Sandalmaker Poet

Last saturday the roomies and I went on a search for Athen's own Sandalmaker Poet. He is a well-known sandalmaker who makes authentic greek sandals with all of the laces and leather straps and everything. He is also a famous poet and back in the day he would write you an original poem and paint it onto the bottom of the sandal. He has had famous customers like John Lennon, and Jackie O. Now his son runs it, and even though they have been offered big bucks to sell out to a larger company, they still work out of a tiny little hole-in-the-wall store on a random street in Athens.

Going there was so awesome. The sandalmaker poet was very nice and definitely knew what he was doing. We walked in and kinda got creeped out at first because he was staring at our feet, but apparently he always tries to guess what size of foot his customers have. They had about 20 different styles to choose from, some with the names of famous customers that bought them. So we would choose from the "menu" which sandal we would like to try on and the sandalmaker or his apprentice would bring it out and lace it up for you (kinda complicated for some of them) and see if it was the right fit for your foot. After I tried on the Hermes I knew I had to get them, especially since the sandalmaker himself approved. He then fit the leather strap so that it perfectly fits my foot, and he added shoe nails and an offical stamp in the leather sole. It was such a cool experince and now I have my own authentic Greek sandals!

Back to School

I finished my first full week of school! Greek, literature, philosophy, art and archeology, and sociology should keep me pretty busy this semester. All of my professors seem very nice and very excited about teaching us this semester. Learning Greek is going to be more difficult than I thought, but its exciting as I start to get the hang of it and start to be able to recognize words and phrases outside of class. It will take time to adjust to a completely new alphabet, but it will be worth it to be able to read street signs and make small talk with Greeks. Literature and philosophy are both going over my head, even within the first week. How sad is that?! I guess I'm just not used to thinking in that creative way. Science classes have taught me to think analytically and I just can't break from that! I am really excited about Art and Archeology because the classes often meet outside of the classroom, with field trips to museums, archeological digs, the acropolis and other famous sites, and even a full weekend trip to Delphi, the site of the Greek Oracle. One of our assignments is to prepare a presentation about an assigned piece of ancient art, and we will give the speech in the museum, in front of the original object itself...how cool is that?! Where else would that even be possible?
Along with classes there is an opportunity to complete a outside project that allows you to become involved in the Greek community in some way. I am interested in a few of the volunteer activites including working at a soup kitchen once a week or volunteering at a community health clinic. I visited the clinic during the week. Boy was that culture shock. The clinic is in the center of the "sketchy" part of town, in Ommonia. It is not really dangerous (especially during the day) but it is where all of the immigrants and druggies hang out. Athens in general is pretty dirty and run-down, but Ommonia was definitely the worst. The clinic itself is also rundown. I would love to be able to talk with doctors and observe how healthcare works in a different country. My only hesitation is that they would have me filing papers and correcting charts, which is not really conducive to meeting doctors or talking with patients. So I still have to decide about that. Any advice would be great!
So school so far has been great and I'm excited for the new things I will learn this semester.

Firsts

Hello, everyone! This post adds to the long lists of "firsts" that I have had over the last month. Though there is so much to tell about my travels before even ending up in Greece, I think I'll start with my first week in Athens.

So here goes...

After 3 weeks of traveling around Europe, Justin and I landed in Patras, Greece on Sunday, January 25th. We came over from Italy by ferry, which was an adventure in itself. After a beautiful train/bus ride along the coast and through the countryside we finally made it to Athens just in time to meet the roomies and head to an orientation dinner. There are about 50 students in my program, all from various states within the US. They all seem fun and nice, even though it was a bit awkward and clique-ish in the beginning.
All orientation week was spent with a few meetings about the neighborhood and safety and travel, but most of it was spent touring the neighborhood and getting to know our new home. We rode the metro and the trolley, checked out the local supermarket, had Greek coffee, went to the fresh outdoor market, ate at a few local hotspots (2 euro gyros and spanakopita at the bakery...mmmm) and had many other new adventures. We also had Greek school for four hours every day, which was helpful so we could communicate on a very basic level with our fellow Athenians. Greek is hard though, let me tell ya.
At the end of the week the whole program took a trip to Nafplio, which is a town on the southern part of the mainland, and is right on the coast. It was a gorgeous little fishing town with cobblestone streets and kids playing soccer in every platia. It was also Greece's first capitol and has ruins of a huge medieval castle perched on a cliff that overlooks the town. On Friday we hiked the 999 steps to get to the top of the mountain and enter the castle. The view was stunning, with gorgeous acqua blue water on one side and rolling green, green hills on the other side. We stayed up there for a few hours, exploring the ruins and taking in the fact that we were actually IN GREECE!!! Even still it feels too good to be true.
On sunday we were back in Athens and me and two of my roommates spent the day exploring Athens outside of Pangrati. We took a long walk down the Promenade, which is just a pedestrain pathway that passes by several archeological sites. We didn't make it to the Acropolis yet, but stopped by the temple of Zeus and a few Roman baths. We also ended up at a huge swapmeet that goes on every Sunday. Our day ended with a nice dinner in a Greek taverna in celebration of our first week in Athens.