Today I woke up to the sound of squeeking breaks and honking horns. This could mean only one thing, that the long trip to Athens yesterday wasn't a dream at all and is in fact reality. There is an obnoxious yellow sign outside my window/balcony that says "Authentic" in an obscure font. Gelato and clothing shops also line the street below.
My apartment is on the 1st floor (i.e. the second floor because in Greece the first floor is "floor 0") and I am living with three other guys. It turns out two of them both go to DU, while I don't remember where roomie "Nic" was from. "Jeff" and "Alex" are the other two roomies. It seems like we are going to have a blast this semester, especially since the majority of the group has X chromosomes.
I also took my first shower here today, minus most of the essentials, which almost made the shower not even worth it; but I digress. We have to turn on the water heater, which has the capacity for about 20 minutes of hot water. Luckily the temperature here has been more than reasonable... roughly mid 70s to low 80s... so a boiling hot shower does not sound appetizing. It was a little too warm yesterday when we got in, especially since I was wearing pants, but it cooled down thanks to a couple of rain clouds.
But my day/s of traveling were very interesting yesterday/this weekend. When I left Albuquerque at about 12 PM, we flew in a relatively small aircraft to get to Chicago. Interestingly enough, my brother and his girlfriend were on the same flight as me, so I was able to hang out with them. I was lucky enough to have a woman sit next to me who was very kind and seemed generally interested in my story (she also was pretty scared of flying...). When we landed in Chicago, my brother, his girlfriend, and I went to eat some lunch before I would say adiu to them because although they were also heading to London, they were on a flight an hour earlier. Then I proceeded to make my adventure from I think it was terminal 1 to terminal 5, which required me going through security again.
My flight to London was not bad at all. I was on British Airlines, and I must say they are a pretty nice airline. They had touch-screen t.v.'s, so you could watch a variety of different things (like the Simpsons (both movie and an episode), Scrubs, but beautifully enough... GLADIATOR!!! So I fell asleep to the sounds of Russell Crowe killing people. And I slept until I was woken up by the attendants serving the "breakfast." Once I arrived in London, I proceeded to go through another security checkpoint, but once I was through I had about an hour to kill, so I strolled along in Heathrow's BA terminal and admired the different things that they were selling in the various shops. I also saw a sick Maserati there.
Finally I the flight info boards directed me towards my final gate, the one that would be taking me to Athens. As I walked up to the gate, I wondered whether or not this flight was the flight that most of the other Arcadia Athens students were taking... And voila, there were many other students waiting for the plane as well. Being me, however, I looked for a quiet place to sit down and prepare myself for the last leg of the trip; the last part that would be the deciding factor between not being here and writing this to you, and being here and writing this to you.
But as we all know I am here, and the last leg was the easiest of them all. I happened to be sitting next to a fellow student, "Morgan," who was very nice, and we chatted it up pretty much the whole way to Athens.
But then came the passport checking, the customs, the whatever you want to call it... I walked into line, the guy behind the counter took my pasport, scanned it, looked at me, gave my passport back to me, and waved me on. Talk about getting my panties in a bunch for nothing. So now I am here, in Athens, writing this to you. Today has been an interesting and somewhat eventful day. We went to the school to hear about safety information, and in a half-an-hour we will be taking some language classes to get a basic understanding of Greek. Because tell you me, Greek is fucking intense to read (pardon my french) and hear. So there you go, my travels so far have led me from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Athens, Greece. I have gone to a grocery store, officially got lost for 2 minutes, and had a pork gyro (mmmm delicious). Everyone seems friendly here, although there is a serious language barrior at the moment. Thanks for reading this everybody, and hopefully I will continue to write about my adventures.
P.S. We are taking a trip to the island of Kythnos this weekend, so I will probably update you all on that afterwards.
P.S.S. If you have any questions, such as where I am located in Athens, just comment you questions onto the blog and I will be happy to answer them, I just might not answer them in a timely manner!
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