Pleasant Surpise and Success

Another early start to another long, productive day. Woke up to cereal, bananas and fresh-squeezed (by self) orange juice. We got up earlier than we needed to specifically to go to the Open Street Market in the morning. It's about two blocks from our apartment and then extends for several blocks along a cross street. Vendors everywhere! I ended up going twice with M and K separately. We've completely overstocked the refrigerator. The pictures below do no sort of justice to the grand scale or business of the market, but gives you an idea of what all was there.

M getting some grapes. Look at the size of those bunches!!

In all, we bought garlic, potatoes, olives, olive oil (the best I've ever tasted), grapes, corn, cucumbers, lettuce, string beans, carrots, spinach, bananas, pears, oranges, tomatoes, cilantro, melon, a basil plant, a persimmon plant, eggs, and more for about 20-25€ total. Not grocery-store sized portions, either. And so fresh the lettuce still had the roots attached. The man told us (in Greek) to put them in water so they would last. We understood after a few minutes of charades. We made several friends among the vendors with our broken attempts at asking for what we wanted. We'll get better. Hopefully at least a little by next Friday.

After that adventure was the similarly thrilling task of actually attending Modern Greek. The class was more fast-paced than I would have believed (or cared to believe for that matter) but the teacher is very sweet and just wants us to try more than anything. That seems to be a running theme here - one that I like very much!

We had lunch and M and I planned on doing laundry right after, but while dragging clothes down to the washing machines, a passing fellow student told us that her friend had her clothes "ripped to shreds" by one of the machines. Combining that tidbit with the fact that the drums were barely big enough for two pairs of jeans, and each load would take nearly 2 hours, we decided to try our luck at hand-washing in the bathtub instead. It worked, but 8 hours later the clothes are still on a drying rack in our room. However, SS decided to do her clothes via the machines and the Academic Center (where the machines are housed) closed before the locked machine was finished, so she can't pick up her wet laundry from a couple blocks down the street until tomorrow after lunch. It's annoying, but the clothes will be safe (unless the machine ripped them to shreds!)

I had to run to Ancient Greek (too busy doing laundry to realize the time) but still made it before the teacher. This teacher is, like the others, just wonderful! He's British (+1), he's not assigning assigning essays (+2), he doesn't believe in piling on lines (+3), he'd rather we go out and see Athens than sit in our rooms fussing over Greek (+4), and he let us decide what we wanted most to read of Thucydides (+5)! The class will still be difficult and more book work than all the other classes combined, but it will be fun and hopefully pretty low-key, especially since K and SS are in my class, too.

I cooked my own dinner for the first time since I got here tonight. Eggs, bread, half an ear of corn, and salad made with lettuce, carrots, string beans, cilantro, feta cheese and a little olive oil. Oh, and there was Nutella (which is insanely cheaper on this side of the Atlantic!) for dessert. Livin' the high life. :) We really need to learn to read Greek food labels, though. It took several minutes to find the salt, even though we were staring right at it, and G accidentally picked up dessert wine instead of a bitter wine. This was her second failed attempt. We're all having a good laugh about it. "Fortunately" she picked up some ouzo, too. I'm waiting to see how "fortunate" a decision that was. ;) More on that tomorrow (in all likelihood). We're planning a beach trip tomorrow, so hopefully there will be pictures of that. Καληνύχτα!