Go for it.

Today brought me so much happiness, it's ridiculous. For starters, I met the family that I was paired with after notifying my director I was interested in being matched with a Greek family. The original cause of the pairing was to get in touch for babysitting gigs. I know this is going to be so much more. After calling Valia in order to let her know I was interested in spending time with her son, Alex, she quickly gave me directions in order to get to her house. Now, I'm pretty comfortable doing things on my own, especially since my experience in India, but this was to be my first solo adventure since being in Greece that required leaving my immediate neighborhood. I actually had no clue that I would have to take a 40 minute commute in order to get to the family's home. However, it wasn't too bad. I caught the right metro (these ones aren't color coated like the ones in Boston or New York in order to differentiate between the green and blue line). I was worried I kept missing the one I needed to get on, but I soon found out that I was indeed waiting for the right one. Whew!


Alas I arrive 10 stops from my original starting station to meet the lovely Valia. She is beautiful and so lively. Her and I immediately clicked and began talking about where each was from, what I was studying and more about my experiences so far in Greece. I loved her the moment she started talking. I've had my fair share of babysitting and meeting new families. I don't always know what to expect and this was no exception. I was so grateful that I was put to ease when we began talking. After a little drive from the metro, we ended at her beautiful apartment flat. It's enormous without being too much. I walked into a goofy little baby named Paul and a super energetic 6 year old Alex. I'm always worried the kids will be super shy or totally against a new person coming into spend time with them, but Alex quickly put that worry to rest. He was fast to show me his school work, drawings and his room. Before Alex and I scampered off, his mom told him, "Alex, we're Macy's Greek family because she doesn't have her family here". My heart melted. It was in that moment that I knew this was going to be more than me just watching Alex or helping him with his English. I felt absolutely comfortable and so happy.


Alex and soon began to vibe one another and it was an instant connection as his mom said. She told me later that she had never seen him get to comfortable so quickly. I got even happier. Ha ha. After about an hour and a half of playing trucks, dinosaurs and reading, it was time for me to go. Alex was sad to see me leave and asked for me to stay or come back tomorrow. We decided on once a week, on Wednesdays. I am so excited. Soon Valia walked with me to show me the buses I will take the next time. I'm happy to be challenged to find my way to and from her house. It also gives me some time to be alone and get away from the same thing day in and day out. I am beyond ecstatic to spend more time with my new Greek family :D


Once I finally got off the metro and started walking home, I came across a game of volleyball. I have been looking so hard for games and people to play with, so I immediately become psyched to see it. I almost walked by, but I decided that I was going to ask to play. One side only had 5 people, so it was perfect. I gathered my courage and went for it. They said yes! I jumped in and got right to settling in. I guess they were pretty impressed because every time I made a move, they cheered and gave me a high five. I guess they underestimated me at the start. My side won :D I was mildly bummed that it had ended so quickly, but my new friend made it better by asking me to pepper. Gah, so much fun. In between our reps we exchanged names and where we were from. His name is Rahmat and he's from Afghanistan. He was super sweet and very good at volleyball. He was excited that I had the fundamentals and could actually maintain consistent peppering. He had no idea how happy I was and how much I had felt in my element. We set up another time to play and I'm seriously so excited.


To finish my awesome day, I made a quick stop at a little market across the street from my apartment to buy some milk. When the cashier told me the total in Greek, I understood! I was so proud of myself and completely content with my day. A shower and bowl of cereal to finish off the greatest day this week. Going on my own adventure today and putting myself out there to the strangers really pushed me to go for the things I wanted. This new family is going to offer me a nice change to my daily life and playing volleyball with the guys allowed me to enjoy something I love to much. I'm grateful that I can take these risks, but also grateful that I have the opportunity to test my gully :D

Not everything's perfect.

including this program. Today I had a conversation with some of the girls in my program, and I'm glad to say I'm not the only one who has been feeling not so great about our program. I don't know if it's the fact that I'm spoiled by a liberal arts school education where classes are based on student-teacher interaction or if I excel in an environment where conversations with the professors are constantly taking place. Either way, I find that my program lacks a lot of this. I find myself struggling to want to go to class because I am so uninspired. On top of that, my Modern Greek class moves in a speed that I think is unreasonable. We cover a chapter in about 2 days without many explanations of what's going on other than here it is, we'll look over it, do enormous amounts of hw on it and keep going. There's SO much vocab that I still have no clue what it means and today we learned a topic that I still don't know when we use it, yet we're moving on. Tonight I have to create an entire dialogue with another person to recite tomorrow in class. I haven't taken a language class in a while, but I know that intro classes don't just tell you to run before you can walk the way this course is commanding us to. Sigh... I enjoy the field trips and hands on aspects of the program, but as soon as we enter the classroom, I'm immediately discouraged and quite frankly, frustrated. 

The Land of Awesome.

This past week has been so absolutely amazing. Crete was more incredible than I could have ever expected. And the best part? It was part of my school’s program. They organized everuthign from the buses, ferries and hotels. They really did a great job too. Every place we went to was nice, clean and in the center of everything going on. To begin our trip, we explored Heraklio- the port our ferry dropped us in. It was so beautiful. We began with a walking tour followed by a visit to the site of Gortyn. Here we saw some pretty insane ruins. Everything is just crazy to look at and think about all the history that exists in one spot. The people of Crete are pretty amazing-past and present.  Our next stop was Phaestos. Talk about huge. This was the oldest site we went to during out entire visit. I felt so cool being in the same spot where Greek civilization started and continues to hold an enormous amount of importance in the Cretan community. I feel so blessed. 

right off the ferry at 7 a.m.

Heraklio port.

Beginning of tour.

love the buildings!

church of Ayios Titos.

colors!

Morozini Fountain.

fresh errrryday.

ew, rabbit.

center of town.

view from end of tour.

little town we took a stop at.

one of oldest Cretan churches. 

rockin' the scarf as a belt ;D

brian and i snagged some fresh grapes, sshhh!

Gortyn.

Entrance to Phaistos.

Views all around.

ruins.

After learning all about the Minoan communities that lived in the area, we had a free afternoon to explore Matala Beach . This beach is Hippie Central. I loved it. Everything was so colorful and you could feel the carefree atmosphere from a single conversation with the storeowners. We had lunch and enjoyed the beautiful water. I bought my bffl Jesse a knife from there that is SO cool, I thought about keeping it for myself. Alas we made our way to Olympic hotel for our first night’s stay. The day was long, but everything we saw and got to do was more than words can describe.

Day Two started with a HUGE site- Knossos. Now this is the mamma jamma of Crete history. It was the palace to the Minoans who while not the official first Greeks were the community that existed before the first Greeks called Mycenaeans. IT IS MASSIVE. Even more incredible is how much of the site is still holding up. It’s interesting comparing it to the buildings we live in today that can’t stand earthquakes, but here we have thousand year old palaces still holding up. Ha, I think it’s kind of funny when we think about it. Anyways, the site was extremely busy so it was difficult to maneuver the area in a slower pace. Again I was filled with happiness knowing I was standing in the presence of remarkable history.

After Knossos, we went to Heraklio Museum that houses most of the artifacts found at Knossos. It was small in size but large in importance. Seeing everything in the hard form made everything that I was learning in class come together. I appreciate the way that I am getting a genuine first hand encounter with the lessons being taught in the classroom. It’s one of the greatest things about the CYA program. Once we finished there and grabbed lunch, we began our trip to Rethymno. Here we did a walking tour and enjoyed the ocean’s beauty. The following day we visited the Rethymno Museum followed by a visit to another site by the name of Aptera. The weather started to get nasty, but this meant insanely awesome clouds. [see below]

 To conclude our day we made out way to what was my FAVORITE town out of everywhere we had been on the trip- Chania. A walking tour of the old town had me smitten and I had fallen in love. The Venetian style architecture took my breath away as well as the generosity of the people in the town, and all over Crete for that matter.  We were supposed to hike Samaria Gorge the next day, but since it rained and made it unsafe, we had an extra day to fill with other activities. So on Friday we went to another site near a wonderful beach. It was a quick site review and an afternoon in the water. I love the beaches here. It was warm, but because of the wind it seemed a lot cooler than usual. Either way, it was a beautiful way to end out trip. Soon after the beach, we hung around Chania a couple more hours then started our treck back to Athens. I really really love Crete and suggest everyone to go there one day. 

I am not currently planning my Thanksgiving break- Cairo. I’m going to do it. I found a small group of people from my program who I'm going to travel with. I can't wait. This is too awesome.