First Impressions

So I've been in Greece for a little more than 24 hours at this point, and it's definitely been interesting. Our apartment (I'll post pictures later when I have a chance to take them) is cute, but a little quirky. I'm already missing my American shower -- the one here is hand-held and you have to remember to turn the water heater on 20-40 minutes before you want to shower so there's hot water. There's three of us living there and we each have our own room and access to a balcony.

This morning, we went to the hospital to get the requirements for extending our visa taken care of. I got to have another TB test and a chest x-ray which involved stripping from the waist up and being pressed up against a very cold machine. I'm starting to be able to find my way around the neighborhood a little bit and found a fruit store, a fish store and a bakery already. Tomorrow we're going to the weekly fruit market to learn how to buy things.

We had our first intensive Greek lesson today and learned the alphabet, vowel and consonant combinations and a few Greek essentials: please, thank you, excuse me, yes, no, good morning, etc. I'm at the point where I can kind of sound out signs, but I'm not really sure what anything means.

I'm heading out for dinner now, at the typical Greek hour of 9 PM and I'm absolutely starving... hopefully we'll manage to order some delicious food!

12 Days to Go...

Well, I leave for Athens in 12 days. I've almost finished unpacking from moving out of Georgetown, so now it's time to start packing for GREECE! Of course, first I'll have to deal with the lovely pile of stuff on my bed -- the last of the unpacking. My room hasn't been this clean in a good year or two.

I've got my visa all taken care of and I've started reading the guidebooks and travelers' tales I got for Christmas. It's making the trip seem very real and also making me pretty excited. I've got a few more things I need to buy for the trip -- a plug adapter for my laptop, maybe a new backpack, and a lot of toiletries -- even though they say not to bring them, I'm hoping that if I bring them and use them all up while I'm there, I'll have enough space to bring home everything I buy abroad. My to-do list is slowly shrinking, although I keep thinking of new things to add to it.

I got my housing assignment a few days ago, and I'll be living with two other girls. One is from Chapman and the other goes to Princeton. We're only a few blocks from the old Olympic stadium, a weekly farmers' market, and the Center where we'll be taking classes. It's shaping up to be an amazing 4 months!