Thursday, April 16 The city was fun

Thursday, April 16th
· Relearned “signome”-sorry (had to use it a lot!)
· 8:36am showered, took vitamin C, with all the time changes and lack of sleep, gotta keep my body healthy!
· 9:07am run to breakfast, late to shuttle, go back to hotel room for a power nap. I was exhausted. My head hurt so bad, cause I felt like I still hadn’t had any sleep.
· 10:15am ready to go! Feel so much better. Off to the shuttle
· 10:32am Stuck on the street w/ a big truck blocking the way. Our driver was yelling at the guys to move their truck and he just stopped the shuttle and waited for them to move. Everyone was yelling at each other. It was kind of funny! I’m taking pictures the whole time!
· 12:15pm find open market…my life changed forever. We went into the meat market. There were people with lambs hanging everywhere, yelling “you want lamb” etc in Greek. It smelled so bad. I was nauseous, almost threw up, had to get out of there, so we made a left and found ourselves in the frozen fish market. Reminded me of the part in “No Reservations” that she wakes up really early to go get the fish. There was so much sea food, big seafood! But if you think about it, it makes sense Greece is costal country surrounded by sea, so that’s where it all comes from!
· Got ice cream
· Got Corrine real leather Greek Sandals. They fit them right to your feet there and then nail and hammer them. The guy was really nice. Spoke almost perfect English.
· Dropped my camera. Thought I broke it. Luckily it’s a cannon and if it weren’t I bought it on American Express and it was fine!
· Got yelled at by Greek guy for not buying his bag (little did I know I would buy one 20 min later down the street for less than half the price!)
· Bartered for sun glasses. Paid 5 Euros down from 15! Wow what a deal!
· Got caught in the middle of this guy’s act in the street. He made a balloon dog and pulled me over as he made it and I became part of his act. He gave me the pink balloon dog, but made me give him a kiss on the cheek for it. So with caution I kissed the crazy Greek man!
· 3:04pm Bartered for bag.
· 3:06pm Corrine’s bag broke. Good thing I just bought my new bag!
· 3:29pm gave pink balloon dog to a boy on the street, made his day!
· 3:33pm Corrine stopped and looked on the map again for this restaurant we never ended up finding, but looked for for an hour.
· 3:52 Gave up on finding restaurant. Needed to find a bano…it’s hard on the streets, cause you can’t go to the bathroom anywhere unless you eat at the restaurant etc, so we just took life into our own hands, walked in like we knew what we were doing! It worked.
· 4:37pm WC again, found it in Hadrian’s Library I think.
· Crazy to think that all these places are older than Christ. Un fathomable.
· 6:13 On top of Mars Hill looking down at the city- wow it’s beautiful. Mars Hill is where Paul went to preach Christianity to the Greeks a long time ago. It was the beginning of Christianity in Greece. It is one slick rock.
· 6:30pmish Acropolis- WC again…when you’re walking around the city all day and drinking lots of water, well, you gotta go…
· 7pm how cool, we were up there for the lowering of the flag ceremony. It was cool. They walk up in the soldier way, sing the national anthem and then lower it and fold it. Little did we know that was the indication that the acropolis was closing…we were just taking pictures and the guy was like ma’am you need to go now.
· 7:28pm Kicked off the Acropolis. We begged him to let us take one more picture in front of it cause we hadn’t even taken one picture in front of it. Corrine was taking my picture and then remembered that I was supposed to take it with my mascot for school…
· 7:29 Got reamed for having a “toy” in the picture. The guy yelled at us so bad. He screamed. “No toys! Respect this place.” And then he made me delete the picture. I tried to explain that it was because I was a teacher and it was my mascot. He said he didn’t care. No toys. And then told us we could take one last picture without it. I was like, “No, I’m good thanks.” and we left.
· Said “signome” like a hundred times to him.
· Ate a Euro for dinner. I love them. It’s basically a pita with vegetables, fries, cucumber sauce all wrapped in pita.
· 9:33pm Corrine threw up her dinner. I sat with a dog while she threw up. The dog followed me all the way up the road. I named him “leafy” cause he had a leaf stuck to his fur. Totally nice dog…but didn’t pet it. Safety first!
· 9:43pm got on bus 040 to go to the hotel, got home, packed for Hydra tomorrow. Exhausted. 11 hours of walking does that to you!

This guy is so my favorite. He just looked right at me and I took his picture! Classic! This could be a reasons why not to smoke Ad.

Lots of Greek Orthodox priests all over the place. So cool!

Officially my favorite flower! I'm not sure what they're called, but I think they're beautiful! I have a few fake ones in my room, but it was so exciting to see them in real life! Beautiful huh!

This was our bus driver Jerry. He was so mad when we got stuck in traffic. It was kind of funny to me. He kept yelling at the guys something that sounded like "Beberine"...