I deserve money for stuff like this).

After climbing around the top of the volcano for a while and trying our best to disturb it, we climbed back down, reboarded the boat, and set off for a second small island right by the volcano.  This island was actually part of the volcano at one point and still has hot springs that feed right into a small lagoon.  The boat couldn’t dock anywhere here, but we were given the option to dive off and swim into the hot (actually more like lukewarm) springs.  The warm water felt quite good, but the best part was the therapeutic mud that covered the bottom of the springs.  Like any obnoxious college group, we proceeded to cover ourselves with the mud in war paint fashion while everyone else gave us weird looks.  Their loss: we were exfoliated and they weren’t.

Next, we made a brief stop at a third island to eat lunch.  On the menu that day: octopus.  We had to, right?  We then hopped on the boat and headed back to the main island, but this time we went to the northwest side of the crescent moon to the town of Oia (pronounced Ee-ah).  This is the one you may see in all the postcards and pictures because it has all whitewashed houses and churches, along with a beautiful, uninterrupted view of the sunset.  We docked once again on the bottom of the giant cliffs and were given a choice of how to proceed up.  We could either walk (yea right) or ride donkeys.  Since we’re all donkeys, we chose the lazy asses…wait, other way around.  Despite the ever imminent threat of donkey flu, the donkey ride was really entertaining, mostly because Matt acted like a kid on Christmas and couldn’t stop laughing the whole time, which in turn caused the rest of us to giggle the entire way up the caldera.  We got to the top with a couple hours to spare until the sunset, so we walked around a little and took in the town before staking out a place to sit and wait.  And wait we did (as you might be able to tell by how many pictures I took in the same location).  When the sun finally did creep out from behind the last couple clouds, it was gorgeous.  The light and shadows reflecting off the buildings was surreal, which made it pretty easy to feel like an expert photographer.  Though the sun was blocked by more clouds before actually reaching the water, it still was definitely worth seeing.

Tired and fulfilled, we headed back to our hostel and promptly collapsed in our respective beds.  We woke up early once again on Sunday morning to catch our ferry home, but not before we got a beautiful view of the sunrise on our hostel’s side of the island.  We all slept the whole ride home (with the occasional waking up to work out neck cramps), and used the rest of the day to catch up on internet, news, and sports (yea, we watched the Vikings…go Brett Favre and AD!).  I am now neglecting homework and instead finishing this up for all of you “readers” at 1 AM my time, so I hope it was enjoyable.

In other news, we officially have become “locals” in our little neighborhood of Pagrati.  The last time I stopped in the gyro shop, the woman at the counter smiled and rallied off my order to me before I could even talk.  I didn’t even have to say “the usual.”

So, that’s the Santorini blog, “readers.”  Until next time, kalinihxta (that's good night) from my home in Athens.

Of course, here's all the pictures from the trip to Santorini.  Just click this link and enjoy!

Special Shout-out of the Day: Ben Rietz.  Ben joined Charles Moore as another contender for biggest contributor to the blog by taking the official new Scott on the Rocks picture.  Steph could’ve also joined this high-class group if she was creative, but alas…

Second Special Shout-out of the Day: Taylor Swift.  I know this is like cheating, but this needs to be done.  I'm not sure how many of you tuned into the MTV Video Music Awards last night, but if you didn't, you missed one of the most insulting displays in music history by Kanye West.  Here's the story: my girl Taylor Swift had just won the award for Best Female Video when Kanye West decided to storm the stage during her acceptance speech, steal the mike from her, and tell her that Beyonce deserved to win the award.  What a jerk! That's the last time I download any of his music.  Here's the story with a link to the video so you can all see how stupid Kanye is.

European Insult Tally

Bill: 1

Scott: 3 - I managed another point this week by insulting the one Greek that I probably should have tried to not insult…my Greek language teacher.  Class was apparently scheduled at too early of a time for me on Thursday (10 AM), and I responded to this outrageous starting time by falling asleep in class (I tried my best to stay awake, but the back of my eyelids are so convincing).  I woke up to her staring at me and asking me to stop snoring and quickly tried to play it off as if I’d been awake the whole time, which I’ll of course defend to the death.

Matt: 1

Ryan: 1

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Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Who Likes Pictures?

Ok everyone...here's the moment you've all been waiting for.  For the first time in Scott on the Rocks history, we have pictures!  That's right ladies and gents, consider this as a passport filler for all of you.  This once in a lifetime opportunity allows you to see multiple different countries, stand in the shoes of the Three Caballeros (Bill, Ryan, and Matt), and satiate your desire to be a world traveler! So, without further ado, you may click on the links below which will lead you to a few wonderful slideshows outlining our journeys so far.  Enjoy!

Click on this link to see a slideshow London and Paris!

Click on this link to see another slideshow of more Paris!

Click on this link to see a slideshow of the best pictures from London and Paris along with all the pictures so far from Greece!

Alright I hope all of those pictures worked for you guys...if some of them didn't show up, you can always click the link on the bottom of the slideshow pages that says "back to main view."  I hope that'll work as a fail safe, but hey, I'm as new to this as you guys are.  And I apologize that all of these pictures are scattered everywhere, but that's what I get for waiting to put them online until I had way too many to try and work with.  But hey, I did it and to some people that's all that counts.

Now that you're either angered because the pictures didn't work or happy because I finally did something productive with this blog, I guess I should update you all on what else has been going on here.  As you can see from the pictures, Matt and I made it up to the top of the Acropolis the other day because we were bored and we had miraculously finished all the tons of homework that we had been assigned.  The view from up there was amazing.  We could even see the sea!  And speaking of seas, we went to another beach since the last post.  This one was even better than the first because of how clear the water was.  We could see rocks that were about 10-12 feet (sorry, 3.04-3.65 meters) below us without it even looking like they were underwater.  I guess we have Poseidon to thank for that.

And while we're on the subject of Poseidon, that's whose temple we went and saw the other day before going to the beach.  The temple was built on a peninsula out into the Aegean that had sheer cliffs on all sides, so that was pretty cool...again, this is when I hope those picture links worked cause it's on there.

Besides that, not much else has really happened.  We still haven't even had every class yet because our history teacher has been away (he has a good reason, but it might soon be time to start asking for a refund).  For art history, we went to the National Archeological Museum today and I fittingly forgot my camera.  I'll just say we didn't see anything important and then none of us will feel like we missed out, mmm k?

Friday we leave for Santorini for a couple days.  Now, when I told you about this before, I had stated that we had it all figured out and booked.  But the plans have kinda changed a little bit.  After figuring out that we could save a little money if we didn't use the travel agent that St. John's and St. Ben's works with, we decided that we'd anger said travel agent and go on our own.  It was later discovered by me and most of the group that the money that we "saved" was actually only on the ferry over, which means we now have to sit in airplane style seats for 7 straight hours instead of being in four-person cabins which the travel agent had booked us in but said we could drop if we wanted to save money.  So, basically we ticked off our travel agent for nothing, are now traveling in less comfort, and get this look from the travel agent whenever we see her (which is especially scary because she's a woman).  Perfect.

Alright, I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories to blog about after Santorini, but at least you have some pictures to tide you over. And if you didn't like them or they didn't work, just listen to this song about pictures.  That should tide anyone over.  Cya.

Special Shout-out of the Day: Stephanie Twelves.  Steph, I am assigning you a job to do that will benefit the blog.  Since I am entirely uncreative when it comes to titles (remember, Charles came up with the name for this thing), I am calling on you to come up for a name for all the people who read this blog.  I'm sick and tired of writing "you," and "you all," etc.  "You all" need a title.  So get back to me on the comment section (anyone else can do this too, but no one is required to...except Steph).

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott: 2

Matt: 1 - Matt finally scored a point this week during the walk around the Acropolis when he insulted an unassuming little Greek boy.  Earlier in the week, we had heard in our Art History classes that slaves were the ones who mined the marble from deep inside Greece's hills.  This was a terrible job, and only the worst slaves and criminals were sent to do this.  Well, as we were walking back down the hill, a little boy sprinted in front of Matt, cutting him off and almost making Matt fall.  I chalked this up to Matt having a poor center of balance, but Matt quickly yelled to the boy to "watch out or I'll (Matt) send you to the mines!"  Ouch.  Well at least we all got a history lesson out of Matt's insult.

Ryan: 1

Ya digg?

Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

Easy as Aß∆

Ever since I graduated from high school, I’ve thought about all the things that I could go back to and absolutely dominate if I were able to now.  So far, my list includes things like the first grade spelling bee (which I was eliminated from after misspelling the first word I got…chair), machine-pitch baseball (I would smoke those things like Albert Pujols now), and any sport in gym class (wait, I dominated those anyways).  Up until yesterday, that list also included kindergarten.  Now I may be no Da Vinci, but I can fill up coloring books like it’s my day job.  And forget learning about how to tell time.  I’ve gone through 8 time zones in the last week and have only slipped up once.  But apparently, if I had to relearn the alphabet, I’d still have the same problems I did in that first grade spelling bee (stupid chair).

Why do I say this?  Well, yesterday was the first day of classes here in Athens.  First on the schedule: Modern Greek Language.  Now, I’m assuming most of you reading this have never tried to interpret an alien language, but I can now assure you that I have.  Not only are Greek words weird sounding and without any comprehendible rules, but they also are written in different letters.  Any of you who have ever been in a frat (sorry, fraternity) or sorority may have already noticed that these letters are quite foreign.  But we don’t have any frats (sorry, fraternities) or sororities at the upstanding universities of St. Ben’s and St. John’s, so my innocent eyes have never looked upon these odd symbols before.

As I sat in this class yesterday, my mind went to mush.  All of the sudden a “p” made an “r” sound, an “n” made a “p” sound, a “∆” made a “th” sound, a “∑” made an “s” sound, an “H” made an “I” sound, and a bunch of other made up symbols such as circles with lines in them and Ω’s and so on made other sounds.  I’m sure our teacher was doing her best to go slow, but I don’t think she could understand just how hard this was.  This wasn’t like learning Spanish or French (which, as we all know, I’ve already struggled with this trip), but instead was like trying to learn hieroglyphics.  After only an hour and a half of sounding as incomprehensible as this guy, I was exhausted.

Luckily, I was given a much-needed break before I had to go to our next class, which was Art History.  Even luckier still, Art History only lasted 10 minutes.  So I had that going for me, which was nice.  Our first day of classes was thus ended.

Later that afternoon, we met with a travel agent who has worked with our study abroaders in the past.  Little did I know that by the end of the meeting, we all would have booked a three-day stay in Santorini (small volcanic island about 10 hours off the coast).  So I guess I’ll have that to write about soon.

Oh, and let me not forget about yesterday’s other big event.  You see, at CYA, most of the students studying abroad aren’t with entire school programs.  There are a couple schools that are represented by high single-digit numbers (USC, Notre Dame), but St. Ben’s and St. John’s are the only schools here with a large group.  That was until yesterday, when the Lewis and Clark group of 17 new students arrived.  I could have sworn the skies grew a little more ominous over our heads as the gods realized the circumstances below.  These new students instantly became our rivals.  We knew that we needed to get prepared for a battle over Athens that would be bigger than any war in Greek history.  All we can hope for is that the Lewis and Clark admissions lady didn’t accept any brave or courageous students.  (For those of you who are a little lost over the last sentence, I personally know one of the admissions ladies at Lewis and Clark, so this is serious stuff).

In other news, we had the night free last night, so we decided to visit one of Athens famed outdoor cinemas.  It was on the roof of an indoor cinema, and was run by an old man and his wife.  The movie itself wasn’t the best (The Proposal), but the outdoor atmosphere was awe-inspiring.  I then slept for 10 hours and we all headed to the beach for the first time today.  I guess it’s a little known fact that the Aegean Sea is saltier than McDonald’s french fries, so I could basically float without any effort.  But, the water was also perfect on the hotness scale, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

Other than that, not much has happened.  We went to the grocery store and got some bare essentials (Coke, cereal, milk, and Snickers bars) and also found a great little shop that makes gyros the size of Chipotle burritos for only 1.80 euros.  A gyro for that little euros is as good as it gets.

Alright I’m clearly running out of ideas for this post.  I guess I’ll write again soon when more things happen.

Special Shout out of the Day:  Joseph Jensen.  For those of you who don’t know Joe, he is a 20-year old friend of mine who is studying abroad in Mexico.  Normally none of that is important enough to merit a special shout out but Joe did something amazing yesterday in his pre-med studies down in Puebla.  That's right ladies and gents, on the first day on his hospital shift, Joe delivered a baby.  It’s a miracle of life and also a miracle that he didn’t faint.  Congrats to Joe and to the newborn, who was soon named after him (I just made that part up).

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott: 2

Matt: 0

Ryan: 1

Ok I’m sorry this is getting monotonous, but it’s tough to insult a Greek, and that’s not for the lack of trying.

 

Ya digg?

 

Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves

The Opening Ceremonies

Kalimera from Athens.  Yea that's right, I know some Greek (and we've only been here for about a day and 4 hours).  The Greeks here are very friendly, so just imagine all that I'll pick up by the end of my time here.

Since I last wrote, we had to wake up early and get to the airport, which is never fun.  It also doesn't help when no one in the room gets any sleep due to a crying baby and paper thin walls.  Sorry, I should rephrase that.  It was a screaming baby that must've kept bumping his head or something, because it seemed that each time I was on the verge of getting into a REM cycle, there was a loud BANG followed by a slowly but exponentially growing whine.  There was no stopping this kid.  This was coupled by me having the same recurring dream that we were supposed to be at a train station for some reason by 3:50, causing me to shoot awake and check the clock at least 5 times.

All in all, by the time the alarm actually did go off (at 3:50 still... at least I'm an intelligent dreamer), I had maybe gotten an hour of sleep.  Awesome.  We all zombied our way out of the hostel and into the street so we could get in our taxi which was supposed to arrive at 4:15.  Before I go into that, however, let me flashback to us trying to get a taxi.

This little interaction went a little like this.  Before we left to go out for our last day in Paris, we decided to book a taxi because we weren't sure whether we could do it when we got back.  The lady behind the front desk was one that we hadn't seen before, but we weren't too worried.  Until...

Bill: Parlez vous Angles? (Do you speak English?)

Lady at Desk: No. (No).

Bill: Uhh...crap (That's a direct translation to English)

While we all sat there dumbfounded, Bill struggled through Frenglish trying to communicate with the desk lady.  Eventually he got through with a few choice words and arm signals, and we got a taxi for 4:15.  However, Bill couldn't remember the word for "morning", so we just hoped that it was for the AM.

Now we leave the flashback and return back at 4:10 the next morning.  As we stood on the curbside, we noticed a parked taxi van on the other side of the street.  It had to be ours. We all ran across the street, eager to get in, only to have the guy tell us that he wasn't waiting for us, but instead was waiting for someone else who somehow had ordered a taxi at the same time going to the same place that wasn't outside.  Hmmm.  Coincidence? I think not...

Depressed and tired, we crossed back over the street to our hostel's curb.  As we were crossing, another taxi van came rumbling up towards us on our side and stopped on the curb.  Hooray! We all moved towards the rear of the taxi and opened the hatch to load our stuff.  But just as we were about to, the taxi driver came running from the driver seat waving his arms.  He told us that he was waiting for four people who had called for him to arrive at 4:15, but he was going to a different airport.  This was getting ridiculous.

So, we trudged back up the curb and started checking our watch again.  It was now 4:17.  We started to question whether we had actually ordered the taxi for the right time, but right as I was about to slap Bill, a third taxi came roaring down the street towards us.  He screeched to a halt in front of us and waved us in.  Finally, a taxi!  He explained how he had just been assigned to give us a ride and made it 10 kilometers in 10 minutes to get here, and was willing to drive fast to get us to the airport too.  Perfect!  We piled in and held on tight.

We made it to the airport in probably record time, going god-only-knows how many kilometers per hour.  Luckily there was no traffic.  And apparently there were no lane lines, speed signs, or road rules either.  Needless to say, he got a deservedly large tip.

We unloaded and made it to the plane on time and headed out for the Grecian capitol.  After a three hour flight and a one hour bus ride, we made it to C.Y.A., where I am writing to you now.  Our day ended uneventfully with some much needed sleep... lots of sleep.

So far all we've done is some orientation stuff, which is boring. But we also got our class schedule... I have three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and only one class on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Oh, and none of them meet before 10:00.  Feel bad for me, please.  I'm sure there will be plenty more stories to tell in the upcoming semester, but for now, this is all I got.  Cya (Get it? It's C.Y.A.)

Special Shout out of the Day: Ben Jagger. Ben, I see you became a follower, and you get a deserved shout out today because, well, your bigger bwother misses you (read that phonetically).

European Insult Tally:

Bill: 1

Scott: 2

Matt: 0

Ryan: 1

No changes at all in the European Insult Tally today... chalk it up as simply a travel day.

Oh, and I just realized that I went a whole post without mentioning Taylor Swift... oops.

Ya digg?

Your friend or family member (or random acquaintance)

Scott Twelves