Late, but Still Greece!!!

So here I am, in Athens, and although I meant to post a blog entry once a week since I've been here, I haven't! I've been very busy with school and traveling around the Greek islands! I arrived in Athens at the very beginning of September, and got settled with my four other roommates (one of whom has since moved out). Athens is a pretty cool city, it's not the most beautiful of cities, but it has a definite character, and its pretty cool to think about how long a city called Athens has been here. I'm taking two classes that take place outside of the classroom. One is on the archaeology around Athens, so classes take place on the Acropolis, in the ancient Agora, and at other sites around Athens. The other class is on sculpture from Ancient Greece, and meets at two of the big museums in Athens, the Acropolis Museum (the new one), and the National Archaeological Museum, both of which are pretty cool! I am also taking a class on the ethnography of modern Greece, which is fascinating, and I love! and of course, Modern Greek, which is a lot of fun, as I haven't studied a spoken (rather than dead) language in 2 years, so its a nice change, even though I do miss Ancient Greek and Latin.

My apartment is shared with 3 other girls (it was 4 in the beginning), and I have a single, as does one other girl. We live in the Pangrati neighborhood, which is very middle class Greek, and is not aimed at tourists as other neighborhoods in Athens are. We shop at local stores, and live close to the academic buildings. Although the apartment is small, it is a lot of fun to live in! Our neighborhood is very hilly and is mostly residential in our corner. There is a park, and a couple squares where there are more stores, but our little area is mostly residential and has a couple bakeries (which all have excellent baklava!!). In the beginning of the semester there was a taverna (a very typical Greek restaurant) diner that we went on. The professors took us all to local tavernas and we were given many different types of Greek food, all of which was very good!! I really enjoyed the tzatziki, the zucchini meatballs, and the saganaki (fried cheese...very good!)! I have also done some traveling with my roommates as well as one school field trip to Crete. I will do a blog entry for each trip, and hopefully will be better about blogging after this!!!