Traveling . . .

So, I haven't written for a while. We've had really sketchy internet access, there was one hotel that we were in where only one person could be on at a time, the next hotel we had to pay for it, and then we were on a ferry, where we also had to pay for internet access, so this hotel is doing pretty great in my book! In order to do some catching up, this post might be rather long, but it is in chronological order, and hopefully this takes my mom a couple of days to read. :)

Saturday February 23, 2008
We traveled from Delphi to Ancient Olympia today, which was another five hour bus ride south. We are heading towards the Peloponnese on this bridge that took six years to build; if it wasn’t there we would have had to go four hours out of the way to get to where we wanted to go. It was finished in 2004, just before the Olympics took place in Athens. The first official crossers of the bridge were the torch bearers for the Olympic Games. However, it was very expensive to build, so expensive that our bus had to pay a 56 euro toll, which is like $80. We figured it was probably worth it, considering we would have had to pay for the gas in the four hour detour. The bridge was really cool looking. According to Wikipedia, it is a true suspension bridge, with thin cables holding it up. The legs of the bridge are not dug into the floor, attempting to try and prevent damage from earthquakes. They are basically just sitting on top of the ocean floor so that they can move with the earthquake and not against it. It was a really pretty bridge. We arrived at Olympia, and met our guide at the Ancient Olympic museum. Olympia is most definately an ancient city; it mostly consists of , the site of the ancient Olympics, a few tourist kiosks, and the museum. A lot of the sculpture and artifacts in the museum were put there for when the 2004 Olympics were held, so people could tour it. The actual grounds of the Olympics themselves were pretty much ruins, due to all of the earthquakes that have occured since 393 A. D. It basically looked like a whole lot of stones strewn all over a quite large patch of earth. The few pillars that were up had been reconstructed so that people visiting the Olympic grounds during 2004 would be able to see what these temples would have looked like. The first “building” we saw was Hera’s temple, and experts really aren’t sure why there was a temple dedicated to Hera in the stadium, but it could be because this stadium was also where the women’s Olympic Games were held. Women, with the exception of the Priestess of Demeter who was allowed to attend the games, were not allowed to spectate or participate in the men’s games, because they all competed in the nude. However, a little known fact (or, at least a fact that I recently learned) is that the women had games also. Men were allowed to watch, and only women competed. They wore long white dresses with one breast exposed, to pay tribute to the fierce Amazonian women who were some of the best and most dedicated athletes of early history. The Amazons got so frustrated with their right breast getting in the way of archery and javelin throwing that they cut them off. So, that’s something else I learned today. Another thing I learned was that a marathon is 26.2 miles because, after the Spartans defeated Darius's Persian invasion, that is how far a Spartan soldier ran in his exceptionally heavy army and shield from Marathon to Sparta to tell the people that Greece had defeated the Persians. Because of his exhaustion, he died after uttering just those few words. The marathon is run in honor of this soldier, a general in the army. Another thing about the Spartans I learned was that retreat was a great dishonor. In the movie 300, the queen tells the soldier that he should either come home with his shield or on it, because to come home without a shield meant that he had shown cowardice and retreated. The shields are so heavy that it would have been exceptionally detrimental to getting away fast, so the retreating soldier would throw it away. When that man came home without his sheild, everyone would know that that man was a coward. Around the grounds of the games, we saw the 200 yard race, and almost all of the people in our group ran on the exact same grounds that countless athletes in the Olympic past had run. What a thrill that was! I just jogged it with some other girls, but it was still amazing to think about. It was a gorgeous day, only a few clouds in the sky, and the sun shining brightly, clear blue sky. Also on the grounds we saw the workshop where one of the ancient wonders of the world, the Gold Statue of Zeus, was built. However, the Turks stole the statue and attempted to confiscate it via boat, but it was so heavy that the ship started to sink halfway back and the statue was lost in the ocean. The shop had been converted into a Christian church. We walked around the ruins and lay in the sun, and it was altogether a very delightful time, other than the fact that we were all exceptionally tired. We also saw the house where Nero stayed in when he was a dignitary at the Olympics, and the place where the wrestling and boxing took place.

Sunday February 24, 2008
The day dawned lovely and bright as we got back on the bus to go to Areopoli. It was a great bus ride here, though, aside from all the twists and turns. It was totally gorgeous. We stopped for our break at a bakery, where I had a chocolate covered mousse thing with a cookie bottom and a cherry on top, which was absolutely delectable. For lunch we stopped at this restaurant that over looked the Aegean Sea. It was absolutely, stunningly lovely . . . wonderful scenery with traditional Greek music playing the background. I couldn’t help but think "this is Greece; we have finally arrived." It wasn’t the Parthenon, Delphi, the monasteries, or anything like that that made me feel all Greek-like; that mostly made me feel all touristy-like. It was sitting at a restaurant, eating souvlaki on a skewer, looking out over the gorgeous ocean that was so clean that you could see to the bottom of it from about 100 feet up, and it must have been about 10 feet deep. Wonderful, wonderful Greece.
We went down to the water afterwards, and saw a very small octopus!! It was really cool, it was in the very shallow water, and we only noticed it because one of the girls almost stepped on it! We waded in the Aegean Sea and skipped rocks. It was really lovely. Then we had to leave to go to silly small town that they thought had a castle and churches that we could go explore, but the castle remains (basically the foundations and the bottoms of the walls) were across the hill, down a valley and up another hill that would take way to long to get across than the hour that we had, so we didn’t go over there, and all of the churches were closed. So, we walked around the town and saw a hunter with two dogs, and also two donkeys and a horse.
Then we went to the hotel, but they weren’t ready for us, so we went and saw the sunset as close as we could get before it vanished in the haze. At the hotel, there was a spear fishing convention going on; at least, it smelled like fish and all of the guys were walking around with the words “spear fishing” written on their t-shirts and “scuba diving” written on their sweatpants, so we thought that those were pretty good clues; us goes 2 koleg.

I had a cold shower this morning. Apparently, the water here is heated by solar panels and so in the morning, when there has been no sun for the past 8 hours, the water is cold. We got on the bus, and traveled for about an hour to a place where there were a bunch of caves. There was water in the bottom of the caves, and so we got poled around in them by Greek tour guide people who did not speak any English. At least, the guide on our boat did not speak any English. It was really beautiful though, all of the stalactites and the water reflecting them. We were there for about 45 minutes and then we headed down to the beach for awhile. We all thought that the caves were going to be quite chilly, but we didn’t got down very far, so it was actually warm and even kind of humid. We trekked back up to the bus and rode for about another hour, during which I mostly slept. Travelling around all the time is tiring! We knew that we were going to be hiking around, trying to find a castle, but we weren’t exactly sure where it was and there wasn’t really anybody around that we could ask, so, pretty much we wandered into some bush and over rocks and prickly bushes and lots and lots of feces. It smelled quite a bit too. The view, however, was wonderful, with the mountains and the water, and there were some very pretty flowers; poppies are freely grown here and they really pop out against the grass. But, there were also a lot of rocks hanging around too, left over from the building of the walls, I suppose, and that made the hiking quite treacherous as well. Castle Tigani was the name of the castle that we were looking for, and it turns out that we were definately not headed in the right direction; we pretty much had to turn all the way around and go back in the opposite direction of where we had first headed. The climbing on that hill was pretty dangerous as well, since there were just rocks everywhere. But, most of us made it up the hill, braving prickly bushes, poop, and wobbly rocks. The castle was pretty much a ruin, but the view from it was fantastic; it was easy to see why someone would build a castle there. In one spot, you could hear the water rushing around inside of the caves in the cliff that the castle was on. It would be an amazing place to live, but it also seems like you would seriously be cut off from society, way up on a cliff that leads to nowhere. I guess maybe that’s how the royalty liked it. So, we had our picnic lunch up by the castle and it was warm and lovely. It was basically hot. Hot hot hot.

Tuesday February 26 2008
We left Areopoli bright and early to make it to visit all of the places that we were going to before arriving at our final destination of Tolo. Our first stop was the ruins of a Frankish castle. It reminded me of the movie “Timeline,” with the arrow windows that had a very large radius so that the person aiming the arrow behind the window has a very big target range, but the enemies outside of the castle have just a narrow slit through which to shoot their own arrows. It was pretty cool! There were also many look out towers with stairs so we could climb up them, even though they were kind of rickety, and there was also an old orthodox church that I don’t believe is working anymore because there wasn’t an iconostasis and the icons on the walls were pretty faded to the point that on some of them you couldn’t really tell what exactly it was supposed to be, but some of them we could still tell what they were because we were so well versed in iconography. We have done quite a bit of hiking on this trip, at least in the past week or so. After we got back on the bus, we traveled for another hour or so, until we got to a town that had 1000 steps that led to the top of a fortress on the top of a mountain, but the castle on the top was closed (it closed at 2:30) and so instead, some of the other girls and I went to go explore the town. Except that there wasn’t much to explore in the way of shopping, at least, since almost all of the stores are closed from 2:30 pm until 5:00 and then they’re open until 11:00 pm or so. It’s that way in pretty much all of the towns that we have visited. It would be nice, taking a break in the middle of the heat of the day and then hanging out late. The night life doesn’t really start until midnight anyway, and then they party until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.
On our way to the hotel, we went through Sparta. There was really nowhere to stop, so on our way through, in recognition of the movie “300” and one person on this trip who is very much, shall we say, obsessed with the Spartan way of life, we all yelled “This . . . is . . . Sparta!!” Quite epic, if you ask me. We were at the Hotel Tolo, which had a beach view and a nice access to the public beach. I walked around the city, which naturally had quite a few restaurants and cafes with beautiful ocean views.
It’s gotten be a disaster with the showering facilities in nearly every hotel: in this one, it was that the water pressure is so great that you couldn't hang the shower head on the clip above your head. If you do, it flew straight up and then sprayed water above the shower curtain all over the floor and the mirror and got the whole bathroom wet, including pajamas . . . not to mention that the shower curtain nearly ate you because it sucked up on your body like a leach. In another hotel, there was no place to hang the shower head, so you had to hold it up yourself; taking a shower like that is rather difficult. So yeah, in a word, showering is almost always a fiasco.

Wednesday February 27 2008
Wednesday was another performance day, with everyone choosing a section from the play Agamemnon. It’s about the arrival of Agamemnon back home after he had gone off to fight the Trojan War. When he left, the winds were not favorable and so he sacrificed his daughter in order to appease one of the gods to get a good start on his expedition. However, in doing so, he angered almost every other god, and so had to know that disaster was awaiting him when he got back home. His wife, Clytemnestra (who had been sleeping with his cousin behind his back) claimed fidelity and then tricked him into committing hubris, which is thinking that you are better than the gods, over stepping your bounds. She then lured him into the castle and killed him in the bathroom by stabbing him three times. Two other girls and I did the scene where Clytemnestra is re-enacting for the chorus (and the audience) how she murdered Agamemnon. It was really fun! We all presented in the theater in Epidaurus, in the theater dedicated to Asclepios, a physician who was a mortal turned into a god by Apollo, his father. When we were in the theater, trying to do our performances, we didn’t exactly have exclusive access to the area. Other tour groups were coming in, and wanting to demonstrate the acoustics of the place, and this lady kept telling our group to leave. But . . . we kept coming back. There was also a small music/recital hall type ruin there that was being constructed, but we couldn’t see what it looked like. It was difficult even to imagine what it would have looked like, considering that the theaters are so big, and the room that was supposed to be the Music Hall was very small, seating for maybe 50 people at the most. It was definitely more like a recital hall than anything else.
We also went to Mycenea, which was considered to house the kingdom of Agamemnon and also his tomb and the tomb of Clytemnestra, which was very exciting! The tombs were kind of shaped like beehives, which was really interesting in itself. There were to sort of sarcophagi or anything like that in them; just an empty beehive that was exceptionally tall and the architecture and physics of it all were very interesting to look at. All of the bricks had to lay at exactly the right angle so that it would not collapse in on itself. It has been standing for quite a long time with little reconstruction, I think, so it worked! We went to where it is speculated that the bathroom is in the castle, and also we went in to a cistern where they kept water back in Agamemnon’s day; there was not any water in it but there were bats, which was kind of freaky. It was totally dark in there; we had to bring flashlights so that we could see. And what we saw was a lot of stairs; some poles; and also a lot of bats, in case you missed it the first time. They must have been used to humans, though, because none of them woke up and started flying through the air.
We went to bed that night, setting the alarm for 6:30 in order to see the sunrise over the water.

Thursday February 28, 2008
The sunrise was absolutely stunning. There were mountains in the background, and just enough fog to have some clouds to turn really rich colors of orange and pink, and it was gorgeous with the clear blue sky ahead and cool blue water stretching to the edge of the horizon, giving the sense of eternity and continuity of it all. We were headed to Corinth! It was not much of what I expected, though; I had always pictured it as this really biblical place, which it was obviously, but apparently there are usually groups of people praying at the site where we know that Paul stood, known as Beme. There is also reason to believe that the site where Priscilla’s (whose husband was Aquila) tent shop was located. Also, apparently Corinth was the Las Vegas of its time, both in Grecian and Roman periods. The word “Corinthian” means to pimp or to whore, which was news to me. On the Acricorinth, which is a hill/mountain on the outskirts of the town, there was a fortress and on the other side of the hill there was a temple to Aphrodite, where women would sell themselves (this was an honorable profession, mind you), becoming the person of Aphrodite in the temple. There were also aqueducts there that still had water in them. Corinth was so heavily populated that there had to be a huge supply of freshwater. We also got to see one of the most slender canals in the world. From the conception of the idea to the final carrying out of the plan, it took about 2000 years.
As we were going to be traveling by ferry to Crete that night, we decided that it might be prudent to first visit the temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea, to ask for a favorable wind and safe trip. We did not sacrifice anyone, though. It was truly another fabulous place, with the sea breeze in the air and the temple with the sea and the sun in the background. We climbed all over the rocks, and we also met up with a professor emeritus, Olin Storvick, who would be teaching us for the next week in Crete. He’s an archeologist who made a Newsweek worthy discovery of gold coins in Israel. He is eighty-three years young and is one of the spryest men of his age that I have ever met. He and his wife have been married for nearly 60 years, and he has been all over the world, teaching students and making archeological history. We traveled back to Athens in order to catch the ferry to Crete. It was a really nice boat, kind of like a moving hotel. A really smoky, moving hotel. We tried to watch a movie, but we were all so exhausted that we pretty much went to bed right away, around 10:30. Our professors told us that we had to meet in the lobby at 6:45 to get off the boat; however, the boat docked earlier than they had expected and right around 5:30, an automated voice kept repeating, in both Greek and English, that we needed to turn in our key to the front desk. Needless to say, we were up and at ‘em a long time before we needed to be.

Friday February 29 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHTYN!!!!

We’re in Heraklion, the capitol of the island of Crete!! We made it to our hotel, exhausted and crabby and completely ready for another day out looking at rocks that had fallen down many years ago, and then reconstituted to what some Sir Arthur guy (not of the round table . . . that totally kept running through my head) thought that they should look like. We went to another palace that was built around the same time as Agamemnon’s palace, except in a completely different region of Greece. It was the castle at Knossos, the palace of one of the sons of Zeus and Europa, King Minos. When this site was discovered, it was the first time anyone had started to discover the ancient Minoan civilization. It was the place where it was thought that the Labyrinth that the Minotaur destroyed his victims was, and where Theseus finally defeated the half man, half bull creature. There was a lot of bull iconography and mural work there because Zeus was a bull when he and Europa “mingled.” We saw some people excavating with toothbrushes, which looked like a completely time-consuming task. We saw places that people thought might have been his throne room, and also reconstructed art work and also in the museum we saw a lot of art, pottery, sculpture, and statues. It wasn't really a long day, but we were all really tired from the lack of sleep that morning; I had an early bedtime!

Saturday March 1, 2008
We got up again at 8:30 am and we were off to see another castle, some other Minoan ruins in Gortyn, and then the beach! We traveled to southern Crete, to the second largest castle in Crete, called Phaestos. This was the place where a clay disc was found with many hieroglyphic signs on it that helped archeologists interpret the language linear B, which was used to keep track of economic things such as the number of sheep that a person owned, or how much one person owed another. Olin took us around the site, and commented on the proposed actual use of these rooms. It is all speculation, but many rooms have pithoi in them, which are extremely large ceramic vase-shaped holding tanks, basically, that were so large that the room they were fired in was the room that they had to stay in because they could not be moved. They held seed, oil, wine, and grain and other foodstuffs like these. They were as tall as an ancient human being, and some of the math majors in our group estimated that if they were full of water, they would weigh about a ton. These huge jars were also at the palace at Konossos, they seemed to be the best place to store food items during this time period, which was the late Bronze Age. We then traveled to Gortyn, which was the Roman capitol of Crete. What is so neat about this place is that the Law of Gortyn, which was a wall about fifteen feet long and seven feet tall filled with ancient Greek (Doric) writing with all of the laws of the city. The interesting thing about that is how the writing was written; "as the cow plows," that is the first line read left to right, and the second read right to left and the third read left to right and so on. It was also interesting because when the lines read from right to left, not only was the sentence backwards, but so were the letters. It was like trying to read in a mirror! We also saw the tree under which Zeus and Europa “mingled,” which was pretty sweet. There is also a cathedral at Gortyn, one of the first Christian cathedrals to be built. It was dedicated to St. Titus; yup, the one from the Bible. Apparently he was the first bishop of Crete during the sixth century. There is also a theater there and we had a “discussion” about whether or not both Greek and Roman temples had scenas.
After that, we headed back to the bus to hit the beach! It was a very nice day; most of us had already stripped down to the last layer we had. The town that we went to, however, was pretty much a ghost town. It is definitely not the tourist season here, and there was basically only one restaurant place open, but I did have my first taste of lamb. It really wasn’t that great, because it was mostly a bunch of bones and fat, but I also had a Greek salad, which consists of green peppers, onions, olives, feta cheese, and tomatoes. The olives on Crete are different than on the mainland; here, they are much smaller with hardly any meat on the seed and a lot more bitter than any olive that I have ever tasted. Good, but I can only eat one. After that, we went down on the beach, which was very nice and warm and laid out; I put on sunscreen, of course. The place we were at is called Matala, which is where Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, and a bunch of other hippies went to escape the world and live in the caves/crypts made in the Neolithic age up in the mountain for a few years. It is also where Zeus and Europa “mingled” for the second time, this time with Zeus in the human form, presumably. We were there for a good two hours just laying in the sun, relaxing with the sound of the waves crashing in the background. It was wonderful, one of the best things that we’ve done this whole trip, in my opinion.

Sunday March 2, 2008
Today was another 8:30 day; we were off the see the last castle on the island of Crete, Molia. It is the one that had the least amount of reconstruction done on it, but it was still really easy to imagine what this castle must have looked like when it was first built. I don’t consider myself to be an expert, but after seeing two partially reconstructed castles in two days, it actually comes pretty quickly. This castle was at least a two story one, with maybe a basement also. There were other structures around there too, where houses had been and where other people lived. There were these strange rocks here that were circular in shape and had small holes bored into it around the outside, and then one larger hole in the middle. Archeologists think that it was used for libations to the gods as some sort of holding place for food and wine that could be accepted as sacrifices to the gods, but no conclusive evidence has come out of that. It was interesting also because the height of the stairs was only about four feet or so, and we were wondering if that was all the taller that people were, because otherwise they wouldn’t fit on the bottom level of the house/castle. What probably happened is that the stairs have fallen after much wear and tear, and the stairs actually went up higher than it looks, but something interesting if the people were actually four feet tall is the size of the statuary that was created in that time. Those statues are larger than lifelike as it is; they’re six and seven feet tall, but if the people at the time they were created were four feet tall, that’s ridiculously out of proportion! Also, something around here smells like maple syrup when you walk through the fields. We have a couple different theories on that too; one is that there are underground bee hives, and the smell comes when there are larger than normal holes in the ground. The other is that it comes from the anise plant. The Greeks use a lot of anise here; in their drinks, in their desserts . . . there must be anise around here somewhere, but I’m not sure what exactly that plant looks like. We walked through the building on the site that had some of the pictures of the excavation and models of what the buildings were thought to have looked like.
After that we went to the cave where Rhea (Gaia, the mother goddess, one of the original three gods) gave birth to Zeus so that she could stay away from Cronos, the father who ate all of his children so that they couldn’t take over his position as king. It was a fifteen minute climb to the entrance of the cave, and I was expecting just a hole in the wall of the mountain, but when we reached the entrance of the cave, it was definitely more like a cavern. There were about 115 steps down to the bottom of the cave that was filled with water, and the cave is so old that the stalagmites have stalagmites. It was really deep, and not at all where I would choose to have a child, but it worked for Rhea. The cave totally blew me away; it was so amazing to see a place that existed for so many centuries and no one found it for a very long time. It is just mind blowing to see a place that you have only read about in mythology, and I don’t know how they decided that this was the place that Zeus was born, but either way, the cave was so amazing. The stalagmites were so long and had a green tint to them and water was dripping from the top of the cave and it totally defied my expectations. It was really awesome.
We also had an amazing lunch at this place; we had pork that was locally grownoff of the grill , and cheese pie with honey on them, and a good Greek salad, and good bread, and oranges for dessert, and then some kind of fig preserve thing with anise in it and covered in like, corn starch. I liked it, because I like black licorice. I thought it was really good!
After that we visited a monastery that was home to six nuns and the church there had some very old icons, many of which were faded off of the walls, but there was an interesting one of Jonah coming out of the whale, a fish with arms and legs. There were also chains there, a relic, and the people who came into venerate them would cross themselves, kiss the chains, and then wrap them around their bodies. It was very interesting to see, but because the nuns did not speak much English, it was difficult to ask them to explain what had happened or why the chains were in the monastery.
We came back to the hotel to see a ton of little kids and their parents walking around in costumes! Carnival has officially started! There was confetti all over the streets and later that night, I kept hearing these huge sonic booms, but I figured it was something dangerous and violent and didn’t want to look out on my balcony to check. A minute later, I heard Linka, one of David’s kids, running down the hall yelling about fireworks! So, I headed out to my balcony, but I couldn’t see them, so I ran across the hall to Nina’s room, because her balcony faced the optimal direction for viewing the fireworks. It was very exciting! Very Fourth of July like and fun! There were just a bunch of people out in the street watching and cheering, and of course more people from my trip in the balcony right next to mine. At supper tonight, we had a farewell for Olin, because this is supposed to be the second-to-last abroad program that he visits, making 35 trips, teaching around 500 students, and, if the time was consecutive, about four years. He is one brilliant man, he just seems to know everything but he is also very modest about it, knowing when he is right, but also knowing when to make concessions, and he always admits when he doesn’t know or isn’t sure about something. He is just a really great guy to have around, and I’m glad that he was able to come to our trip!

Monday March 3, 2008
We went to a museum that had information in Nikos Kazantzakis, who was a controversial Greek author. He wrote books such as “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Christ Recrucified” which we are reading on this trip. He had some pretty different philosophies about Jesus’ divinity. The museum also had information on the Church of Titus that we went to the other day in Gortyn; it had the altar and iconostasis from that church and some relics and also had a picture of how the layout of the church might have been. There were some folk art instruments, like a bag pipe and a flute (maybe a fife, really) and some instruments with strings that you would bow. The bows had bells on them! They also had information on World War II in Greece, and how they were occupied by both Italy and Germany.
After that, we went to the biggest church in Crete. There were a lot of iconic scenes on the ceiling of the church and not too many on the walls of the building, which made for some serious neck craning. This church also had stained glass, which is one of the first orthodox churches I’d seen with colored glass of any kind. It also had very high ceilings.

Well, I'm going to do some more homework! I'll also upload some pictures sometime soon and add the link to this blog; it's a lot easier to do it that way. Thanks again to those of you who are sending notes to me! It's great to know that there are actually people reading all of this stuff I'm doing everyday.