good sweet glorious jesus

I came face-to-face with my arch nemesis a few moments ago. I was walking up the stairs to the 3rd floor of my hostel and there he was, wiggling his ugly antennae at me. While that might sound perverse, it might as well should have been. We both squirmed. Kayla said, "Aw, it's so cute." And I wanted to smack her. You try growing up with cockroaches and then we'll see if it's so cute. So now you know, Athens has cockroaches, almost identical to the giant flying tree roaches of Texas. I was too freaked to get a picture. Sorry. The past two days have been a bit of a blur, but I will try to recap as best I can.

Met up with Carter and Alonna yesterday morning. Tried to go to the Byzantine and Christian museum, but I guess the cab driver didn't understand, because we ended up somewhere completely different, and decided to go to the War Museum instead, probably the least-predictable place for Greeners to be. Got in free, thank you Insternational Student ID Card. Here are a few tidbits from the museum:

This and the following reliefs are from the Temple of Apollo, mostly depicting scenes of Amazonarchy. Amazonarchy is best described as depictions of a female warrior class in battle with the Greeks. Check out those facial expressions and use of perspective!

Fun fact: most relief pediments were placed high atop temple walls, so they were sculpted to give the impression that the figures were actually leaning out of the rock, towering over the viewer.

For a little bit of modern warfare. I snapped this picture with Tanner in mind, specifically:

I also thought the positioning of the machine guns was a little bit dirty. ;)

There were also a collection of children's renditions of the Attila invasion of Turks into Greece in the 1970's, a bit morose in my opinion:

After that had some delicious lunch right outside of the Monastiraki district, the outdoor shopping area of Athens, with lots of womens' shoe stores, A LOT. Then, we got hopelessly lost and ended up having to hike the Acropolis in order to get back without getting too badly blistered. Which, on the plus side, gave us some amazing views of the city:

Yes, it really is that high up. The night ended with drinks with Kayla and Jordan at the Athens Sport Bar, where they play sports on the tele 24/7! I have also decided I have a favorite sport: rugby. It's the best game in the entire world! It's like a cross between football, soccer and keep-away all at once!

Today was still interesting, but far fewer pictures. Went off the beaten path with Kayla and Jordan and took the Tram out to the various suburbs of Athens, which could be misconstrued as New Jersey or other various shorelines of the East Coast.

We took the tram out to the very last stop, stepped off and it was like walking into a completely different world from the widely sheltered portion of Athens we had been getting familiar with for the past couple of days. It's bright outside, and dry and wide, and people are scattered but not looking like they are going anywhere in particular. The coast is there, but cluttered with docked sailboats in various forms of disarray and repair. The ground is dry with brush and graffiti and trash and junked cars. Stray dogs sleeping in the sun. From behind loosely fenced, barbed wire courts, children play soccer, basketball and other things. We walk across the freeway (they do have freeways here) on this blue bridge I swear I've seen in my dreams years before, and down this path, behind yet another loosely constructed fence, we find a cheap amusement park for kids, complete with towering moonwalks, carousels spinning in the hot sun, arcade games and other cheap forms of carnival attractions.

We're starving by now and keep seeing this one sign in English (which is VERY rare for this part of town) that says FREE FOOD COFFEE FUN leading towards the back of the park. We decide to walk inside and it's dimly lit, low-seated couches, empty for how wide it is, all adults smoking and drink coffee drinks. No food to be seen. Some people notice us, but most are engrossed in their own conversations. I imagine this is the place the rebellious teenagers go on the weekends, seedy with large windows looking onto a dirty coast, a good place to recover from a heroin binge. We decided to go elsewhere. I will make a point of coming back here before I leave and take pictures. It was beyond surreal.

Taking the tram back to town, I'm convinced there is a spell on Athens that activates every day around 5pm. I looked around and every other person was dozing off in their seat. The dry heat, the work of the day, all hits around mid-afternoon and everyone wants to do nothing but sleep sleep sleep the fatigue of an old city away.

All around, a good day. I can't believe I have another 3 1/2 weeks here.