The End of Classes, the Start of Greek Vacationing!

On Monday, I had my last Greek class. We listened to Greek music and Fay brought us a delicious apple pie and we all sat at the cafe. I wish class was always like that :)

After, we cleaned our rooms and got back our security deposits. Greece doesn't seem to big on donating things; there are no Goodwills as far as I can tell, so we filled up all three dumpsters.

Then, I went into town for my last afternoon in Ioannnina with three other girls. I had a fabulous salad and then we studied at a cafe next to the water and had chocolate milkshake-like drinks, which definitely helped the learning.




We went back to school and crammed in a few minutes of studying and then took our Greek-Albanian final exam. I also submitted my paper so I am DONE with classes!

For dinner, everyone in our group went out to dinner with out teachers and program administrators at one the restaurants we had been to a few weeks before. It was delicious, as always, and it was fun to have everyone together one last time. After, we enjoyed the town at night; we went on a neat spinning ride by the lake and all hung out, with our professors, until extremely late. I got one of hour sleep and then got up so we could depart at the ungodly hour of 7 am. Luckily I A) had no trouble waking up and B) had already packed. The same could not be said for two of the boys in my group; me and several other girls literally shouted, jumped on their beds and fought over blankets in order to get them to wake up, and then they still had to finish packing haha. We made it with all our stuff to the bus, though. The departure was extremely rushed since everyone was still half asleep and in a hurry, so I feel like we didn't really comprehend the fact that we were leaving; it just happened.






5.5 hours of napping later, we made it to Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games. The site is actually gigantic; there's a lot more there than just a field for foot races; Olympia is actually a sanctuary and while there are no actual buildings today, there are a zillion pillars and wall/building remnants. We had a tour guide who was extremely smart, although since I was exhausted, not everything she said stuck. She did tell us that the idea of the "Olympic flame" which is never extinguished originated purely as a practical matter; priests kept a fire going all the time because it would be too much work to have lit it every day.







We then walked over to the archeological museum, which had some beautiful sculptures, some of which were surprisingly intact (several heads still had noses!) Picture uploading is taking forever, but I might add some photos later, and I'll put them all on Picasa. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant and then drove (aka slept) to Sparta. Our hotel is extremely fancy, which is a nice change after our last hotel and the whole bed bug calamity. We had a four course dinner and used every piece of silverware provided to us. First, we had spaghetti. I thought that was the meal, so I ate a large plate and then half of Kelsey's. Then, they brought out bowls of tomatoes and onions. Then, we had an entree of beeftecki, I think, which is chunks of meat on a skewer with some veggies, and a side of potatoes. For dessert, we had divine chocolate mousse. That was several hours ago and I am still very, very full. In order to help digestion along, we took a walk around town. The area we are in has lots of clothing and shoe stores and cafes. It feels different than Ioannina or Thessaloniki, but still Greek.