Going Greek

What about your husband?
He's really just there to make the rent cheaper.

Things I miss about America:
1) American TV - Watching TV in Greek on the very little down time we have just doesn't cut it and there is only so much BBC World News I can handle. Bleh.
2) Straightening my hair - Since I blew my converter on the first day, I have not been able to straighten my hair, and I have definitely been roughing it for the past week and a half. Stupid European electricity.
3) LAUNDRY - I have never been so self-conscious about how I smell in my entire life. Try only packing a week's worth of clothes and going on a month trip; we wreak.
4) Walmart - I lost my chapstick the second day I was here. I am lost without it and NOBODY has Burt's Bees. I have an addiction and unfortunately it is very specific. It's a problem.
5) Normal size showers - Apparently everybody in Greece is 4 foot nothing and the size of a twig. They cause me to make a mess and the bathroom floor constantly has a steady inch of water covering it.

Now that I have gotten through my little rant, hands down I am more than happy to give all of it up to be here! This morning was an early one again. We got off the ferry around 7. We immediately met Irini and set off for the town of Eleusis to see the Temple of Demeter and it's surrounding area. We stopped for breakfast first where we were pleasantly serenaded by Katy. Quite the wake up call; I just love her haha. The area we saw was huge, and was supposedly the spot where Hades came up from the underworld and stole Demeter's daughter Persephone and married her. It was really neat to see to what extent these people went to portray their religion as true. After we went to Corinth. We stopped at the Corinth canal and watched the ships pass for a little while. The canal is massive and was pretty cool to see. After that we headed to Ancient Corinth. It is estimated that Ancient Corinth had a population of about 200,000 people; that is a HUGE for a city in that time. The ancient city was large with agoras, fountains, temples, stoas, etc. Part of what we saw while we were there was the public restrooms of the time. Let me just tell you that people got to know each other REAL fast in that set up. One long bench with holes right next to each other...your legs would have practically been touching! So weird! While we were there we met with one of Barnes friends who is a grad student at Mizzou who just happens to be positioned at an excavation on Corinth. He has been there for 4 years already! We got to go behind the scenes and see them actually digging out a Byzantine home. They told us about the things that they had already found today and we got to see them working....that was really cool! The lead archaeologist on the project also talked to us about his specialty which was ancient pottery. They took us to a little shed where there were literally thousands of little clay pot pieces scattered about on different tables and categorized by date, type, etc. Now I remember why I stopped wanting to be an archaeologist. He started explaining that they find tons of pieces like this on every dig and his responsibility is to go through each individual one, catalogue it, then do this really complicated mathematical formula (who knew archaeology involved math?!) to decide which pieces were most similar to have possibly belonged together. He has been at that dig site for 20 years! That is 20 years of looking at clay pieces the size of golf balls to see which ones fit together to possibly make part of a clay pot or vase. No. Freaking. Way. More power to whoever feels like that is there calling, but I don't have near enough patience for something like that. Then after all that process he goes through, he ends up REBURYING most of it! Are you kidding me? Doesn't that just make it somebody else's problem? Circle of life I guess. But he did say that the guy who photographs their pieces for their cataloguing is a photographer on Greece's Next Top Model. That's legit. After Corinth, we headed to Nafplio where we will be staying for the next four days. Barnes says this is his favorite town and I can already see why. The town is beyond beautiful and situated on the water. We got to port right as the sun was going down and the view was spectacular! Then of course we ate. It was a good meal as always, and I narrowly missed spitting out my water on the table because we were laughing so hard. Oh and I have found a solution for my lack of wine drinking. I just buy a Diet Coke (Coke Light here in Greece) and put it in my wine glass so I can still do the traditional "Yamas" (Cheers) with everyone. Lauren joined in on the soda in the wine glass tonight. We keep it classy. After dinner we headed to this little gelato shop in town that Barnes swears has the best gelato in Greece. It was the best ice cream I have ever had in my entire life! Pretty much going to eat it every day while I am here. Yum!

Oh and by the way, Lauren and I had our first touristy encounter today. We were trying to find a laundromat in town (refer to the beginning of post again) and were standing on the sidewalk with a map. Two guys on bikes stopped to try to help us. They were harmless and spoke very little English, but we learned you look at the map BEFORE you leave the hotel. Whoops!