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.