you and me together, we can do anything baby

Song of the day. I love Dave :)

Monday morning brought another week of classes. In Greek, we've progressed to reading paragraphs filled with words we don't know. I feel like maybe I'm on first grade reading level instead of kindergarden, although my comprehension is still close to nonexistent except for the few words and verbs we've learned. I could have a short discussion about likes and dislikes and languages we speak, but that's about it. We're learning a little more grammar, which is helpful. Unfortunately, making a singular noun plural is more complicated than adding an "s" so that kind of throws me when I'm reading or writing, but it's still interesting, and I like learning.
In dance, we practiced our old dances, which we've got down for sure, and learned some new ones which were good too. I like the class; everyone looks ridiculous but it's entertaining and I enjoy the music.
In Albanian class, our professor continues to lecture at light speed, but we've moved on to actual "Albanian" history rather than general Greek peninsula/Asia minor history. I think I will start taking notes on my laptop so I can control-F through my notes haha. After that, I went on an evening run with Anna and Katlynn. Anna used to run for UW (aka she ran a half marathon or more 7 days a week during the season) so she runs a little bit faster than Katlynn and I, but it's good to push yourself sometimes. We met up with other girls at the track and did some good stairs and lunges and 8 minute abs. I'm loving having so much time to work out and people to go with. On the major downside, my left IT band has been really painful since Monday night. I've felt twinges there before when doing abductor strengthening but this was something new. I went on an early morning (7am...) run today but it kept hurting so I'm not going to do any running for a while. I'm not sure what I'll do instead since 8 minute abs is only good for, you know, 8 minutes. Anna recommended some stretches and I found some online too. Most of them look sort of awkward but feel good. We'll see how that goes. I doubt there are too many English-speaking sports med/physical therapists here so hopefully it gets better.
In culture class, we learned about 19th and 20th century art. The professor started off right away by asking us to bear with her poor English, which was a total lie; she had absolutely perfect English and spoke very clearly and slowly, which was wonderful. I enjoyed the lecture a lot; she talked about European art movements and how they influenced Greek art, but stressed that while Greece wants to be part of Europe, they want their art to be very Greek and not European.
I took a two hour nap since I was tired from getting up early, which was great except that my room was probably at least 75 degrees, and it's only going to get hotter... The cool weather that we had when we first got here seems to be gone. I'm going to need to do some shorts shopping since my 3 pairs of jeans probably won't be useful too much longer.
We all met as a group before heading downtown for the interviews. Apparently, there are TWO HUNDRED sheets missing and they think someone or someones in our group stole them. I don't know if the housing coordinator misspoke when she said the number because I cannot imagine how on earth so many sheets would be gone, but needless to say, I'm fairly sure no one in their right mind would even keep one, since they're very starchy and not fitted, and we certainly don't have room for them in our suitcases. Apparently she came into most people's rooms and asked 3 or 4 times if anyone had accidentally or on purpose kept more than two sheets. No one had, of course, but she didn't seem to believe us. Since we're living in the "guest house" of the Stavros Niarchos center, the dorms are sort of considered to be a hotel, and they clearly have different beliefs about privacy. Last week, the housing director came into our rooms when we were on our field trip and got really mad because there were a few towels on the floor. They never really made their expectations clear, and we have different expectations coming from the US, so there are some issues, but that's why we have Taso, fortunately.
When we went to town, I was in a group with Tani and Leah for interviews. Leah' super into the interviews and she's also doing a documentary about Greek universities and the education system so she was very enthusiastic which was fun. We continued to get different answers from everyone we talked to, but they all continued to say that no one trusts the government; that's the one common theme. Actually, one man didn't even say that; we just asked him the first question about politics and he used an expletive and said "I HATE POLITICS" so we moved to the next topic.
Dinner was at a new restauarnt which was really nice and had phenomenal food. The dishes were a bit different than the other places we've been to, but that made the experience that much better. We had spanikopita (I know, yesterday I said they never serve it in restaurants but I guess sometimes they do!), meatballs, tzatziki, other spinach things, beans, salad, and more. For dessert, we had very thin orange peel drenched in a sugary sauce, which was very sweet but had the underlying orange zest flavor. Overall, quite the fabulous meal.

Tomorrow's a field trip day! We're going to a museum so I might not have pictures, but we'll see.

Love Alex