So the adventure has finally begun, and I am writing to you from my apartment in Athens, Greece. I don't even know where to begin. There's so much to tell. I guess I'll start at the beginning. I had a great flight to Athens with a stop in Toronto. My friend Morgan and I started out the journey together with many tearful goodbyes at the Rochester airport. We were also pretty surprised to see the plane that would take us on our 30 minute flight to Toronto. Pretty sure it's the smallest plane I've ever seen!
When we got to the airport, I got to meetup with my college roommate Natalie before she took off for Barcelona and I to Athens. It was great to see her, and we took advantage of our legal drinking status in Canada by ordering some amaretto sours to start our adventure off!
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| Photo cred to Natalie |
About 9 and a half hours later, I arrived in Athens at about 10:30am. It was so surreal to be there (still is). We eventually found the CYA staff members at the airport waiting to direct us to some taxis that would take us to our apartment. On the ride there, it was pretty crazy to see Athens. I was surprised at how big the city was and how far it sprawled out. In a way, it reminded me a lot of Los Angeles, CA, especially because Athens is surrounded by mountains. It took about 40 minutes to get to the apartment. I live on the 2nd floor of the apartment building (which for Americans would be considered the 3rd because Greeks call the first floor the zero floor).
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| View from my balcony |
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| Eratosthenous Street in Pangrati |
After dropping stuff off at the apartment, we made our way to the CYA Academic center, which turned out to be a minute walk around the corner if that. In fact, I can see the Academic center from the other side of my balcony, since its spans around the whole apartment. It's a beautiful little area, and it's so convenient. My classes are all at the Academic center, unless they are on site (like at museums or monuments, etc) and so is the cafeteria for lunch. Also, the center sits next to the Panathenaic Stadium.
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| CYA Academic Center |
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| Panathenaic Stadium |
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| Acropolis in the distance at the CYA Academic Center |
After checking in, my roommates and I decided to explore Pangrati, so we walked around, found some cute stores including a nice little fruit and vegetable store. We also found the supermarket, called Xtra, and as we were wandering, a Greek man came up to us asking where we were from and such. He was really friendly and actually was from the States (Daytona area). He was visiting his family in Athens like he does regularly I guess (I could get used to that ;)). Anyway, he was really funny and sweet, probably in his late 50s/60s. Him and his wife kind of temporarily adopted us as we made our way around the store, desperately trying to figure out all the foreign greek words. He even bought us a bottle of wine. It definitely was the highlight of my first day in Athens. It was so nice to have someone be that kind. And I'm coming to find that most Greeks are just the same-very friendly and soo excited when you attempt to speak to them in Greek.
Well, that concludes my first few adventures. I have soo much more to tell, so I'll be back with another post very soon.
