mostly monday.

Yesterday, I enjoyed sleeping in and then went on a run. It was hot but I loved being in the sun. I came back, showered, and as soon as I had gotten dressed I heard that some girls were going on a hike 15 minutes later. So, I changed back into workout clothes and we did almost the same hike as Saturday, but with even more sun and sunblock. The view was still gorgeous and it felt good to be outdoors, even though my allergies have been very unfortunate despite Claritin. Normally I just switch to contacts halfway through the day after my contacts get really dry, but I'm out of contact solution and the grocery store doesn't have it and I haven't made it to a pharmacy yet, so I've been enjoying wearing glasses every day. However, whether it's from sunburn or just pushing up my glasses since they're loose, the bridge of my nose started to hurt yesterday afternoon haha. My only solution was to wear my glasses like a librarian and not move, so I watched some more house. I only have one episode of season two left!
Also, apparently the cafeteria is open on weekends, which I found out today (Monday). I heard the food was actually good; they had lamb skewers I think.

This morning in Greek my teacher was not very pleased with how tired and not knowledgeable about last week's lessons we were. It's taking us all a little while to get to a mindset of memorizing Greek words. I just keep comparing it to Spanish. I remember learning "to be" in Spanish sophomore year but it seems like it was easier then because I wasn't comparing it to a language I've already studied.
We had dance class number two, which was a little more somber due to the whole Monday-morning thing. We did the same steps for half the class and then learned two new sets of steps. We also listened to a variety of traditional Greek music. Most of it isn't something I'd put on my iPod to listen, but I enjoyed hearing all the different instrument combinations.
Lunch was actually quite good. There was sort of eggplant with meat inside (beef I think) or stuffed peppers with rice, which was actually somewhat spicy. I tried to have both but the lady told me "ena" which means one. I was happy I understood but not happy I couldn't have both, especially since you don't show any ID or pay, and you can walk in as many times as you want. However, I think we were a little bit too hard on the cafeteria. The food presentation and room ambiance could be better, but the food could be worse.

We also had our first Albanian lecture. The professor is really enthusiastic and I think the topic will be pretty interesting, but I'm not excited for the class structure, since 50% of our grade is our final and 40% is a paper on today's Grecian-Albanian relations which is "up to 10 pages" in length. 10% is attendance. Today he just talked about some geography and the concept of history in general, so we didn't learn about the relationship yet, but we have two more classes this week, so we will.

On Mondays, we exchange our sheets/towels between 6:30 and 7:30pm with the landlady, for lack of a better word. It rained today (it felt exactly like Seattle) so everyone was mentally very anxious to get new towels. The lady (I cannot for the life of me remember her name: it's long and Greek) is really nice and I like getting to talk with her briefly.