12 July 2008 - 15:44

What an incredible first day! With my travels completely...and I mean COMPLETELY behind me, I have met some incredible people already. I will profile a few very quickly:

Vasileios - Vasileos (surely my dad is a big fan!) is from Athens. He is the first Greek that I met in the program, and is very nice. I was introduced to him as a fellow Greek the last night after orientation. He is helping me learn Greek!

Babi - pronounced like Bobby, he is taller and also from Athens. For anyone who knows him, Babi reminds me a lot of Devon Groussis (PC Cosmos).

Fay - Local product of Chania. She is your stereotypical Greek woman - mix between the energy of a girl my age and the warmth of a yaya. But we could not talk too much...her and Babi became quick friends last night :-)

Saranta - Saranta arrived late yesterday and hasn't slept in 2 days. Maybe this is why we connected so easily this morning! We have been talking all morning about Greek politics, Greek soccer teams and everything in between.

Niko and Sofia - Both are also Greek students, but we haven't been able to talk much. Niko probably speaks the least English of any of them. It is very broken, so he remains quiet when I am participating in the conversation. When I am not in the conversation, the group quickly switches back to Greek, with Vassili or Saranta filling me in on what I do not understand.

I could continue this list for pages. But I won't today. I am sure I will make many more friends outside the Greek community. They all spend most of their time together, which I think is unfortunate for them. It is a comfort to be around people who speak your native tongue and can converse about things of which you are very knowledgeable. It is hard to start meaningful conversations in a language which not everyone speaks very well. Conversations require your full attention and lots of questions. But this is good. My Brazilian friend, Armando, who studies in Italy, and I like to jump between groups of people to make sure we are never in the same group for too long. I seem to be making good connections so far, and have only had a few conversations with Americans. Ariel, my roommate, also joins in the on the group-hopping. He is absolutely fascinating. And he has a girlfriend who lives in Chicago, so I am already hoping that that will result in a visit to Kansas City for him in the future.

Orientation began last night and continued this morning. We learned the history of the island of Crete from a Greek woman who spoke only broken English. It was a session that repeated itself far too often and went on far too long. I hope future sessions are more interesting!

Tomorrow (Sunday) we have an early breakfast followed by a bus tour of the Island. We are staying on the western side of Crete this week, but next Sunday will travel to Knossos in the middle to east side of Crete, near the port city of Heraklion (pronounced Iraklion). The tours should provide more great bonding time and wonderful picture opportunities.

Classes are done for the day, so I think I'm off to the beach! Yes, be jealous. :-) Crete is beautiful, and you should all try to make it here sometime in your lives. I have been thinking a lot already about the personal value of traveling abroad, but I will discuss that in a later post.

Kalinichta (Good night!)