Yesterday, I had Greek class in the morning, an hour break, and then Greek culture lecture. Taso was the lecturer of the day, which was lots of fun since he’s a great speaker. He talked about lots of interesting concepts relating to ethnography and Greek culture. Here in Greece, the government, as I’ve mentioned before, is pretty socialist, so to me it’s surprising that they provide so much to the citizens (like free education). However, there is a very adversarial relationship between citizens and the state: citizens expect the state to take care of all of their needs, but they feel no reciprocal responsibility to help solve community problems. There are very few NGOs here, and there’s no culture of volunteering or philanthropy; “volunteering” is generally considered stupid. The media also reinforces this idea; articles generally focus on (lack of) government actions, but don’t report individual acts. On a different note, Taso also said that the Greek way to say “I love you” is to say “Eat!” :)
Our afternoon Albanian class was canceled since the professor was sick (nobody was too sad…) so I had time for a nice run. Nice is a relative term; I hurt from the run with the other girls since we did a hill, and I did more hills yesterday so I was really glad to come back and just be off my feet for a while. That didn’t last too long, though, since we had our first Greek dance class. Our classroom is under the bleachers at the track; it’s actually a legit dance room with a whole wall of mirrors and a sound system. We were impressed. The class was an hour and it flew by. We learned a simple dance; it was just a few grapevine steps and shuffles, but everyone looked really funny and impressive at the same time, so we laughed a lot. Taso really got into and was definitely the best dancer. Our dance teacher got mad though and told us we couldn’t learn if we laughed so much, so we had to be a bit more serious and we did the same steps to increasingly faster songs. It was definitely an excellent way to spend an hour.
This morning, we met at 8:30 to go on an excursion to Zagorohoria, which is an area in the mountains about an hour away. We first stopped at a set of beautiful bridges: an old one which was slightly rougher, and one new one for the road. The sun was shining and the river was surprisingly turquoise, and there were several little staircases and rocks to clamber on. We enjoyed this stop a lot.
We got back on the bus and drove a bit further down the road to another bridge, which had interesting supports that could be climbed, so I did.
Then we drove to a town, which was called Monodendri I think. Everything in the area of Zagorohoria is built with stone, and the town was no exception; all the buildings were gorgeous. We walked down a series of windy road/paths with lots of great photo ops, and at the edge of town we walked down a long road on the edge of a cliff, more or less, which opened up to give a view of the Vikos Gorge, which is the world’s deepest gorge, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Just past that spot was the entrance to the Agia Paraskevi Monastery, which basically seems to be about to fall into the gorge, not from architectural instability but just from being built on the edge of a mountain. It wasn’t huge, but there were probably 9 or 10 little buildings (with even littler doors, which came up to my chest). It’s not in use anymore, but it’s a beautiful place. Then we wandered up a little path to a sign that said “The Great Caves.” We figured that could be pretty neat, so we walked on a path with views of the gorge that kept getting better and better, which was sweet. The path turned around a corner and sort of turned into a tiny ledge sticking out of the face of a cliff, which was entertaining. There was a wall/door built into the mountain as an entrance to the Great Caves, which were very tall and afforded yet more beautiful view.
The path kept continuing to a few more small caves and viewpoints and then Megan and I went even farther, which required a bit more climbing and less walking. We felt totally fine but everyone else freaked out. We got sweet pictures though! Nico, the teacher from the other class, told me “There’s living dangerously, and then there’s not living” haha.
We meandered back along the path to meet the less adventurous and those with poor hiking shoes, and then we headed back to town for lunch, because we were starving. We had a delicious GREEN salad (you’d be surprised how rare that is for us, probably thanks to the cafeteria), yummy bread, excellent soup, great potatoes and the best chicken I’ve had in a longgg time. And fish, which Joe said was the best fish he’s had here in Greece. I love our group adventures because they always result in fabulous foooood.
Then we walked to a museum, which was featuring a photography exhibit by Voula Papaioannou, who photographed Greece during World War Two and the Greek Civil War, which happened immediately after. The pictures were all black and white and very powerful. They showed daily life, Greek architecture both erect and destroyed, normal people, working people, starving people and many other subjects as well. The museum was a remodeled house, I think, and It was really cute; it had several stained glass windows and a stone exterior with blue accents (like much of the town).
We walked back to the bus and headed back to school. I hope they didn’t choose the best excursion for the first one, but it seems like this one will be pretty hard to beat!
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