Garden Parties and museum visits, it keeps getting better

The past week everyone in our program (College Year in Athens/DIKEMES) got invited to the President's house (of our program, don't get too excited) for dinner and garden party. Monday night, we all piled in three huge buses and fought our way through Athenian rush hour traffic to the northern suburbs. There we were greeted by his whole family and escorted into the garden. To sum it up in one word: gorgeous.

There were little tables set up everywhere and quaint flower beds and broken pots scattered in little corners of the property. You can't be the president of a classics school and not have imitation ancient pottery in your backyard. The food was amazing. MMMMM. Our apartment tried to do some mingling, but quickly realized, we are not that good at mingling. Oh well...

This past weekend I also experienced my first Athenian metro ride. Not very noteworthy, but the destination is. The Dream Team (the self-proclaimed title of our apartment) went to Archeon Gefsis, a restaurant that is a time machine back to Classical Greece. Can there be a more perfect spot for a bunch of archaeologists? The waiters wore traditional dress of 5th c. Athens, we ate traditional food, and drank traditional drinks. It was awesome.

Oh, and I guess I should mention some of my classes, the main reason why I am abroad in the first place. I love everything about them. For my Aegean archaeology and Greek sculpture courses we rarely meet in the classroom. Instead, we meet at various sites and museums around Athens. We learn directly from the pieces, instead of a powerpoint with fuzzy images. Why sit in a room studying the ancient agora, when you can be walking through it, pretending like you're Socrates and debating with the youth of Athens. In two weeks, CYA will be taking us to Crete on a week-long field trip to visit the ancient sites on the island. Can't wait!