Friday, 26 May

Perhaps a rather pedestrian outline of events, but things will get very interesting tonight when we hop a ferry for the island of Crete.

Wednesday was Harrison's birthday. A few of the korai (I will use this word from now on to mean "the female students" went down to the Plaka (touristy shopping area) late Tuesday night and bought him a soccer ball. They welcomed in his birthday at 12:30 am by knocking on his door and presenting it.

We continued the orientation on Wednesday with a great session by Professor Dawn Stevens on things to do in Athens. She is a font of all knowledge, having lived in Greece for about 10 years.

Then Professor Michael Barbas continued his unique lecture on Greek culture with a look at Globalization in Greece.

We had the afternoon free, so Marshall, Audrey and I went to the huge bookstore named Eleutheroudakis, on Venizelou Street not far from City University. They have an impressive selection of English language books. I bought a pocket Oxford Modern Greek-English dictionary, a book on Greek Art and Architecture from which I plan to crib many of my lectures ;-) and for Harrison, a Loeb edition of Plato which has some of the best dialogues, including one we are reading for the class, the Phraedus.

We all signed the book for Harrison and presented it to himn at an impromptu party on the hotel roof that night. Of course, in the States, they would lock the roof, or if not, put up dire warnings about falling off. But I guess they expect people to have more common sense here! It's very pleasant up there in the evenings, cool, and great views of the Acropolis, Lykkavittos Hill (tallest in Athens, and outlying hills.

Yesterday was our first day of classes. Marshall started us out with an overview of the class and some thoughts on Greek history. I showed some slides of Greek pottery and talked about dating conventions in pre-history, ending with some slides of Minoan art in honor of the trip to Crete. In the afternoon Audrey began her class on Paul with an impressive overview, including an invaluable chronology of the entire Bible, showing where each book falls in place. We peppered her with questions along the way. It should prove to be an incredibly interesting class.

Harrison, Melissa, Karin, Joy, Jon and David are now on Crete! They took the overnight ferry last night and will stay overnight on Crete and then go to Santorini. Marshall came down with a bad cold that kept him from sleeping well the past couple of nights, so we decided to stay here in Athens last night (Thursday) and try to get some real sleep. It seems to have worked out, and we will take the ferry tonight from the Piraeus (still the main port of Athens!) to Crete. Knossus is about 5 km south of the biggest city on Crete, Irakelo (ancient Heracleon). Dawn said that the archy site at Akrotiri is closed, so we are opting for extra time on Crete in lieu of the jaunt to Santorini. With the museum in Irakleo (second only to the Nat'l Archy museum in Athens) and Knossus, this should fill up the whole day and a half. Our guidebook says that there is not much signage at Knossus, so we will see how much we remember from teaching Minoan civ all these years!

Richard, Audrey, Brian, April and Brad are going on another set of island-hopping trips, which Audrey will detail in her blog, I'm sure (Check it out at http://audreyinathens.blogspot.com/)

Today Marshall and I slept in (finally), ate a leisurely breakfast, and bought our tickets for Crete. After I post this we are going on a walking tour of Athens. The, back to the hotel, pack, and set out for the Piraeus. I plan on taking thousands of photos.