Friday, March 24

Ann Marie Sierra

This morning we woke up very early around 4 a.m. and left for the San Diego Airport.*Yawn* My Mom, Dad and I boarded our first flight to New York. At the airport we ran into Miles Holiday and Billy with their grandparents along with John Keller. So, we got to hang out with them a little bit before we left and that was fun. A few hours later we all landed in New York where we parted. My family and I went from there to Heathrow Airport in London. While we were at the airport we found a minnie mall, where we got to shop and eat for a while during our 6 hour lay over. I ate a really good Curry chi ken kind of soup for brunch in one of the shops. In my Dad's pocket he had dollars, pounds and euros, so it was funny and hard to try and sort them out to pay at the counter. There were a lot of brand stores inside like: Bally, Boss, Clique, etc. One thing that I found really funny was that inside the stores they were playing modern American music....very interesting (Especially "I wanna love you"). We looked around in the shops for a while, but the prices were SO high and completely unreasonable. I think the only thing we actually bought was eye shadow. We felt like we should get something since we were there. :-) I loved watching all the different people walking around, talking or reading their books. Everyone was so different and unique. Most of the people we had conversations with had a British accent which is so much fun for me to listen to and admire.  From there our family boarded our last flight from London to Greece. While in the plane we got to watch the same movies about three times, which got very boring. The day ended while we were on the flight, so I will stop there. All I can say about the rest of the trip was that it was amazing, fascinating and a!  great experience.

Saturday, March 25

Athens

Evelyn Blacklock

 We woke up fairly early (or so we thought) for people still suffering from the lingering effects of jet lag.  It wasn’t until after we had eaten a typical Greek breakfast (several varieties of rather dry cookies and breads, very good yogurt and honey, along with suspicious-looking eggs) and taken the subway to Πιρεος (Piraeus) that we made an unfortunate discovery: today was the first day of Greek daylight savings time.  We were actually an hour behind schedule.  Still, we were able to buy tickets for a ferry to Αιγινα (Aigina), an island about an hour and a half out to sea, renowned for two things -- the second best-preserved temple in Greece, and pistachios.  After we arrived at Aigina port, the first thing we did was to look for a particular restaurant – the Areti – which had been highly recommended.  The only problem was that we got three entirely different sets of (Greek) directions from three different people, so we ended up wandering all over the town of Aigina before we finally found the restaurant (which was well worth the search).  Nobody minded – there were so many photos to take of the brightly-painted churches and houses, the palm and lemon trees, and the beach and harbor. 

 Aigina once rivaled Athens in power and influence, but now is more of an island resort and weekend getaway for people who live in the city.  The streets are lined with shops selling pottery and pistachio products, and in the harbor, many of the boats have been converted into floating fruit and vegetable stands.  (Note about walking around in Greece: Motorcycles apparently have the right of way, both on the streets and the sidewalks.)  The restaurant was right on the beach, with a beautiful view of the Mediterranean Sea and some stone ruins on a nearby hill, and the food was delicious.  One thing nobody had the courage to try was the locally-caught octopus, displayed by the bushel or strung out to dry at nearly every restaurant lining the street.  We contented ourselves with photographs.

 After lunch, we planned to visit the temple of Αφαια (Aphaia, a local divinity), atop one of the volcanic island’s several mountains some fifteen kilometers away from the town.  We found that the bus schedule wouldn’t work for us, and (wisely, as it turned out) decided that a bike trip would be too demanding for the time we had.  In the end we rented two small cars, both with stick shifts, and, armed with somewhat confusing, mostly Greek directions, we set off to find the temple.  At first, the road hugged the coast, but after a while we began to drive into the mountains, passing farms with goats and sheep and glimpsing monasteries perched on cliffs.  After a few wrong turns and some dead ends, we eventually arrived at the temple, which was amazing.  Dating from the 5^th century BC, it still has two stories of well-preserved columns.  There was also an incredible view of the island from the top of the mountain. 

 The time had escaped us, however, and we realized that we would have to rush to make it back to the ferry on time; if we missed the ferry, we would have to wait until 9:00 pm for the next one.  We hopped back in the rental cars and took a route that the car rental man had assured us was the quickest way back.  Well, maybe it was the quickest way, if you followed the route correctly, but we apparently didn’t; with about 20 minutes left till the ferry was to depart, we were still nowhere close to the town -- and we suddenly realized that all the cars on the street we were driving on were parked facing us.  Just as it was dawning on us that we were probably going the wrong way on a one-way street, a Greek drove up from the opposite direction, looking at us like we were crazy, which confirmed our suspicions.  After a tricky three-point turn (with Mom’s car dying every time she tried to shift gears), using up some more of our precious time, we got on the road again, this time in the right direction.  We were down to ten minutes when we arrived in Aigina town, and we weren’t done yet: we missed another crucial turn and started to go back into the mountains!  When we finally did make it to the car rental place, we had about three minutes left, and we still had to run all the way to the pier where the ferry was docked.  We arrived, out of breath, and showed our tickets, only to discover that we had bought one-way tickets by mistake!  Fortunately, we were allowed to board the ferry anyway and purchase our return tickets from the captain’s office.

 Exhausted, we finally made our way back to the Hotel Mirabello.  As we straggled into the lobby, the first person we saw . . . for the first time in the flesh . . . was Mr. H.  We visited briefly with him and several other ETS group members who had not yet retired.  The hotel staff kindly insisted on serving us a late dinner before we gratefully went to bed, knowing we had a 6:30 am wake-up call the following morning.

 ~Evelyn Blacklock

Monday, March 26

Charlotte Blacklock

 We all dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:30 in the morning and ate a buffet-style Greek breakfast before piling into two monstrous buses.  Our two wonderful and knowledgeable guides, Costas and James, supplied us with historical information as we passed out of Athens and toward Marathon.  We had a tremendously long bus ride, but there was plenty of gorgeous scenery to look at, and we in bus 1 also passed the time by playing several gory games of Mafia. 

 Our first stop was at Marathon, the site where the great battle took place.  There wasn't much to see, just a mound of dirt as a monument, but our guides told us about the place, Mr. Hinrichs read to us out of Herodotus, and we "made pho-tos" of the mound.  Mr. Hinrichs also gave us a Greek lesson; we went over the Greek alphabet (singing the familiar ETS "Alpha, Beta, Gamma" song) and repeated some phrases in Greek. 

 After reboarding the bus, we resumed Mafia until lunchtime.  We stopped at a restaurant which served typical Greek food: Greek salad, souvlaki (meat kebabs), etc.  Our family had the pleasure of dining with George Yfantides, a Greek-American and an old friend of the Hinrichses, who accompanied the tour for the first several days.  After lunch we all went across the road to a rug/craft shop and did some souvenir shopping. 

 After yet another long bus ride (by this time most people were pretty tired of Mafia), we reached our main stop for the day: Delphi.  Here we all grouped together to listen to Costas tell about the history of Delphi, where the famed oracle had once dwelt, foretelling the future of many famous rulers.  Then we split up into our separate groups and traveled slowly up the mountainside, "making pho-tos" and pausing for our guides to tell us about the various places of interest.  The views were absolutely stunning, and the ruins were amazing.  We saw columns indicating the locations of shops and stalls, along with remains of the treasury, and the temple where the oracle of Delphi had lived.  We also saw an amphitheater, and here our guides told us morbid tales of the gladiatorial combats that had taken place in ancient Delphi.  At the top of the city was the actual stadium where the Pythian games had been held.  The Pythian games were like the Olympic games, although maybe not quite so popular, and they were held once every four years, like the Olympic games.  It was a long climb to the stadium, and we all stopped there to rest a bit.  Here Mr. Hinrichs organized a footrace, which Jon Keller won – unfortunately, we didn't have any laurels to crown him with.  Think of running in the same stadium that the Ancient Greeks used thousands of years ago! 

 We finally all hiked back down to the buses, and after a short ride we stopped at our hotel.  After unloading our baggage and finding our rooms, we walked a short way to a restaurant for dinner.  In addition to the usual dessert of baklava, there were two enormous Greek birthday cakes – it was my 17^th birthday.  The waiters, along with two little Greek girls, sang some sort of “Happy Birthday” song to me in Greek.  There was so much cake we got to eat it for breakfast the next morning, which made for a nice change; the Greek breakfast buffets were already becoming slightly monotonous.

 When dessert was finally over, we all wandered back to the hotel where some of us played a few riotous games of ERS (aka Slap, Egyptian Rat Slap, Egyptian Ratscrew, Slap Jack, Russian Ratscrew, Gypsy, Yugoslavian Rat Stew, etc.) before heading to bed. 

 ~Charlotte Blacklock

March 27

Brighton de los Santos

 Powered by a Greek breakfast we started our five minute walk from our hotel to the museum in Delphi.  As we entered the museum we were surrounded by a large array of  interesting Greek artifacts.  The first floor mainly consisted of items related to the history of the Delphic Oracle and Sanctuary.  Sculpture ranged all the way from early and somewhat  stiff Archaic work to the realistically detailed  sculpture of the classical period.  Some of the most interesting artifacts to me were the floral architectural fragments present in the collections.  Egg-and-dart molding and acanthus leaves were other architectural elements which stood out to my eye.  Perhaps the greaquiz work of art was The Charioteer, whose daunting hollow eyes set into the oxidized bronze statue gave it the appearance of  ageless foresight. 

 After the museum we traveled through the countryside.   It grew darker and darker giving the sense of impending rain.  We stopped for a brief lunch before continuing  our journey to the monasteries in the hills. Approaching Kalambaka one could only marvel at the massive rock outcroppings overrun with rich vegetation.  From the parking lot at the monastery we had to cross over a little bridge. Before being allowed to enter the monastery any women wearing pants had to slip a skirt over their clothes.  Upon entering the monastery we saw many Byzantine era paintings which our tour guides promised us would not compare to those we would be viewing tomorrow.  Themes included in the paintings were Christ’s passion, His resurrection, and a rendering of the rapture and the apocalypse.

 After leaving the monastery our tour guides took us to a very special workshop in which Byzantine style icons are painted by hand in the traditional style of the originals.  We saw a demonstration of an artist painting an icon with egg tempera.  She mixed powered pigments with egg yolk which yields brilliant colors.  Many of the icons are painted on wood that has carved borders.  Some of the icons had gold leaf applied to the background and some even had borders of tooled silver.   My mother, looking to make a purchase, found the icon of her dreams:  Jesus holding an open Bible with an especially meaningful scripture.  In the background was gold leaf and the image was bordered in the sculpted silver.  She loved the icon, but something seemed wrong with the price.  Something was wrong.  It was mistakenly under priced by about thirty-seven percent.  When my mother went to purchase it they explained that a mistake had been made in the pricing.  Reassuringly they told her, “Not to worry,” and proceeded to discount it another fifteen percent.  Wow!  My mom was ecstatic (but not to the point of prophecy)!  She first studied about Byzantine icons when she was a teenager in art history classes in college.  Buying that icon made her day!

 At the close of dinner we did family introductions and celebrated Adria Hinrichs’ seventeenth birthday.  She sure looks good for being so old!  Bed was a welcome sight  after such a long and full day.

Ancient Greek Music

Pouring libations

Plutarch

Gamaliel - from Acts.