First Day in Athens, Greece

The first day was spent in Athens, Greece, and I was trying to get acclimated to being in a different country. I arrived with around two hours to explore the city. The streets that I explored were covered in graffiti. In a way it was beautiful; it is not typical to see so much public graffiti in the United States. We met in the lobby for a short discussion of our plans for the night, and we left to find a place to eat. After many restaurants offering us menus and coupons, we found a restaurant with a rooftop view of the Acropolis. In the first hour of the class trip, we were introduced to the incredibly aggressive sales techniques of the Greeks; shop keepers would yell to us from across the street, restaurant employees would complement us in an attempt to persuade us, and people would walk alongside us to try to sell us their wares.

We had a diverse meal that started with bread and vegetables and finished with fish, veal, or calamari depending on what we ordered. A few of us were brave and ordered different juices; Jackson found out the hard way that the Greek interpretation of apple juice is more like apple sauce than juice, and Audrey discovered that lemonade was nothing more than the tart juice from freshly squeezed lemons.

By the time the day was over, I was excited because I had not slept for a period of over 30 hours. I was asleep before I could made contact with the bed.