CMC Abroad Recent Posts

Somebody pinch me… [kwalker10]

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:47:12 -0700

Seriously. Life can’t be this good, and I feel like I’m overdue for some seriously bad news. I’m in the middle of my internship at NATO (the Claremont Colleges’ connection to NATO is one of the reasons I chose CMC), and I love it. All of my studies have been devoted to foreign relations and diplomacy. I’ve read my fair share of communiques. And now I get to be a fly on the wall as these documents get drafted. I come home (always leaving the office late, always after a long commute), and I’m simultaneously exhausted and totally pumped to keep going. (Which is why I’m having this huge internal debate about whether or not the foreign service is right for me, but that’s for another post.)

I love Brussels. The city is so charming and there’s always something going on. And since these festivals (museum openings, parades, food fests, designer exhibitions) are open to everyone and locals go too, I don’t feel like a tourist but like someone who actually lives in Belgium. AND my French is improving! And the people who stop me on the street to ask me out are polite and typically ask me to dinner rather than their apartment. In any case, I wasn’t so sure I could live in France but I could see myself in Brussels.

I booked my dream trip to Thailand. I’ve seriously wanted this trip since middle school, and suddenly a funding source opened up, and airfare went down (thank goodness for a drop in oil prices…), and it became possible. I’m going with my boyfriend, and things are still good for us despite all the time we spend apart while I’m off trotting through Europe. This makes me happy. So now we get to do a jungle trek together! Elephant rides! Hanging out on beaches with clear water and white sand! Cheap cheap cheap massages! Eek!

I got the job of RA and couldn’t be with a better group of people. I’m about to head to Mexico for the first time, and I get some quality time with one of my best friends for the first time in years. I am about to get my wisdom teeth pulled, maybe that’s my bad news. I just hope it’s not something terrible like a year from now complaining that no one hires me, no grad school accepts me, and I have no source of income.

Home after an amazing 4 months [sbao11]

noreply@blogger.com (Sonia Bao) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:47:00 -0700

It was weird coming home, I didn't realize how much I had missed it until I pulled up into my drive way, went into my house and laid down on my bed in my own room. To be honest, I had been dreading going home for the past 3 weeks because coming home would mean leaving Greece and the life and all the friends I had made in the past 4 months. I realized just how short 16 weeks were and how close we had all become amidst being in a foreign country, traveling, living together and growing together. Some of the friends I made this past semester are some of the closest people I know now. It was just so heartbreaking seeing all of that come to an end. Being back at home now, it almost feels as if Greece never happened. We're not all living in apartments a few blocks away from eachother. I don't just walk over when I'm bored or go to the fruit market on Tuesdays and Fridays. No more traveling on the weekends or going out to Psyrri. No more bakerys or gyro stands. Leaving Greece and saying bye to everyone was one of the hardest things I've had to do I think. Looking back now, I have no idea what I was so scared about about going abroad. It opened my eyes to so many things and gave me an experience I wouldn't trade for anything.

I've been back at home for about 3 weeks now, and it's still hard to think about Greece and the memories because it makes me smile and yet sad because it's over. On the plane ride back, thinking about everyone and knowing that we wouldn't all be together again, or at least for a very long time made me nauseous and just want to disappear. Even now, I wish we could all just be back in Greece and have a little more time together. But then I realized, that I shouldn't be moping or sulking. What I experienced was amazing and once in a life time. If i hadn't gone abroad I never would have met these wonderful people and wouldn't have had the adventures I went on. One of the hardest things that I had to deal with was growing apart with my friends. It's as if one second we were in our own little world, and the next we're back in reality and in our homes spread out across the country. But I know that regardless of where we are or how much time passes, we'll always share those 4 months of experiences that no amount of distance or time can erase. That's what makes me smile. Barcelona, Spring Break, the islands, I'll never forget Greece. Making sangria on Sangria Friday's, and cooking family din before going out for a night of fun in Psyrri and going home at an ungodly hour as the sun was rising. It's always going to be a part of me and I'll always miss it on some level. What we had was special because never again will we be able to experience what we had at that time. Who knows what's still in store for me in the future. This is just the beginning of a lifetime of adventures. I'll take these experiences with me and grow from them.

Have I mentioned airplane travel makes me super irritable? [kwalker10]

Thu, 28 May 2009 01:47:10 -0700

Flight: Very beginning: Surrounded by over-perfumed old ladies (isn’t airplane etiquette to forgo the perfume??) and screaming babies. Early middle: Watched Marley and Me. Why I decided to do that on a plane, when I know fully well that I bawled through the last few chapters of the book, is beyond me. Middle: I watched Twilight and am upset that I’ll never get those two hours of my life back. Late Middle: Tried really hard to sleep. Epic fail… End: Flight from Frankfurt to Brussels, unwashed tourists on both sides. Still not enough sleep. I’m really unpleased but have no one to bitch at. (We’ll see how much my boyfriend loves me after we fly to Thailand and back…)

BUT I’m here. And despite all the promises that Brussels would be hot and humid, it’s cold, wet, and rainy. I hope this goes away… I may not have packed well. I have a light jacket for nights, but that’s it. AND no warm pajamas, which I didn’t think I’d need. AND only one pair of flats because I forgot to pack two. AND I packed my baggy jeans instead of my skinny jeans (that are the same wash). I’ll survive. I just may need to go shopping. Believe it or not, I do try not to do so in Europe. Is it bad to call home and ask for a care package on your first full day there?

To end a good note, I have a really good feeling about my host family. My host mother squealed and hugged me when she saw me. I’m quite relieved. And now, I’m off to explore my new neighborhood!

Playing… what now? [kwalker10]

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:56:53 -0700

My host father explained to me (in English) that their oldest son plays hooky every day, but important exams are coming up in a couple weeks so he’s going to be very busy… may even need to stop playing hooky. I figured going to class the couple weeks before exams would indeed be beneficial but wasn’t entirely sure why skipping so much class to begin with didn’t faze Monsieur Parisel.

About thirty minutes later, when the conversation had switched to French, it became evident that Vincent plays HOCKEY.

I must say, the constant switching between English and French (and the fact that I’m living in Flanders, who speaks FLEMISH tyvm… which I can’t read) is incredibly disconcerting.

Back to Europe! [kwalker10]

Fri, 22 May 2009 13:41:28 -0700

As Wes continues to tell me, I never really wrapped up my semester in Germany, did I? The last few weeks were a flurry of school projects, Weihnachtmarkts (Christmas Markets), and realizing how much I loved Freiburg and would miss it when I’m gone.

Now that that wrap-up is done, onto the really good news: I leave for Brussels in FOUR days. Am I ready? Perhaps. Am I packed? Of course not. BUT I’m super excited to get back to the Continent.

My summer plans in brief:

Intern full-time at the US Mission to NATO (June 2- July 24). Wear suits and jackets every day in heat and humidity… who does’t love that? (In all seriousness though, this is an amazing opportunity and I’m beyond grateful for it.)
Head to Paris for Euromeet to have CMC pay for expensive meals, network with CMC alumni, and visit one of my very best friends (who tells me this is the first week of the Parisian soldes, or sales, and that it’s also fashion week for hommes. Apparently I’m sneaking into a runway show or two?) (June 26-28)
Visit Aymi, a good friend from my Germany semester, in Berlin (July 24-27)
Return to a former home-sweet-home: yay, Freiburg!! (July 28-29)
Day trip around Belgium, taking advantage of an SNCB deal where 10 one-way tickets cost 73EUR total and are good anywhere in the country. I’m thinking of going to Brugges, Antwerp, kayaking in the Ardennes, and Ghent. The nice thing about being in a country as small as Belgium is that I can get just about anywhere I want to go within an hour (and most far less than that.)
I’m telling myself I’ll do research for my thesis, make connections for a Fulbright application to study multiculturalism in Estonia since EU accession, and work on grad school and fellowship applications. We’ll see how that goes.
Explore Brussels. The three girls I know from Claremont won’t arrive until July, but Brussels, as the de facto EU capital, is full of expats and there are a lot of opportunities to meet each other. Hopefully I won’t gorge myself on Belgian waffles or chocolates in doing so.

Update of the past month... [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Sun, 10 May 2009 13:21:00 -0700

UPDATE Spring Break- 5/9/09
Sorry I haven't updates recently, here is the past month and what has been happening... I will post Mykonos pictures soon!

Spring Break! By far the best yet! So the trip was 9 nights. It started off with four of us: Me, Sonia, Tim and Wells. We planned to go to Milos for four nights, Paros for 3 nights and Santorini for two nights. Bella met us in Paros and was with us until the end. Terry and Lizeth were also in Paros the first day we were there so we spent the day with them. Now a day-by-day recap:

Friday:
Our ferry was leaving at 3pm so we had time to go to the fruit market. I made some chocolate covered strawberries and got a bunch of fruit for the ferry. I packed and then we went to the Port. On the ferry ride we napped, played hearts and watched a movie. When we arrived at the port we had no idea where to go and Tim summed it up perfectly. Let me set the scene for you first. When we got off the port the islands are just like the pictures, almost everything is white with blue trim and shutters. So, we realize we have no idea what to do and Tim is in the back and I hear him go “Okay, this is going to be a problem…” Son, Wells and I turn around to hear what he has to say and he continues with “our hotel is white with blue shutters.” Son, Wells and I proceed to turn back around to look at the buildings and of course there are more white buildings with than you can count. That was a great start! We all just started cracking up. A few minutes later we found the hotel owner waiting for us with a car to take us to the hotel. We had a room with four bed, a tiny-like kitchen and a bathroom. After we dropped off our things we went to explore/eat. The nightlife in Milos was almost less than existent so after we ate we went back to the room and played hearts.

Saturday-Monday:
Every morning we woke up starving, found the nearest bakery and then went back to the room to sunscreen up and go to the beach! On our way out we would stop at the grocery to get turkey cheese and bread for lunch. We talked to the owner of the hotel and he recommended we get a car. There were countless beaches in Milos and to see a good number of them we needed some kind of transportation. The car was only 20 euro a day so we decided to get it for the three days we were there. Wells drove the stick shift, he struggled a bit, but did better than any of us could do so we were quite grateful and supportive even if it took him 6 tries to get going… The beaches were UNBELIEVABLE, as you can see from the pictures that don’t do any justice. The water was the bluest and clearest I’ve ever seen and the numerous caves were so creepy/cool. Tim and I ended up swimming through some caves (Wells and Son chickened out) and we came up on this beach that couldn’t be reached from the land. We swam up to it through this cave and found carvings all over the walls. People that had been there before had carved names and initials into the wall, so we obviously did the same and want tot go back and see our initials later in life. Each night after the beach we would shower, nap and then go to eat and go back to the hotel and play hearts. One of the nights Wells and Tim dropped me and Sonia off in Plaka and we climbed to the highest point for the sunset (same place as all the jumping pictures). The sunset was great, even though there were clouds, but it was nice that we had some girl time and the boys had some guy time, it kept us sane.

Tuesday:
We packed up and went to a restaurant and sat and ate and played hearts while waiting for our ferry. The ferry to Paros was not very pleasant. The water was very rough and the boat was very very rocky. The boat was also really stuffy. There was no one on the ferry, but it felt packed because there was no airflow. We met Bella in Paros and got to our hotel, which was more of an apartment for five. We dropped our stuff and went to find food!

Wednesday:

We met Lizeth and Terry for brunch and decided to go to the nearest beach. Paros had more life to it, but the beauty was nothing compared to Milos. The beaches here were just like California beaches, but the water was still very blue! After the beach we went back got ready and went to happy hour, had the worst margarita ever and then went to dinner. At the beach, there were kids fishing off of this long skinny deck so Sonia and I went to go play with them, Wells ended up coming over too and trying to communicate with these kids about the fish and things was hysterical in itself.

Thursday:

We woke up, got breakfast and then took a bus to Golden Beach, we spent the day on the beach just laying out and hanging out. We got back to the hotel where Tim fell asleep so Son, Bella, Wells and I went to dinner and then sleep.

Friday:
Friday we headed to Santorini. We woke up, packed and hit up a bakery and waited for our ferry. Instead of waiting 20 minutes we ended up waiting 2 hours because our scheduled ferry had problems and was cancelled. We finally got to Santorini and took a 45-minute bus ride to the hotel that was literally on the beach. We dropped off our stuff, signed up for a tour on Saturday and by then it was about 4pm and we decided to catch the last part of the sunrays. Sonia and Tim were starving so they went and got food while Wells buried me. Afterwards, Wells and I found Sonia and Tim when they were finishing and ate at the same place. Bella had gone for a run and had eaten earlier. We were all pretty tired so we decided to go to bed and go out on Saturday.

Saturday:

We took a ride back to the port to catch our “traditional boat tour ride” We took our traditional boat to the volcano, hot springs, Thissalonia and Oia (pronounced Ia, this is the famous city in Santorini known for the sunsets). We climbed around the volcano, it was hot and the hot springs weren’t hot yet and ended up jumping off the boat into freezing water. Thissalonia was a city that was supposed to have very little tourists (ironic to us). We got to Oia and took donkeys up the hill. Mine was definitely suicidal. He would try to pass the other donkey in front of us and go as close to the edge as possible and I felt like he was going to jump off the cliff! We got to the top and found a very cute restaurant and sat down to wait for the sunset. We ordered drinks and dessert while waiting and played Uno. When we got the restaurant it was empty, but by the time the sunset was close it was the place to be! (I picked it ☺ ) After the sunset we got another ride back to the hotel. We showered and got ready to go out and headed to one of the clubs down on the beach. It was fun, but we didn’t stay out very late since it had been such a long day.

Sunday:

This was Greece’s Easter Sunday and we went to get food before leaving for the port at two and walked out on the beach and there were a bunch of pits that had been dug and had lambs on spits in them. We went to one of the restaurants with this in front of it and ordered the lamb that was just finishing cooking. It was great! We packed and got a ride back to the port. We had a couple hours until our ferry so we played Uno and had a coffee. We thought our ferry was going to get into Athens at 9:30, but around that time we figured out that we actually had 2.5 more hours to go… that was fun. When we finally got to Athens we got home and passed out.

Monday:
I sleep most of the day and watched a movie before getting out of bed. Technically it was still Spring Break! Later I went of the the Kevs and Pete’s to work on my two presentations I had for Stav’s classes.

Tuesday:
I went to my classes, gave my presentation in Athens on Site, it went well. We cooked eggplant parmesan for dinner and it was amazing as always. Watched a movie and went to bed

Wednesday:
I had my last walk for Greek Key and then headed over to Kev’s to use the internet. I left to workout after I had made plans to have a family dinner with Kev, Tim, Pete and Wells. Wells made herb roasted chicken and I made the salad (which was delicious if I don’t say so myself). I did romaine with sliced green apple and strawberries, I honey roasted almonds and walnuts and made my own raspberry vinaigrette. Bam. We had a lot of extra so we went to Petros to get some movies and brought him a plate. We watched a movie and then bed.

Thursday:
Classes, I gave my presentation in Byzantine History, it went well as well. We decided that we were going to Meteora that weekend and that night we went to a Bazookia. It was really fun and we got to dance on stage with the singers!

Friday:

We had our last ½ day field trip with Stavros for my Byzantine and Athens on Site class. I went back to sleep after the field trip because we had only gotten back from the Bazookia two hours before we had to meet for the day trip. After getting some more sleep I went to the fruit market, showered and we did a great dinner Friday night. I made jigantes with my sausage sauce and I made pasta too since we had 12 people. We did a Greek salad with croutons. I was the chef for the night and directed all the chopping and made the sauce from scratch.

Saturday:

We woke up early and caught the 8:10 train to Meteora. I went with Kevin, his two friends from Barcelona and Wells. The train was a little over 5 hours. When we got there we tried to buy tickets back, but it was full so we had to buy bus tickets back. We got food and then went to rent mopeds. We hit three monasteries that day and then came back to the hotel room and watched Office episodes.

The monasteries were crazy cool! The pictures don’t really look good compared to what it is like actually being there. I can’t even really describe it, no words would be good enough.

Sunday:

We woke up and had breakfast and then hit the 3 other monasteries. We explored some caves and hung out on the rock for awhile. We had a good amount of time before the bus and returning the mopeds so Wells taught me how to drive and then we all just cruised around for a while. The bus home was about 5 hours and I was exhausted.

Monday:

I did laundry, met with Jen, the professor I am working with for the first summer session. I went to the gym and took two classes and then stopped at the grocery.

Tuesday:

Classes again. For Athens on Site we went to the old Olympic Stadium and actually got to go in it! We went underneath into the area where the baths used to be. It was one of the coolest classes we had all semester. We were just hanging out on the marble seats while Stavros was lecturing. All the tourists were so confused and a couple tried to get in, but they couldn’t, hah.

Wednesday:

Didn’t have class, so naturally, didn’t really do a lot. Laundry, homework and organizing were the only things I did.

Thursday:
Classes, 8 hours, you get it.. I took a nap after classes and then went to the gym from 10pm to midnight. It is a good time to go because it isn’t busy at all and I could use the classroom to do all my squats and lunges.

Friday (5/1/09):

I went on a day trip with our new Greek friends, Phil and Kelly. Alex, from the program, came as well. We went to the beach and then had the best meal I have had so far! When I got home, I went to Pete’s and we played cards for a while. That night we went to Psyri and danced forever!

Saturday:
Spent most of the day in bed since we didn’t get back from Psyri until 6am. I went over to Pete’s and just hung out, we played cards and just hung out. We also went to get Crepes and I got one with cheese, ham, peppers and tomatoes and it was pretty awesome. I love Crepes.

Sunday (5/3/09):

Caught up on my television shows and did some homework. We spent a greater part of the day playing hearts too.

Monday:

I realized my external hard drive wasn’t working. It has all my pictures, music and movies from Petros on it. AWESOME. Not. Didn’t really do a lot, just mourned.

Tuesday (5/5/09):

Classes, nap, celebrated Cinco de Mayo and played hearts.

Wednesday:

Just dorked around in the apartment and did a little homework. For dinner, Wells, Tim and I did pasta with a sausage sauce and I made guacamole and chocolate covered strawberries. We then went the Busta Rhymes concert. Kind of a big deal. It was so fun! Busta didn’t come on stage until 3:30am, but the DJ was SO GOOD! He played the best music and it was current, hard to find! Busta Rhymes was actually pretty bad and we left around 4:30, but we were dancing the entire night and had a blast.

Thursday (5/8/09):

Two hours of sleep later, it was time for the last day of classes. Byzantine only lasted for an hour and we went for ice cream in Athens on Site. We went for coffee in both my Philosophy and Greek class. Afterwards I took a 3 hour nap and then did work.

This weekend we are going to Mykonos, one of the islands. We had to meet at 5am on Friday and I’m currently typing this on the ferry. We are spending two nights and a good number of people from the program are going since it is their last weekend. It is going to be a blast and I can’t wait. We’ll be back in Athens on Sunday night. I have my two Stavros finals Tuesday and my Philosophy paper due as well then I’m done and the summer starts!

mopeds: the french man’s seduction tactic [lwong10]

Sun, 10 May 2009 13:47:26 -0700

it’s funny how many of my friends will get dreamy-eyed when you talk about french boys on electric scooters. “ever since i saw that mary-kate and ashley go to paris movie”, they muse, “i’ve always wanted to see paris from the back of some super handsome french boy’s moped.” and it’s not just my friends. hundreds of american girls are swept up by french accents, the city of lights, and romantic encounters involving a vespa.

well, girls, the secret’s out. french boys now understand this weakness and are trying to exploit it as best as they can. i was with friends on one of our all-night clubbing adventures at a “hip-hop club” that, in all actuality, sounds just like any other american club without the hip-hop specialization. at the end of the night, my two girls and i were waiting in the club’s entrance for the metros to start running at 5:30am. a tiny band of boys walked by us… and back… and back again… and back. one of them attempted to make small talk with us which we shut down, then left… and returned AGAIN, this time with the other ones in tow. two of them started trying to chat up my non-interested friends, and the third sat next to me and immediately revved up his french seduction game.

a sidenote about french men: they accost women on the street and say throatily, “bonjour mademoiselllllllllllle” in their sexiest manner- which, if they’re older and creepy and you’re just trying to get to the library, comes off horribly unappealing and scary. french boys and men will tell you that you’re ravishing, that you’re the most beautiful woman they’ve seen in their life. or they’ll say really awful, gross things to you in a cajoling, dirty manner. hopefully not much of the latter. they sometimes follow you through the metro, “accidentally” fall against you on the bus… the audacity and serious creepiness of some french guys is astounding to me. french girls and women, in return, are excellent at ignoring these men completely and never giving random men on the street so much as a glance or the time of day. i have guy friends studying here that complain about how cold and heartless french girls are, but i must admit that i’d do exactly the same to them, if i didn’t know them.

anyways, this boy (whose name i couldn’t quite comprehend from his slur-mumbled response) told me that i was the most beautiful girl blablablahbla. i laughed and said, “man, you’re really french. nice pick-up line”. he got offended and told me that he wasn’t like those other french guys. he wasn’t dangerous! so, i asked him for some evidence that he wasn’t a sweet-talking stereotype, and here were his reasons (mind you, he wasn’t exactly in his most rational state of mind):

he had a good family. they were very close. sometimes, he helps with chores in the house. he went to la sorbonne and studied econ. he was very interested in econ philosophy. he has a gold card. he has nice hands. his mom bakes great pies. he enjoys great pies. his friends are nice (and handsome, eh? here, he nudged me and winked). he works for a well-known financial institution. ah, and then his eyes lit up. here, he said, is why i’m not dangerous (and therefore why i should fall in love with him). “i have,” he says, dramatically, “a little red vespa”.

any other girl, and they would have done the whole swoon thing that he expected. i just laughed. vespas do not impress me. i disliked those mary-kate and ashley movies. and i will NOT be charmed by this man who obviously has done his research on american girls. anyways, i had a great time listening to his hilarious logic, and decided to give him my number and just not respond. to shorten an extremely complicated story, i ended up accidentally agreeing to a date with him and then having a surprisingly intellectual, wonderful time during the date. then at the end of dinner and ice cream on the little island in the middle of the seine, he drove me home on the back of his little red vespa. and, much to my chagrin, i really enjoyed it.

Meteora [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:54:00 -0700

One of the most beautiful places I've been yet!

Spring Break and other thoughts [sbao11]

noreply@blogger.com (Sonia Bao) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:12:00 -0700

Spring Break was a WHIRLWIND. It was completely just unreal and beautiful and amazing. We spent 9 days on 3 different islands and soaked up a lot of sun.

MILOS
We went there first for 4 days and this place was just gorgeous. I didn't have any expectations for Milos because it was small and not as popular as some of the other Cyclades. All the hotels were white with blue shutters and we had our own little suite with a balcony. They SAID their hotel was 90m from the port and the water...they lied. We later find out that all of our hotels lied haha ESPECIALLY the one in santorini. So we rented a little car and drove around the island exploring different beaches and caves. The island was tiny and you could go from coast to coast in 15 minutes. The water was incredible! It was so clear and blue and you could go swimming because the water was pretty calm and you could still see your toes eve when you were waist deep in the water. We went to this one beach and the water was literally turquoise. I feel so lucky to have been to these places. The weather was great, the sand was fine, and there was no one else on the beach except us 4. The last night Jess and I went to Plaka and climbed to the church on the highest hilltop to watch the sunset. It was soo windy but so beautiful. The view was breathtaking.

Paros
Paros was a bit of a disappointment. I mean, we didn't do much because the weather wasn't too good the first da we were there. We took a bus through the island and ended up in Golden Beach. One of the beachside restaurants reoepened for the first day for the season and their patio area was right on the sand and we relaxed in the evening sun eating a Greek Salad with some Giant Beans.

Santorini
Santorini was beautiful. Of course. Our ferry there got delayed so we didn't get in until late Friday afternoon. First impression: wow there are alot of cliffs and windy roads you have to drive to get to the top of that cliff. We made it to our hotel, which was on Perissa beach (the opposite side of the island from where the port was). Right outside our hotel was the black sand of the beach with little umbrella huts. We signed up for a boat tour for the next day. I also had the best dinner that night! We made friends with the restaurant owners (a couple by the name of Liza and Kosta). We practiced our Greek with them and they were all very impressed haha. Liza is actually an American who met Kosta and they dated and did the long distance relationship over the phone while she learned Greek over audio cassettes. Eventually she moved to Grece I guess and they opened up their restaurant NTOMATINI. We had the best zucchini rissoles (fried zucchini deliciousness) and pasta.

The next day we got up to take our boat tour. We rode a traditional sailboat to the volcano and we hiked up that. It was pretty cool seeing as how this volcano sand half of the island when it erupted thousands of years ago. This is also the place that the lost city of Atlantis is said to be. We spend about an hour on the volcano, got back on the boat and went to the hot springs by the volcano! They were NOT hot. The boat couldn't get too close to the hot springs because there were too many rocks in the shallow water by the shore so we had to jump off the boat and swim to the springs. It was a COLD jump and the water wasn't too warm (who knows why) but it's supposed to get pretty hot in the summer. The water was orange from all the sulfur from the volcano. The swim back to the boat was pretty bad because the water felt so cold in contrast to the warm water from the springs. We climbed back aboard and sailed to Fira, this old little town with traditional houses. We climbed up a huge cliff of just switchback roads and enjoyed a light lunch at a cafe built right at the edge of the cliff overlooking the water. On our way day me Jess and Bella almost got trampled to death by donkeys. They have donkeys that you can ride up and they were coming back down and their owners couldn't control them and we could hear them running down the path getting faster and closer so we ran down that path in about 5 minutes. The same path that took us about 20 minutes to climb up. After Fira we sailed to Oia to watch the sunset. This time we took donkeys up and dear god I thought I was going to die. After I got on my donkey, he just decided to take off and not wait for the others. It was so scary at first because I thought I was going to fall off as he made his way up the stairs of the cliff. The only image in my head was of Lena falling off her donkey in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I could feel tears forming in my eyes from sheer terror. He was walking so close to the edge too I thought he was suicidal. Then bella's donkey walked along side me and my donkey was a little guy and bella's was bigger and mine just kept trying to race with bella's up the hill. It was scary at first but pretty cool. the beginning was harder because it was a lot steeper so the donkeys had to work harder. I feel really bad for them because they get treated so badly and I would hate to have to carry people up and down the same cliff everyday for the rest of my life. We found a nice little restaurant that overlooked the water to ready ourselves for the sunset. Oia was simply breathtaking. It's everything I ever imagined it to be. The stark white houses contrasted against the blue shudders and domes and blue blue water. I thought I was dreaming. The sunset was gorgeous. The orange and pink that the sun reflected into the sky and off the white houses. It is something I will never forget.

We made it home Sunday night after 7 hours on a ferry. And now I'm sitting back at school typing this. There are only 3 weeks left in this program and it felt like just yesterday that I was panicking about coming here and leaving home for so long. I've grown to love Athens and Greece and just the Greek culture, but I think when the time comes I will be ready to come home to the good ole US of A. It's hard because I want to go home to see my parents and friends but I don't want to leave Athens because I don't know when I will come back again and even if I do it won't be the same. I feel like another chapter in my life is closing. I've had the great chance to meet a group of wonderful people that are now some really close friends, that I otherwise probably would not have met.
I'm ready to go home, but I am definitely going to enjoy and make the most of my last 3 weeks here. Appreciate the city and stay in Athens for the weekend and not travel anywhere.

Greek Islands! (Milos, Paros, Santorini) [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:47:00 -0700

Here are all the pictures! Our professors had a lot of work due this week, so I can't write about it until tomorrow night or Friday, but I eventually will. So here are the pictures with captions so you get some type of idea! We went to Milos, Paros and then Santorini. They were so beautiful and amazing, I want to go back!

I GOT THE JOB! [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:33:00 -0700

So I applied to be an assistant program manager for the program I am in Greece with for teh summer. I just found out that I got the position!!! So... I'M STAYING IN EUROPE UNTIL THE END OF JULY!! I get to travel to more places in Greece, Turkey and possibly more! There are three sessions, each 3 weeks long, beginning May 20th. There is one class the first session, two classes the second sessions and one class the third session. Each class has an assistant program manager and I was picked for all three. Another girl that is in my program now is doing the other class in the second session. A pretty good amount of people applied for this position... :) A little pat on the back for me, I'm proud and SO EXCITED!

March 24th-April 5th [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:01:00 -0700

Pictures from Barcelona and this past week

Tuesday, March 24th

Midterms were very easy. Two of them were made up of 11 questions multiple choice and then each had a 500 word essay on topics that I had already written a 500 word essay about. My Greek midterm was a little more challenging.. didn't really study that much so I ended up getting a B. Tuesday Night I made the giant beans again and they were amazing! I cooked them and soaked them for much longer this time and the sauce was great, tomato sauce with sausage. We left for the airport around 11:30 because we wanted to get to the airport around midnight. Getting to the airport at midnight was way too early. The airport was empty and there was no line for anything. We sat around and played cards until the gate opened and then we took naps in front of the gate for about an hour and a half until we started boarding.

Wednesday

We got to Barcelona around 5 am and got to the hostel around 7 am. The hostel was closed until about 9 am so we went around the corner to a little bakery shop and had coffee and breakfast. We checked into the hostel around 9 and they told us our rooms wouldn't be ready until after noon, but we could chill in the lounges if we wanted to hangout. We put our luggage in the storage room and then passed out on their couches for about 3 1/2 hours. We woke up and moved our stuff to our room and went to explore. We started on Las Ramblas and came across the permanent fruit/vegetable/fish/meat market. We went in and Sonia, Lizeth and I got separated from Boston, Pete and Bella. We went through the market and got the best fresh fruit juice and we wanted for the other three for a little bit, but realized we probably weren't going to find them so we continued on our walk and decided we would find them back at the hostel. We ended up going to Picasso's Museum and walked around. We came back and took and nap. Every night we were there except for Friday, the hostel had organized things for the night if we wanted to go out with them. We never had to pay covers at the clubs and we always got a free drink when we got there. It was a great system. Wednesday night was fun, but Sonia and I headed back pretty early because we were pretty exhausted from no sleep the night before since our flight was at 3 in the morning.

Thursday

We went to Park Guell (Well) Thursday and it was so cool! It was designed by Gaudi and in the park was his house that had a lot of the furniture he designed. He was the first to design furniture to fit the shape of your body. After we left the park we went to this old guy's garage that guys from the hostel had told us about Wednesday. He had thousands of figurines (see pictures) and gave us a presentation of them and ended up setting off a firecracker that almost made me pee my pants. It was a great/weird experience. Afterwards we got lunch at a little diner and then walked back to our hostel. We took a nap and then got ready to go out with the hostel again. We went to clubs on the beach Thursday night. The first club was pretty fun, but the second club we went to was amazing. They played the best music ever and we danced for about 5 hours.

Friday

Sonia and I woke up earlier than everyone else so we went to the supermarket and went to get some food. We went back to the hostel and read a Cosmo we found and ate our delicious food. Once everyone else woke up we got ready and headed to the beach. We made a quick stop at the fruit market to get some juice and oranges. We spent the day at the beach. It was windy, so a little chilly, but great. Didn't go in the water because it looked freezing. Sonia and I played a little volleyball with some Portugal guys. We went home and took a nap and then went to dinner. We had planned to go to the Dow Jones Bar, but Sonia had gotten sick over the last couple days so I went back to the hostel with her. Sonia went to bed, but I went out to a bar with an Australian, two English girls and a guy that worked at the hostel. It was actually really fun!

Saturday

We went to the church Sagrada Familia Saturday, which was breath-taking! It was also designed by Gaudi and just magnificent. After the church, Sonia, Lizeth and I went shopping while Boston, Pete and Bella went to the Picasso Museum. We got back and took a nap and then we went out with the hostel again. We were supposed to be able to do salsa dancing, but they were playing like techno salsa music which was weird so we left and went to Razzmatazz, which is supposed to be the biggest club in Barcelona and it was SOOO CRAZY and fun! That night we were out until 8:30 am! It was a great way to end our trip!

Sunday

We woke up around 11:30 and had to be out of the room by 12 so we packed and stuff. We had made friends with two British girls that were in our room and we went to breakfast/lunch with them before they had to catch their bus home. Sonia and I went back to the hostel and watched Black Hawk Down while the others went exploring a little more. We left for the airport around 8:30 pm and we were back at our apartments about 4:30 am Monday morning.

Monday

I slept until 3pm, did two loads of laundry, went to the grocery store and watched Walk Hard. Quite the productive day.

Tuesday

I had to be at the center by 7:30 am to go apply for my residence permit for Greece since my visa runs out before I leave. That took awhile so I missed my first class and then went to my next three classes.

Wednesday

I was supposed to go on a Greek Key Walk Wednesday, but the group left without me, Boston and Ashley so we just went back to our apartments. We had a Greek Language class make-up from 2-4 and we played memory and Sonia, Lizeth and won! When i got home I made some spaghetti sauce, went for a walk to do my "spatial narrative" for Greek Key, went to the gym, got home, took a shower and then design my spatial narrative project. Christine made Dijon Chicken for dinner and it was great!

Thursday

Classes were the same as usual, except the weather was perfect so Apostolos had our Greek Language class on a hill next to the Acropolis! He is amazing as I have said before. Once I got home I think I took a nap and watched Grey's Anatomy.

Friday

We had a half day trip for my Byzantine and Athens on Site Class. We went to this hill with a church and some cool caves. It was so windy, I felt like it was going to blow me off the hill. Tim and I watched Gran Torino on the bus ride, if you haven't seen that movie yet, it is a must. We got back and went and got some food and then we had Sangria Friday again.

Saturday

Christine and I went on our AthOriginal Walk for Greek Key. We went to Psyrri looking for hidden churches and we found all of them in under an hour. Friday and Saturday the weather was PERFECT. When I got home from our walk I went on our roof to do work. Tim and I booked our tickets and hostels for Spring Break! Tim, Wells, Sonia and I are going to Melos, Paros and Santorini. The four of us are going to all three islands together and will meet up with some others in Paros and Santorini!! SOOO excited! One more week and the islands begin!

Sunday

Today I went back to Zeus's Temple to get pictures from the day i forgot my camera. I took a shower, watched pretty woman and did homework. It's going to be a great two weeks!

NATO Week [kpedersen11]

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:00:07 -0700

For all those who do not know, this weekend was the NATO summit in Strasbourg, France. This was particularly interesting because Strasbourg is only about an hour away from Freiburg, so there was a considerable amount of activity in and around Freiburg. The week began with a very large peace rally that took place in downtown Freiburg. I, along with many other IES people, decided to go down and investigate (hoping against hope that we would see people getting tear-gassed and all that good stuff). The crowd was full of communists, hippies of all sorts, general anti-war people, and a few curious participants who were caught up in the crowd and ended up marching around Freiburg (like me). The chants of “Anti-Capitalismo” “Solidarity” and other various anti-NATO slogans aimed at riling up the crowd. Overall it was a fairly solid peace rally, but not as exciting as I was hoping. I did get to see what a peaceful German protest looks like though and it actually is peaceful.

The next portion of my week involved a vist to a center in Freiburg dedicated to the eradication of small arms exportation. Present at the center was an ex-military guy from America, who had been a guard at Guantanamo Bay and is now a pacifist. He gave a long talk about the evils of military and how it is all a big conspiracy by the rich white people to keep the rest of America down. He actually made a couple interesting points, but the majority was so naive and pathetic that I actually began to get angry. I consider myself a pretty liberal guy, but I am also a realist. It would be awesome if there was a chance to eliminate the military but there is no way it is going to happen. The elimination of our military would not solve anything, and in all likelihood would actually drop the world deeper in to chaos. One of our people actually had to get up and leave, and I began criticizing many of the points that he was making. Primarily because they actually had no back up plan. It was: lets get rid of the military. Well what next? “Um.. we don’t know, we are not experts in that sort of stuff.” !!!!!!!!!!!! I became quite angry at that point. We actually had quite a civilized debate until our Egyptian colleague, Dena, decided that she was going to start ripping on the United States and refering to all of us as naive and unwilling to accept the faults of our country. When you cannot have an argument without getting out of control and outrageously emotional, I will not take the time to try to have a discussion with you. All I can do in that situation is yell back, and to be honest, I do not enjoy pointless screaming matches. It was a fairly interesting experience, but it really made me angry with the idiocy of pacifists.

The coup-de-grace of this whole week was my opportunity to go to the Atlantic Youth Summit in Strasbourg, which allowed me to participate in a forum between 300 students and a good portion of the movers and shakers of NATO. It was an absolutely amazing experience. I had the opportunity to listen to the Secretary General of NATO speak and in fact was sitting within a foot of him before he spoke. I tell you it is an absolutely amazing experience to listen to a man who refers to NATO policy in the first person. He is a brilliant man, and also appears to be a fantastic person as well. I was really impressed with his speech and his overall intelligence. I also heard: the Director of Military Operations, the director of policy for the secretary general, Bernard-Henri Levy a French Philosopher, one of the chief correspondents for the Financial Times, and many many others. The whole discussion revolved around the future of NATO and whether is and would remain justified in its operations. Granted alot of it was propaganda, but it really was interesting. Even more exciting than that is that I was able to go see President Obama speak in his first major public speech in Europe. His whole speech revolved around the concept of a new “Era of Responsibility” in economics, foreign relations, nuclear proliferation, climate, and energy. I was impressed with his speech, but the most amazing part was his ability in answering questions. The man is incredible. He can take a stupid question, make it sound important and interesting, make that person feel important and interesting for asking it, and take it in the direction that he knows everyone wants to hear. It is actually a fairly overwhelming experience.

This whole week was quite an experience, one that very few people get to have, and one that makes me increasingly grateful for the opportunity to study over here. In all honesty this was a once in a life time experience that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Clubs [kpedersen11]

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 07:16:13 -0700

I hate clubs. They really are the epitome of everything that I dislike in the world. Loud techno music, superficial relationships, and the inability to carry out a conversation. I have been to a few clubs since I have come here, and every time I tell myself it is going to be different this time. Never has it actually been better. I suppose part of that has to do with my discomfort with walking up and dancing with random women, but also I just do not enjoy the whole atmosphere. I believe that in order for one to truly enjoy this experience, one would have to be hopped up on some serious drugs, partially retarded, or simply a woman. Now hold on before you judge me for including women in that list. Women in general love clubs. Women have the ability to go into a place and just enjoy dancing with no agenda, nor any desire for anything more. Men in general cannot do that. A man walks into a club with one purpose: women. He is not there to dance in a circle of friends by himself, he is hoping that he can find some random attractive woman.

Personally, I cannot walk into a club and enjoy the stupid awkward dancing with friends, or the sitting and listening to stupid pounding music. Give me an ice cold beer, some nice rock and roll, and a small table where one can talk. That is the ideal. Nevertheless, everytime someone says: “lets go to a club,” I always forget these ruminitions and start the whole process over again. I can do nothing but shake my fist in anger at the cosmos, and carry on with the stupid endless cycle.

Fuimos a Espana [sbao11]

noreply@blogger.com (Sonia Bao) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:20:00 -0700

Wednesday
Our flight leaves Athens at 3am and we arrive in Barcelona at 6:30am. We get there as the sun is rising and the city is just beautiful. We take the bus and get off at Placa de Catalunya. The city isn't awake yet so the streets are pretty empty and the air is fresh. And guess what? THE STREETS ARE BIG! and there's actually sidewalks made for people to walk on! So we roam around the streets until we find our hostel Sant Jordi Alberg. We buzz the hostel, but no one answers, so we find this little breakfast place and sit down, dump all of our luggage in this tiny cafe and get us some coffee and breakfast EMPANADAS! :) they're were delicious. So at 8am we try the hostel again and this time someone buzzes us in. So we check in, but our room isn't ready yet, so we store our luggage and then we all just fall asleep on the couches. It was perfect because we took a 4 hour nap and when we woke up it was only noon and our rooms were ready :) We got an 8 bed mixed room so we dominated the room basically. We put down our stuff, put our sheets on our beds and headed out to explore the city! This time, when we walk out, the city is hustling and bustling with people, buses, cars, and mopeds. So we take our map and head out to Passig de Garcia, where we got dropped off by the bus from the airport. This is a main street on Barcelona so we headed back there and started walking toward La Rumbla, which is also a central city with lots of cafes and restaurants. Along the way we found this really good sandwich place called El Mo's and they had the best tuna sandwiches. The spanish are a fan of tuna let me tell ya. So we grab food there and continue on our way toward La Rumbla. When we get there we spot a fruit market! Our favorite! So we go in and this place is just massive. They have the best fresh fruit juice too for only a euro. So we buy a cup of that and we just explore. It's a fruit, meat, and seafood market with random little restaurants in the middle. Our group gets split up while we're in the fresh fruit market, so me, jess, and liz go our own way. We continue down La Rumbla and there's is just so much stuff. There's a block of fresh flowers, then random people selling rabbits, ferrets, chicken, etc. There were also lots of people dressed up as leprachuans..gargoyles, vampires, taking pictures with people.

We decide to head towards the Picasso Museum. It was really cool. It didn't contain a lot of his famous work because this museum was special because it was created when he was still alive. CRAZY! His friend created it for him and he donated a lot of his works to it. That's why there are a bunch of sketches that he made of people and just random doodlings that he did. that was pretty cool because you never really get to see that stuff from artists. We weren't allowed to take pictures though :(

Then we got lost on the process of getting back and we ended up at the arch (i forgot the name of it :(). But it was pretty cool. We basically just explored the city that first day, getting lost and just appreciating the beautiful architecture EVERYWHERE.

Then we finally got back to our hostel and just crashed for another 4 hours.

Thursday
Today we headed to Park Guel, which also had the Gaudi Museum. It was a huge hike. The hill we had to climb to get up was super steep, but it was cool because there were escalators built into 2 sections of the street to transport people up. It was beautiful. This man was a genius. This entire park was composed of mosaics just everywhere. You have to see it to fully appreciate and understand it. It felt like Disneyland, but in a Dr. Seuss world. It was awesome. His house was also there and was changed into a museum. It didn't have much, just showed the different rooms of his house. He was also the first person to customize furniture to a person. Made chairs to fit individual people. Genius.

Then when we left the park, we went to this little figurine museum that people at our hostel said they had gone to. It's basically run by a Spanish war veteran in his garage. It was a little mysterious going into it, but he just had THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS but little figurines. Toy soldiers to pretty much all the disney characters, the simpsons, pirates, indians, cars. He told us a story and was really interactive. There was a firecracker that scared the living daylights out of us too. At the end of the story we each went through an initiation with a flag. It was...pretttyy interesting.

After that museum, we just wandered our way home seeing the city and just where we'd end up.

Friday
WE WENT TO THE BEACH! It was sunny and warm, but really windy so it was actually pretty cold. I started getting sick so I didn't feel too well. I took a nice little nap on the beach :) It felt good. It was also weird though because people would walk around offering people massages. Literally every 5 minutes someone would walk by offering a massage. There were also people selling henna tattoos, beer, etc. It was kind of annoying really. NO, I DONT want a massage. Just leave me alone. But it was a pretty day :) Very relaxing. Jess and I ended up playing some volleyball with these Portugese guys.

Saturday
I think Saturday was my favorite day. We went to the La Sagrada Familia, which is this enormous church designed by none other than Gaudi himself :) I don't have pictures of that right now because I forgot my camera that day..I know retarded but I will be getting them from a friend soon :) It was really cool because there was an exhibit talking about Gaudi and the designs he used to build the church and everything was pretty much modeled after nature from the shapes of the columns used and the intricate designs on the outside of the church. It had a very gothic feel to it. I loved it :) Then we proceeded to get lost some more, had an unsuccessful shopping evening, but it was fun nonetheless :)

Sunday
I pretty much was really sick Saturday night to Sunday. So we checked out of our hostel, got breakfast...then Jess and I went back to the hostel and just vegetated on the couch for the rest of the day. We talked to the Prague kids that were going back to Prague. Then we watched Black Hawk Down (forgot how good that movie was) and made friends with some Aussies. We left the hostel at around 830pm for the airport and didn't get back into Athens until about 4am :( It was pretty tiring.

I was surprised because as much as I liked Barcelona, I started to miss Athens. I liked the beauty and the open space, but I missed the crowded streets of Athens. I missed hearing Greek everywhere and having people be so friendly. I didn't think I was going to miss Athens. I was afraid I was going to miss Barcelona when I got back to Athens, but surprisingly I don't.

But the trip was really fun overall. I also loved the hostel we stayed out. The people were really nice and hospitable and the hostel was very clean overall. They were very accommodating especially the day we got there and the day we were supposed to leave when we didn't have anywhere else to go. First time at a hostel and a very successful one at that :)

Krakow, Prague, Bratislava, and Budapest [kpedersen11]

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:00:28 -0700

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This trip began at 6:15 in the morning on Friday. I had had about 5 hours of sleep, a ham sandwich for breakfast, and was on a bus. Needless to say I was a tad grouchy, but really I was excited. Not every day does one get to go to Eastern/Central Europe. It was a long bus ride. I am completely unable to sleep in buses unless I am semi-comatose due to sickness, so it was about 2.5 hours in a bus just kinda chillin. Lots of fun. When we got to the airport in Stuttgart we had about 2 hours till our plane was about to take-off so we split up into groups and got lunch/breakfast. I had a nice sandwich, for 6 Euro. My group then sat around talking South Park and making jokes until about 30 minutes before boarding and we headed to the gate. In security my belt set off the alarm, so I was groped by the security guard (seriously this was way more invasive than anything I have gotten in the past) told to take off my shoes (at which point the wand was passed over my feet), and generally felt up all over. To top it off, once we got to the gate and were sitting there for a while it became apparent that our flight was not going to load on time. Turns out there were technical difficulties and we had to switch planes and wait another hour. You know I am a pretty cheerful guy, but my patience was dwindling steadily by this point. Finally we got on the plane, and flew to a small city about an hour from Krakow (apparently pronounced Krakov).

Poland looked exactly like I imagined when we landed. It was dreary, grey, and kinda looked like the Midwest as far as landscape goes. All the while to Krakow, Ewa, a polish girl in our program, was explaining to us some Polish language, customs, and legends. It is always fun to listen to a person from a particular culture explain it to you, because they take such joy in sharing it.

Krakow is a beautiful city, and I must say that Poland really agrees with me. They are really into meat, it is very traditional looking, and they all speak English. We spent 2 nights and days in Krakow and I really loved it. It is filled with a mix of Soviet buildings, and Slavic/Catholic architecture. I loved just about everything about it.

After Krakow we took a small detour and traveled to Auschwitz. Though I was fairly prepared for what it was going to be, I still was blown away. To be perfectly honest, the sensations of the place are indescribable in a blog such as this. Suffice it to say that I was very moved by the feeling of the place, and the examples of cruelty. It is very hard to walk around and simply see the size. The operation was so enormous. I really can’t find the words to do justice to the sensations that are arisen in that place.

The bus ride to Prague was long, very long. However when we arrived I found that Prague was almost as cool as Krakow. It was far more impressive, but a lot less approachable. The sheer size was overwhelming. The first night in Prague we went to a local restaurant, got some fantastic food and then went to TGIF to watch the Basketball game. It was a very interesting experience. The next day we had to sit through two different lectures. The main problem that I had with the lectures was that they were very similar to the ones in Poland. All of the Eastern European countries have very similar views on Foreign Policy, get close to the US, get more involved in the EU, and balance as much as possible against Russia. That day we went and walked around the Prague castle and just enjoyed the city. That night I joined a group of people and went to the famous 5 story club in Prague. It was pretty obnoxious, but still quite entertaining. I must say I led the dancing effort, doing everything from dancing on top of a wall to leaping into a pounding Techno pit and having a dance battle with some random Italian chick. Very fun. The next day we did a City Walk in a blizzard, which was rather miserable. Afterwards I had a delicious meal of Duck and dumplings, followed by strudel. Eastern Europe kicks some major butt with food. Lots of meat, potatoes, and sweet sauerkraut. I love it.

The next day we took an extremely long bus ride to Bratislava and then to Budapest. Bratislava is actually a pretty cool little city. It is very small, rather plain, but has its own charm. I very much enjoyed walking around and looking at everything. It was pretty cool also that I saw the Archbishop of Bratislava while I was there. Something that not everyone can say. Beyond that the Bratislava stop was kind of annoying. We just got two speeches and then pretty much left for Budapest.

Budapest is an absolutely amazing city with incredible architecture and a sense of grandeur that is extremely ironic when put in context of their current economic woes. Budapest is actually two separate cities that were combined into one in the 19^th century. Buda is hilly and contains the castle hill and other beautiful monuments, while Pest is almost perfectly flat. They are divided by the Danube river. It is really a beautiful city. The first night in Budapest I was exhausted so I basically watched TV and slept. The next day we went to a lecture at the Central European University, which was actually quite good. It got me thinking about the possibility of studying there especially since they give you a huge stipend when you are trying to get your masters or PhD. After that we went to the Parliament. The Parliament building was beyond cool. That building is one of the most amazing buildings that I have seen. The inside is coated in gold leaf, while the outside consists of spires which remind one of a palace or cathedral. The lecture did not match the brilliance of the building sadly, but it was informational. After that we walked around the city visiting the castle Buda, and Fisherman’s Bastion. Next we went on a night tour of the Danube, which was mostly fun because we were on a boat in Hungary at night. It was not a particularly good tour but it was fun nevertheless. The next day we went back to the University and then to the House of Terror, a museum on the horrors of the soviet regime. Though it was very good in its set up, it was really hard for me to connect to the display after witnessing Auschwitz. To be honest I really was not that affected by that museum. After that we went to this place called Wasabi which had all you can eat asian food. It was awesome. I came out stuffed. Unfortunately later we had our farewell dinner so I was unable to enjoy that as much as I could have. It was nowhere near the one in Paris, but still tasty. I just think that my expectations were too high.

The next day we said goodbye to Eastern Europe and began our trip home. Overall I really enjoyed this trip. It was informative, but not to the extreme, and I was able to fully experience all of these cities. Add that to the tastiness of the food and the likeability of the people, and this trip was easily my favorite one so far this semester. Plus I got to be in a country when the government fell, that was exciting.

To see pictures follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100626&id=757669487&l=bc04dca6f1

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Bazoukia, Soccer Game [sbao11]

noreply@blogger.com (Sonia Bao) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:06:00 -0700

So there's this very popular dish here called Gigantes and they're basically just really big lima beans. They're really yummy so I decided to COOK THEM! I found a recipe online and went to the supermarket and got all the ingredients. I was determined to cook them right and have them be soft. So I soaked the beans over night and alll day until they expanded and got really big. Then, I cooked them for an hour and made this yummy sauce with tomatoes and onions an garlic and then baked the sauce with the beans for an hour. I took them out and I was so excited/nervous because I had made them for Jess and Lizeth too. And they turned out semi hard :( I was so disappointed and sad that night haha. I so wanted them to be well cooked!! and soft and restaurant-like haha. But MY APRENTS COME IN A WEEKS SO I GET TO BE COOKED FOR AGAIN!! :)

Then on Friday, a group of us went to a bazoukia. A bazoukia is like..a sit down club kind of..Well a mini concert. Basically, there are singers who perform the entire time and the rest of the area is covered in tables where you sit down and watch with a drink. The charge is 25 euro per person, and that gives you a table. The closer the table to the stage, the more money it costs. And, these are like well known performers too. There are also girls who walk around with baskets of flower heads that men usually buy and throw at other girls they think are pretty. A basket of flowers will cost like 200 euros. At the end of the night, the girl will casually look to see who threw the flowers at them, and if she doesn't think he's good looking, she will just leave. Of course, these flowers are thrown on stage to the performers too, but how ridiculous is that?! 200 euros!!

Then on Sunday night, I went to my first football game! :) Olympiakos vs. Panionios. These are all club teams and Olympiakos is supposed to be really good. So we went, despite the FREEEZING COLD and ominous storm clouds. Surprisingly it did NOT rain. It drizzled for a bit and everyone huddled under their umbrellas, but the entire game was sOO COLD! we got there an hour and a half early to get seats, so we sat in the cold for an hour before the game even started. Then the teams finally came out and started warming up and fans just started throwing stuff onto the field! Like toilet papers, water bottles, cups, brochures, ANYTHING THEY COULD FIND basically and NO ONE STOPPED THEM! it was so normal to them! The toilet paper was just rolling around on the field as the wind blew. There were ball boys that would occassionally run onto the field during stops to pick up water bottles and stuff but it's so stupid! Why would you interfere with the game and do that?! it's ridiculous. They started chanting things in Greek, and people were holding flares, and flags. It was pretty cool :) The game finally began, it was kind of slow at first. but it picked up. We didn't stay for the entire game, but by the time we left it was 3-2, Olympiakos. By the end of the game, I couldn't feel my feet or hands. I didn't remember how it felt like to be warm! haha oh and I also bought an olympiakos jersey to wear, like later on my own time :) We weren't allowed to wear any colors that would show we supported any of the teams because the fans are very intense and sometimes there are riots after games.

Well that was my weekend, wasn't very productive. I studied on Friday and Saturday because I have 2 midterms tomorrow. Sunday was basically the soccer game. THEN WE'RE LEAVING FOR BARCELONA TUESDAY NIGHT/WEDNESDAY MORNING AT 3AM AND STAYING THERE UNTIL SUNDAY NIGHT!! I'M SOOOOO EXCITED :)

March 16-23 [jwaggoner11]

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica Waggoner) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:44:00 -0700

These pictures are more from Thessaloniki last weekend, the soccer game, St. Patty's and Athens on Site

So the giant beans didn't quiet work. BUT I did make a sauce with sausage and that was brilliant. I'm going to try the beans again tomorrow and I WILL get them!

Tuesday was St. Patty's Day, after classes we played cards and then I took a nap and then we hung out for awhile with everyone afterwards. when I was on the metro going to my Athens on Site class there was this little girl sitting on her dad's lap and we made eye contact and she waved to me and smiled and it made me realize how much I miss that from the states. I don't see very many little kids here as it is and when I do they aren't as friendly as I have encountered back home. The girl ended up waving to me three times and when I went to get off at my stop she blew me a kiss and for some reason that kinda made my day and made me really miss Cate and Erin.

Wednesday I didn't have any classes so I a lot of laundry and put it on the roof to dry and then it started raining, which is awesome. I did my homework and cleaned our entire kitchen. I worked out too, and did weights that I haven't done in awhile. I took out all the stuff in the shelves of the cupboards and fridge. The rain turned into a huge storm, like giant monsoon back at home during the summer. My Professor, Stavros, had a lecture that night about Jordan and Pre-Christian times so I went to that and then Sonia had tried the giant beans, again, not quite there but the sauce was great.

Thursday, my upper body was pretty sore from the weights I did Wednesday. I went to my classes and we went to the Temple of Zeus for Athens on Site. It was pretty sweet, but I forgot my camera, so I'll have to go back and get pictures. While we were having class fighter jets and helicopters kept flying above us, which made me pretty nervous at first because there was like 6 of each. But then someone said they were just practicing for Independence Day on Wednesday. Thursday night we went to a Bazookia which is live Greek music where they dance on stage and teh tables and throw flowers and plates. It was really fun!

Friday was a great day. Sonia and I somehow got up at 9 and went to the fruit market and then shopping. We went home showered and ended up going to the boys' apartment around 2. We made guacamole and sangria and played cards for the rest of the day, watched some basketball and took naps. Great day.

Saturday was another very productive day. Didn't get up until 12:30, showered, watched Grey's and Private Practice, and went shopping and to the super market with Ashley and Katerina. We made dinner for three Greeks they are friends with. We made pesto chicken with pasta, bread and a greek salad. It was delicious, a little awkward for me because they weren't speaking much english (Katerina is fluent in Greek and Ashley knows a good amount), but they were nice to look at.. :) We went to Psiri to this club called Mao and it was really fun! We got a table and ended up dancing most of the night and then got the best gyros ever afterwards and met this event planner that throws a bunch of parties that is going to get us tickets and stuff to events.

Sunday didn't get up until 2, marvelous. We went to a soccer game with the program. We met in Syntagma at 4:30, but ended up hanging out for an hour because the game was pushed back an hour. Sonia and I went to Monastiraki and bought a couple soccer jerseys. I got one for me and one for Tanner. We all took the bus to the stadium and it was FREEZING and being the genius that I am, wore the lightest jacket I have here. Even though I was frozen, it was still a blast. The fans are nuts here! They cuss at the refs and throw things onto the field at the players and no one does anything! There was this section in one of the corners of the stadium that was going crazy the entire time. They were chanting and dancing and throwing flares all over. We left about 5 or 10 minutes before the game ended because fights or riots usually break out at the end. After getting back to Pangrati we went to Pete and Kev's to play some hearts. After I could feel my fingers again we started to play while watching some of the March Madness basketball games. The second game we played I won AND shot the moon intentionally for the first time! To make things better, I am in first place with the March Madness brackets! I have 15/16 of the sweet 16 teams!

I have my three midterms tomorrow, so I'm just studying today and then we leave at 3 am Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning for Barcelonaaaaa! We are soooo excited! Life is kinda perfect.

PARIS FASHION WEEK [lwong10]

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:48:41 -0700

that’s right friends, i was at fashion week. in PARIS. to update you, this blog used to be called “Being in Beijing” and, since I am no longer in Beijing, has been changed. My style of blogging hasn’t though; I still post a month after cool things happen. My apologies. Anyways, back to the real meat of this blog: runway shows.

For those of you who intend to be in Paris during the month of March and feel like rubbing off a bit of this city’s glam, write Paris Fashion Week into your calendar. Here’s the secret: you can get into the fashion shows! For free! And rub elbows with the biggest names in the fashion/celebrity world! I went to 4 in all, starting with Giambattista Valli, then Victor & Rolf, afterwards Kenzo, and finally Chloé. I attempted Alexander McQueen (ha! why in the world I thought I’d get in, I’m not quite sure) and Paul & Joe. What my friend clued me into was that if you go to the fashion show venue, and they’re spread all over the city during this week, at least an hour early and stand in the Standing line, you have a decent chance of charming your way past the bouncers. Most Standing line people have Standing invites, but if the list-holders and the bouncers see you standing there first in line with that dogged determined grin on your face, their hearts might just melt enough to slip you in after all the invite-people. It works! My friends and I (usually one or two other girls) made friends with the bouncers, chatted up the list-holders, and got to look really cool when we showed up in line and the big unfriendly security men lean over to say hello and let us move to the front of the line. Sometimes, people in the Standing line with invites will have extra, and they’ll slip one over to you too. That happened to me at Chloé.

See? All you need is patience, a chic outfit, determination, and a disarmingly charming attitude! It worked for me. I loved seeing the shows, not just for the famous people (though that was pretty fun spotting out the celebs behind their massive glasses and little entourage) but for the ridiculous/fabulous fashion on the spectators and models! We saw Nina Garcia, Anne Hathaway, some girl from the Hills tv show, a ton of skinny young models, and KANYE WEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the man himself, representing my ‘hood. I got a great picture with him after the Victor & Rolf show because when the show ends, everyone goes out the same door and you end up getting pushed out the door with the head editor of Marie Claire or the next fashion designer darling. Some of the people were wearing the strangest outfits (like a giant neon furry vest?) while others were drop-dead gorgeous. I saw a lot of leather leggings, all sorts of ankle boots, great big shapeless coats, and really hot heels. Giambattista Valli’s fall-winter 09 line was half-inspired by peacock’s, V&R had these amazing snow-white accents to their darker grey dresses, Kenzo was inspired by Russia, and Chloé was, as always, classic. My favorite by far was Kenzo because of its sexy playful ethnic boho chic look. I’m so inspired to go shopping now; alas, price shock from being in China hasn’t quite worn off yet. Another result of Fashion Week: I got a mad cold after standing out in lines for hours and was the irritating sniffling blowing-nose-er in all my courses, but it was so worth it. Only in Paris, right?

Thessaloniki [sbao11]

noreply@blogger.com (Sonia Bao) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:58:00 -0700

Alright, I think it's about time to update this thing again. Sorry I haven't been consistent, but things have just been so busy lately. We left for Thessaloniki last Wednesday as a program trip. We rode the train for about 6 hours and finally got to our hotel (Egnatia Hotel, which was actually pretty nice. AWESOME BREAKFAST BAR with the best toasted croissants ever). The next morning, we set out for day one of a tiring weekend that involved us covering the entire city of Thessaloniki on FOOT. We left the hotel at 9am and went to..I don't even know how many museums and churches. They all started blending in together. I couldn't tell you what we saw at what exhibit. I think on the first day we covered the Rotunda (church) and then visited a the house of a Turkish man named Kemal. A Jewish museums...All I know is, during our lunch break, we went to this game cafe where everyone was playing a board game of some time, so we sat and played UNO :) Then during our break time we found this cafe called the Playhouse where they had HUNDREDS of games to choose from. You sit down, order a drink, and you they give you a selection of games to play from. We couldn't play alot of the board games because all the instructions were in Greek :( That actually didn't occur to us at all, so we ended up playing a variation of UNO called SOLO. It was pretty found and we found a few pretty cool bars that played live jazz. Then we did some more walking...and ended up walking like literally 3 miles at 8pm at night to go see this church. We walked to cold temperatures and winds. Then, they just left us at the church and told us to find our own way home and said they'd see us tomorrow morning. So we're standing there...thinking Great we have no idea where we are. I don't think we're even in the city of Thessaloniki anymore..so we all just hailed cabs and rode home. The second day was pretty much the same thing, covering more museums and churches. But I was able to get about an hour nap in that second day :) That was super helpful. I actually can't recall what we did that second night to be honest... Everything is all jumbled together. One of the nights, we went to go eat dinner down this little street that was lined with tavernas. When we walked in, all the owners ran towards us and were pulling us into their restaurants and offering us free wine and dessert. We didn't get up going into any of those. We chose this other taverna that was filled with loud Greek people and looked very traditional. But the moment we walked in, everyone stopped talking, and just stared at us as we walking through the crowded restaurant, up the stairs, then everyone upstairs stared at it. It was awful. The table next to us were watching us like we were animals in a zoo as we ordered and ate our food. Greeks have no problem with staring because they were never taught to not stare or point when they were little like the rest of us are. So obviously you know when they're talking about you because they whisper and stare, but they think that you have no clue. anyway, that was an experience.

The last day, we finally took a BUS! to everywhere. It was an ancient day where we went down to Pella (capital of Macedon) where Alexander the Great was born and where the royal family lived. Then we went to Mieza where Alexander and Hephastion were instructed by Aristotle. This is were we started our presentations for my Alexander the Great class. My presentation took place at the next site at the Tombs of Vergina. My group did the skit of the assassination of Philip II at his daughters wedding. It went well! :) Then we went in and visited the Tomb of Philip the II/Philip the III depending on which historian says what. There was a museum within the tomb that exhibited everything that was found. That was probably the best museum ever because everything was so well preserved. Sad part is, we couldn't take pictures because the entire place was dark. There were only lights within each glass exhibit and pictures weren't allowed. Exhibited were also the entrances to the actual tombs. Then as if that weren't a long enough day, we proceeded to make another bajillion mile hike up to the top of old Thessaloniki to a site a overlooked the city. It was beautiful, but it was FREEZING because by the time we got up there, the sun had gone down and it was just blowing winds everywhere. The thing that got me through was the prospective of Mexican food for dinner :) We ended up taking a cab down from that horrendous mountain and ate MEXICAN FOOD!! we finally found a place. It was pretty good for Greece. Could have used a bit more flavor, but eh it was good enough for me! We had some nachos with guacamole, sour cream, black beans and cheese. Then a chicken quesadilla. AH i can't wait to go home and just eat a big fat chipotle burrito. Oh how I miss big American food portions.

We walked so much that weekend that I don't think I will be able to wear shoes for quiittee a while. It was a fun trip but just way too jam packed. They worked us like machines this weekend and that's apparently because this is the first time the program has planned a trip to Thessaloniki and didn't know how much to do. Well looking at the itinerary was OBVIOUS that it was WAY TOO MUCH! it just turned out unproductive because people were exhausted, didn't pay attention and nothing seemed of importance anymore and we didn't actually enjoy much.

Then I had my first midterm today, which I think it's safe to say that I did pretty well! :) Then I have 2 more next week and then it's MARCH BREAK!! BARCELONA HERE WE COME!! This Sunday we're going to a soccer game: Olympiakos vs...Panthiakos? I have no idea. But I'm going to go buy a soccer jersey so I can repp Olympiakos haha and pretend like I know what I'm doing. We may or may not go to Hdyra this weekend (island) and spend the night Saturday night. all i know is, I want a relaxed weekend, definitely a relaxed Friday after last weekend. I'm still not recovered from that exhausting trip.

But I have to say I did like the city very much. It was laid out very well with big streets and open areas like plazas to walk with trees and stuff. It is also by the water so it was beautiful. It is just lined with restaurants and cafes and bars. There was also a big student population so that was fun.