Welcome to Athens!

It seriously felt like forever from the time we left Newark until we actually got to Athens! But when we did we were incredibly tired but still super excited. We didn't even have to go through customs because we came through France, and both France and Greece are part of the European Union...so we were lucky! No customs in France, none in Greece, we just walked right through. Aphrodite met us and almost immediately hurried us on a bus. I can't even for the life of me remember what time we got in, but it was dark. As we drove to our apartments she started taking orders for what we all wanted at the taverna so she could call the order ahead.

We were absolutely exhausted...looking back a lot of us weren't even sure if we wanted to go out to eat. We just wanted to sleep! They tried to feign night on the plane but it didn't really work. I kept trying to watch everything that was passing us as we drove into the city but all I ended up remembering was that I counted a lot of moped stores. The bus stopped at this extremely random location and we had to get off and unload right in the street. Drivers in Athens pretty much ignore pedestrians...so we were putting our lives on the line! Then we had to divide up our group in a matter of just a few minutes into 4 different apartment groups. The guys goy lucky, their group was a given. I ended up in the group of us who were pretty much "whatever" about who we lived with. Jen and I had decided on the plane we wanted to room together but that was about all we knew. So my roommates were Jen, Suzanne, Susan, Bridget, Becky, and Ciara.

When we first got to our apartment we thought it was so fantastic...that was until later when we saw all the other apartments and realized we had gotten the stiff end of the deal. But our initial excitement went something like this: "There are four bedrooms in here? And there are balconies? I call a room with a balcony! And two full size baths? Why in the world is our kitchen in two rooms?" Jen and I ended up with the smallest room (although I was the first to choose a room!) because we wanted one with a balcony. I started every day (for at least the first week) stepping out onto the balcony in breathing in the fact that I was actually living in Greece! Our apartment was really big, but that was about the best thing about it. It had 4 fairly spacious bedrooms, but the furniture provided to us by the school was pretty cheap and the kitchen accessories lacking. I guess we couldn't really complain too much, we were in Greece! Even the paper thin comforters (which did nothing to help when the heat was barely working in our apartment!) couldn't squelch that excitement.