One more post pre-Turkey

Outside! Woo!

I'll be back Sunday evening. Love you all!

P.S.

Did I ever say how the trip to Ireland was? It was great!

I got to see the lovely Emily Maskas, and we had great adventures: we kissed the Blarney Stone, which is actually kind of terrifying. Nobody told me the Blarney Stone was part of a wall of a castle. I had kind of assumed it was just a stone. But no, it's in a wall high up in a castle. And the way you kiss it is you sit on the ground and lean backward into an abyss and kiss the stone while upside-down. Terrifying! But it was worth it. Whether it actually bestowed us with the gift of gab remains to be seen.

We also went to Dublin, where we saw an amazing Cathedral--I'm blanking on which Saint's it was, oops--and attended an Anglican (I think) service, which I didn't realize was Anglican until Emily told me afterward. I thought it was weird that there was no Communion. Dur.

Other than that, I had my first Guinness, which was like drinking bread. Thick, liquid, smokey bread. I also met some neat people and heard many lovely Irish accents. Cork and Dublin are both adorable places.

Thanks to the lovely Emily for hosting me and showing me around! I had a great time, even though it was terribly cold after having been in the Mediterranean for four months. The New Englander in me was shamed.

Anyway, love again!

Fail

I fail at updating. But I've had a request to update more, so I'm going to try harder.

The problem is, not much has been going on. I went to the island of Naxos a couple weekends ago. It was very cute and islandy. Oh! And I learned to ride a bike and ate an orange! For those who know me, both of those things are a big deal.

Ilana, Natalia, and I are going to Turkey (if all goes well) on Wednesday for a school trip. Free trip to Turkey? Yes, please. I promise, promise, prooomise to take pictures and video and put them here. Cross my heart.

I will update with exciting things upon my return!

Love.

New Year, New Hair, New Blog Post

The blog is back! I have no excuse for the long gap in posts.... Sorry! Also, the aspect ratio is off. Not sure why. I'm not that wide in real life.

As always, I miss and love you all.

Much delayed post!

I humbly apologize for the number of times I say "umm" and "which is cool". My speaking skills are somewhat wanting....

Here's the movie I made for the talent show:




Once again, I love and miss you all!



"Athens" by Marissa Linzi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Miscellany

Just an update on some miscellany:

Pictures from the Peloponnese are up on my Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/Marigumi/Peloponnese
I tried at least three times to put them on Facebook, but Facebook is horrible and it didn't work. I'll probably just put them on Picasa from now on. Pictures from the two Hold Thy Peace shows that I costumed also happen to be up there, if you feel like browsing.

I've gotten some much-needed rest and relaxation this week. It was nice to spend a day or two lounging around in bed with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Classes start again on Monday, however. Alas! It will be nice to have everybody back again, though.

I just got back from Maria Erini's house. My visit this time consisted of a trip to the farmer's market, where I got her to say "apples" and "grapes". When we were at the grape stand, she did something I've never heard her do before--mixing Greek and English. She kept saying "I want" in Greek and "grapes" in English. Except her R's come out as L's so it sounded like, "Thelo glapes." For some reason, I can't get her to say verbs in English. However, back at the apartment, when it was time for me to leave, I said, "I'm going home now, will you say 'goodbye'?" and she responded, "Bye! Ciao!" I consider that a marked success.

My hair is getting to that unbearable length, where I can feel it on my neck. My friend Tiffany said she'd cut it for me. I'll be sure to post pictures and/or video of the result.

I guess that's all for now. Happy Halloween!

Back in Athens

Whoo. Greetings, all.

I'm back from the Peloponnese and ready for a week of chilling in Athens. This week is fall break for CYA, so a lot of people are traveling. Once again, I find myself with an empty apartment. No complaints here, though. A couple of my friends are also staying in Athens for break, so I won't be alone. In any case, I'm looking forward to sleeping in and getting some time to myself.

As for the Peloponnese trip, it was so much fun! Way more fun than the Crete trip. We were less rushed and really got to appreciate the sites. Also, we went to my favorite archaeological site in Greece, Epidauros. It's the location of the most acoustically perfect ancient theatre in Greece. If someone crinkles a piece of paper in the center of the theatre, someone sitting in the back row can hear it. Some of the students sang songs; my friend Ella and I performed what we could remember of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
There was one other site that was super cool, because it had a lot of stuff that was really well preserved or well restored. I think it was called Messene? That was my second favorite place, no doubt.

I promise I'll put up some pictures in my next post, and I'll put up lots of pictures on Facebook.

I do have one regret from the trip, though. My friend Gary won a stuffed bunny for me from a crane machine, and I left it at the last hotel we stayed at. It was the most amazing bunny ever. We named him Hector Hephaestos. He will live on in memory.

I hope you all are well! Congratulations to HTP for its successful run of Romeo and Juliet (I thought of you all at Epidauros).

As always, I love and miss you all.