Week Break

I know I always say that my time here has been crazy busy, but this last week it really was! I went to 3 islands in 6 days. That equates to 4 nights in hostels, 4 boats, lots of pb&j sandwiches, and lots of new acquaintances. So here it begins...

Monday/Tuesday- We flew into Athens on Saturday, quickly adjusted to our new surroundings, and left Monday afternoon to catch our ferry to the island of Rhodes. It was a really long ride, somewhere around 13 hours. That's longer than my flight to Rome! I slept almost the whole time, but still somehow was tired once we got to the island. Oh when I say "we" I mean, Carissa, Lisa, Paul, Ali and I. We traveled together for the first few days, which was good bonding time for us. For a while we had another student traveler with us. I forget her name, but she is from Brazil and studying in London. She wants to move to the U.S. next year to finish her degree, so she was practicing her English, while I became more cultured. When we got there, we moved our stuff into our hostel right away. It was pretty nice for a hostel. The most memorable thing about it was that our toilet and shower head were inches apart, so there was no way to take a shower without flooding the toilet seat and the floor. We mostly just wandered around and visited different shops. I was tired, and it wasn't a good travel day for me, so it wasn't my favorite island. There were tons of stray cats and it was kind of dirty, which didn't help the situation. But hey, I can't love every second of the trip! We did have a delicious dinner at one of the restaurants. It's so funny because in Europe, restaurant employees stand outside and will do almost anything to get you to eat there. They yell across the way, make conversation with you, and offer you a table. We had so much fun because the square that we ate at had 4 restaurants competing for our business. It's the off season there so it was really quiet.

Wednesday- We decided to take a morning ferry to the island of Kos for the day. We had a lot of fun in Kos. It was cleaner and more friendly. We went there on a Greek holiday, so there were tons of people around because everyone had the day off. They had music and dancing in one of the squares, so it was cool to experience more of the Greek culture. We toured some ruins and sat on the pier for a while enjoying the ocean. I am definitely a water person. Except for the whole motion sickness thing, I love riding on boats and just sitting by just about any body of water. We toured around castle ruins, and saw some amazing views. We were just there for the day though, so then we took a night ferry to our final destination, Santorini.

Thursday- The 5 of us arrived in Santorini at 2 in the morning, which we thought might make for a difficult situation. Turns out that the owners of our hostel were the nicest people ever and agreed to pick us up at the boat and bring us to the hostel for no extra cost. We definitely slept in and decided to wait around for the rest of the group to arrive. A group mostly from our trip, some from the London program, and a guy that one of the London girls knew from Athens were supposed to arrive between 3 and 4 so we figured we would wait until they got there to do anything. They ended up not getting there until closer to 5 or 6. We wasted our day sitting in the hostel room. Oh well, again I say, good bonding time and a nice time to relax, because after all it was our week vacation. Once they got there our group equaled 21. That's a lot of people to get on the same schedule and to keep track of. We mostly stayed in the hostel that evening and night. Besides the hostel owners, the hostel itself was so nice!! Our group of 5 and then 4 guys got private rooms next door to each other that were separate from the main building. Everyone else was scattered through the building. The rooms were nice and they had a really sweet pool for us too. Of course some of the guys had to test out the pool that night, which they claimed "wasn't cold" even though I was standing on the tile next to it, shivering in my fleece jacket.

Friday- We started off the morning "early," which for the guys was 10:30. We had such a fun day. The guys on the trip have had the tendency to be cliquey and only talk to one another. It was really fun to see them in a different setting where there weren't many girls, so they we more open to get to know us. Most of the people I traveled with during the week were the people I wasn't as close to, which was great, because now I feel like I have a close bond with almost the whole group! We spent the morning taking turns going into town to rent ATVs. I was told that all I needed was a drivers license and some cash to rent it. Turns out that you have to have driven one before. Me, being Honest Annie told them that I had never been on one before. They wouldn't let me rent it so I rode around with Carissa for the whole day, which was really fun! I wouldn't have had it any other way! The best part, was that the owner of the rental place looked at me and said, "You are too beautiful and too young to die. I want you to be safe. Please don't drive this." The ATVs were awesome!! We saw some of the most amazing views I have ever seen in my life. The ocean and the rock based towns were the best! All 21 of us were supposed to meet up at the same beach. Four people got ahead on their ATVs, 1 got completely lost, and the rest of us ended up going to a different beach. The one we went to was a black sand beach. It was definitely not beach weather though, so I couldn't fully enjoy the whole beach experience. We still had fun though. We went to Oia to watch the sunset!! Spectacular! We were on castle ruins, overlooking the ocean and the town watching the sunset. Definitely a once in a lifetime thing!

Saturday- We woke up with every intention of repeating the day before. One small hitch. We found out that the ferry we were supposed to take on Sunday was most likely canceled and to get to class on Monday we would have to quick change our tickets to take a ferry that afternoon. Most of the group went to renew the ATV rentals when we found this out, so we spent the day returning ATVs, figuring out tickets, and moving out of our hostel. During the whole chaos a few of us decided to take advantage of the ATV and avoid the stress, so we rode out to one of the beaches. On the way back to the hostel, Ali let me drive her's. I did pretty well, except for the one time that I almost hit a tree, but we don't need to worry about that. I'm safe Mom! No bruises or scrapes! While we did that, a couple of the guys next door to us decided that they were going to spend the whole day in bed and that they were not going to leave that day with us. All of the guys and a few of the girls were trying to make a convincing argument that we could miss our FIRST day of classes on Monday, because we made up the majority so they would have to cancel and reschedule classes. Not really sure when they would reschedule our class in our already busy schedule, so that group was not very convincing. I'm also not sure how they thought that would be a good idea considering besides the 5 of us, our program directors had no idea that any of the rest of the group was with us. (We are supposed to give them a form of where we are when we do weekend trips.) How do miss class and explain that one? I don't know. Haha. We ended up getting everyone ready to go. The two guys next door did manage to stay in bed for the whole day until we left for our ferry. They even ordered food to their room and had someone carry it to them. Hilarious!

Overall it was a really good week! I am trying to adjust to Athens now, but I am sure I will get a schedule down soon. Alright computer battery is about to die and I still have homework to do. Good night!