And I Am Home

And so the May Seminar to Greece comes to a close. This is my first full day being back in Fargo, since I got back after midnight yesterday. My sleeping schedule is completely crazy (like waking up at 1:30am this morning crazy). I'm sure that will be back to normal in no time though. I also had a mild panic attack last night when I took a nap. Clearly I hadn't fully gotten back to the fact that I was home and when I woke up I was really confused about where I was and I started to freak out in my mind a lot. That was when I had to call it quits yesterday. My mind was not functioning, so it needed to take a break.

My goal for today is to make it until 10:00pm. I will probably take a nap sometime this afternoon if I need to, but for now I have some coffee (thank God for triple shot espressos over ice). I cannot wait to make it back to Greece.

I will be doing one more post after this one, but not until later in the day. I will be posting some pictures that I took in Athens. They aren't fantastic, since many of them were just taken as we were walking, but it gives you an idea of what another part of Greece is like.

My Highlights

1. Athens (it was nice to actually see Athens and not just pass through to catch connecting flights)

2. Santorini

3. Renting ATVs

4.Watching the sunset and then picnicking under the stars with friends at a lighthouse

5. Hiking from Fira to Oia

6. Cliff Jumping

7. Seeing ancient cities

8. Speaking Greek with the Greeks

9. Finding local food stops to eat at

10. Seeing the Acropolis at night

11. Getting lost in Athens (on the way here, we were awkward)

12. Getting lost in Athens (on the way home, but being able to ask directions in Greek)

13. Having the bus system in Santorini down like clockwork

14. Being able to walk everywhere

15. Being able to call this country my home (if only for a month)

Chilling in the Athens Airport

Greetings from Athens everybody! Sorry, we had to pay for WiFi at the hotel, so none of us did it. The trip to Athens was off to a rough start. When I picked up my suitcase at the Santorini airport the fabric of my suitcase tore. So that was great. Then when I lifted my suitcase to be weighed it ripped even more. Well this was concerning. Nothing was falling out of my bag…yet. The flight was very fast (only 25 minutes). I watched all the islands passing underneath the plane and Santorini disappear into the distance.

By the time we got to Athens my bag was even more torn and a pair of my jeans was starting to spill out of the side of my bag. Well that was concerning. Buying a new suitcase was on top of my priorities list (I got a hard case this time). I was actually able to fit everything into my suitcase this time.

Our first day in Athens was short, since it was only a half-day. We had a mini scavenger hunt to find some of the bigger ancient sites of Athens, like the Acropolis, Agora, etc. We also found an awesome local joint to get some food too. We weren’t crazy hungry, but we kind of went a little insane on what we ate. We all had pita gyros; we also had some chips and dip, a tomato and mozzarella, and so much more. We also went there today to grab a bite. We got our food in under a minute; it was awesome!

Today we went to a museum. It was the Archeological Museum, so we also saw some of the frescos that come from Santorini. We also saw some huge statues and even the death mask of Agamemnon. We caught the metro back to Monastiraki, and we got some lunch and I grabbed my suitcase. We then headed up to the Pynx, an ancient assembly for the democracy to learn some things about the Acropolis. We then hiked up to the Acropolis and got to see all the great sites. After the real Acropolis we then went to the Acropolis Museum. This was one of the sweetest museums I have ever been in. There are parts where the floor is glass and you can see an ancient city underneath you. When they dug into the earth for the building they found an ancient city (pretty hard NOT to do when people have been living in this area since about 5000 years before Christ). Well they preserved the city and now you can see the excavations while you are in the museum.

We also got to wander the city a little bit. We found the most awesome yogurt bar called Fresko. You select one of three yogurts (I got the Rich and Creamy Greek Yogurt) and then you can put on topping. These ranged from jam like preserves, to fresh fruits, 4 types of honey, and assortments of nuts. We also did some souvenir shopping in the Monastiraki area. I was finally able to locate the big Greek flag that I wanted.

As I am typing this it is currently 6:17 am in Athens. I won’t be able to post this until the Athens airport when I can get free WiFi. So today will be our 32 hour day, roughly. We will be chasing the sun, and the sun will win. This time in Greece will not be forgotten and I  can’t wait to come back in the future. 

So Glad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ggzxInyzVE&ob=av3n

I woke up this morning and this song was just in my mind to be played. It seemed so fitting for our last day here. Hope you all enjoy. 

Only For Now

Well it is our last day. We will be leaving Santorini in approximately 6 hours. So here are sunset pictures from when we went out to a lighthouse this past weekend and watched the sunset. As our time sets in Santorini we were all reflecting about how beautiful it was. A once in a lifetime moment. 

Sweet Sigh of Relief

Well I was able to zip up the suitcase. Thank God. It is very tight, and there are some things that almost didn't make it home. As of now it is two towels I brought from home, but they were destined to be left behind from the beginning. I also used clothing for packing cushions (I have no choice but to be resourceful). I also packed my bag in such a way that I won't have to open my checked bag in Athens. The last thing I want to do is pack that bag again.

It is hard to let go after being here for a month, but packing everything up is putting things into perspective. I am excited to come home. It is great to be around family and friends. In all honesty I am most excited to work. Being abroad just gives me wanderlust, but I must have money to do so. Also, I need to save up for Israel. So much to do this summer. I took a round of pictures, but I won't be posting them until we are in Athens (sorry for the teaser, but just so you know).

As much as I love Greece I do miss home. Growing up in the plains I just love flat land. Mountains are beautiful, don't get me wrong. There is just something about being around the terrain of your home, it gives you a different kind of energy. There is very little flat land here, so there were a few times where I was just longing for a straight, flat road rather than a winding mountain path. Santorini has been my home for a month and it is crazy, because we are having to tell people that they won't be seeing us walk along the boardwalk anymore. We have gotten to know some of the locals very well, and it is sad to say goodbye to them.

Will I come back to Greece? Most definitely. When? That is to be determined. Will I come to Santorini again? Yes. But I will also want to spend time on the mainland. It would be fun to just live in Athens for a month. It would be a completely different vibe than the island life on Santorini. For now I will revel in the last few hours on Santorini. 

The Last Days

Well it is Sunday here. 12:11pm to be exact. We will be leaving the island of Santorini in approximately 24 hours. We will be in Athens for 3 days, but I'm not sure if our accommodations will have internet. So if they don't I am sorry.

Santorini has been a wonderful experience. Today, while we were tanning on the beach, we talked about how we expected to get comfortable here and whatnot, but we never expected it to feel like home after only being here for one month. This makes me excited for Israel, because I will be there for about 6 months (and there will be a blog about that too, maybe not everyday). It feels great to be able to walk down the boardwalk and have conversations with people along the way, because we know each other.

Last night was our Fira clubbing night. It was ridiculously fun, especially with all the tourists. I'm not a person to be big on tourists, but tourists in clubs help make them awesome. We had some great times just staying out until 3:30am and then trying to find a place that has some food (miraculously a market was still open). We then slept and then woke up for the beach today. This weekend has been the perfect way to end our time here in Santorini. Between renting ATVs, exploring the island on our own, clubbing in Fira, and just spending down time we have found a great niche here and it will be sad to leave it. 

Breaking Some Patterns

Here is a warning that I will not be labeling my days for photos anymore, since we aren't in class anymore. I am still taking a bunch this weekend and will be posting those up, but this weekend is one big adventure, so it wouldn't be fair to lump them into days. I got some cool photos last night that will be posted later, including the moon shot through a telescope. A classmate of mine, in the astronomy class, was doing an observation last night and I thought that I would try to snap a picture of it through the telescope. It actually worked too!

The Final Six

As of now these are the final 6 that I will choose from for the gallery exhibit in the fall. I will have descriptions tomorrow.

Day 22 Pictures

Alright, so here is a chandelier. This was right in the middle of the Catholic Church in Fira. Sorry, I completely forgot to crop this one. I like the blues and yellows along the top, near the windows.

This was the doorway to Art Space. How awesome is this? It looks like you are stepping back in time, which you kind of were since you were seeing and learning how wine was made way back in the day.

Here was a flower on the grounds at Art Space. All the foliage was beautiful and grapes were starting to grow to trellises overhead. These grapes were for eating and not for wine though.

This is walking down a tunnel at Art Space. You can see what having the shutter open will do to pictures when walking. It gives it a mysterious, maybe even creepy kind of vibe.

If anyone out there is a cat lover these next photos are for you. This little guy was just chilling on a wall on our way out from Art Space. He (or she) was purring up a storm for us.

He (or she) was apparently tired though. However, I was able to get a picture of him (or her) mid-yawn. It makes him (or her) look like a real lion...except not really.

He (or she) was then tired and then curled up into a little ball on the ledge and started to snooze. Overall, this cat was the most awesome cat I have seen here.

This here is a HDR shot of the Catholic Church in Fira. With HDR you take many photos with varying levels of exposures. You then merge all these photos together and in this final image you have all the shadows appearing that would normally be lost when just taking a regular photo. The chandelier also looks good with HDR. You really can see the detail in the cut crystal and it makes it look very cool.

A Ride With Some Friends

Well today we had class, I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that by now. But we also got to go out and shoot some photos today. We went to Fira today so that I could get an HDR of a church that I saw yesterday. I was very happy, and the people who own the church didn't mind at all. It was a Catholic Church, just so you know what you're looking at.

We also went to a neat little place called Art Space. Yes, we finally got there. The artwork was amazing! The owner was a little hard to understand, because he had a very thick Greek accent, but we got through it. He was an extremely nice person and even showed us what his personal art form was: wine making. It was also cool because the location was an old winery. So throughout the whole gallery you can smell wine everywhere. He told us all about the different wines, and the other alcoholic beverages made from the grapes. For instance, Vinsanto is a brand of wine that is dried in the sun for 21 days and then the juice is pressed from it. It has a very sweet taste. But what is interesting is what is made after the grapes are pressed. The pressed grapes are then distilled and they make Raki (he said it is the equivalent of Moonshine). The Raki can then be infused with Anise or other flavors and then it is Ouzo. Who knew you could make so much from grapes?

When we finished up at Art Space we walked down to the bus stop and waited...and waited...and waited. A man, who was a friend of the owner of Art Space, drove down and stopped to say hello to a friend across the street from the bus stop. Seeing that we are lost and forlorn he pulled up to us and told us to get in his car and he would take us to Kamari. We were very hesitant, since we didn't want to get into a car with a person we didn't know. However, there was a small child in the back seat (which we later learned was 5 years old and his name was Helea - and we got all this information by speaking Greek with him since he didn't speak English) and there was five of us (2 of which were guys). So if anything bad was going to happen there would be quite a struggle.

It was fun to cram 5 people into only 3 empty. There was some lap-sitting. We also got to work on our directions in Greek. So it was a fun experience to travel down the winding road all the this little car. We also got a great story out of this whole ordeal. We also gave him some money for going out of his way to bring us home, even though he didn't want to accept the money. He was more than willing to drive us, but we just wanted to show just how grateful we were that he gave us a ride.

After that we just got some dinner and now I just finished editing my pictures for our final round of pictures tomorrow. Hopefully I will sleep like a rock tonight and then tomorrow is the end of classes. Whoo! We will then be able to absorb Greek fully being class-free. 

Holy Illness Batman!

So turns out my cough is getting progressively worse (whomp whomp). Hopefully it gets better quickly and is just a phase of this sickness. The last thing I want to do is try and get some antibiotics in Greece. In other news we made some stir fry tonight. It was delicious, but not as good as my mom's. We didn't have soy sauce so it lacked that Asian flare. There was olive oil though, so maybe the Greek stir fry?

There will be some more photos from today posted later possibly. I just wanted to get those ones up before everyone got back from hiking and bogged the internet down. I was successful, but there were more pictures that did not make this round of photos, but that I would like to try and see get online.

Day 21 Pictures

This was a flower in Perissa. I bumped up the colors to really make it awesome. It apparently is a Petunia, I just learned this.

This was a little boy that was playing on the street. We came upon him and when we started shooting pictures he got really shy. This is him peaking out to see if we were still taking pictures, and we were.

Another sign for our assignment. I bumped up the reds and brought out some of the contrast between the colors to make this sign just pop.

I found a little Vespa and had to take a picture of the word "vespa" on it. When I was editing it the glint on the "a" was really bothering, but now I like it, because it shows that it is a metallic surface and not just a piece of plastic glued onto the vehicle.

Here was a beer bottle I found on the ground. It was classily amongst building equipment. I brought out some of the wrinkles in the label. You can even see that the label is starting to peel away from the  bottle.

Another sign for the project. This one is clearly saying that no cars and motorcycles are allowed. Are these signs followed? Rarely. It is just best to always be on the lookout for anything moving faster than you are.

This was on a dirt bike. I brought out the rust a little bit. One of the things that drew me to this was that fact that it looks like it is raised off of the surface of the bike. However, it is not, but the sun damage around the edging of the label makes it look like it is.

I license plate. I like it, because it says "YEA" and I also like that the numbers have some rhyme of reason to them, or it at least appears so. 

Here was a sign in Perissa. I messed with it a little so that you could see the brush strokes in the red, and even a little bit in the blue. The top word is a little slanted, but there isn't much that I can do about that.

Yup, I found some old beer bottles. I'm not going to lie, I was completely creeping in someones little property area. Don't worry. It wasn't gated or anything. More like a quad between buildings. I bumped up the red to bring out the peeling sealer.

Well this is a pay phone booth. I actually took this from inside the pay phone booth. I messed with this one a lot to just give is a different feel. The letters almost look neon now. It was a little bit of a bother though, since the red letters caste a reddish tint within the whole inside of the pay phone booth.

We found a bakery. I liked the fact that some of the letters were missing, but due to some glue you could still tell were they used to hang on the sign. The "B" is in the worst condition and the "R" has gotten a little too much sun.

This is not something I drank. You can tell from all the dust. This was actually at an outdoor bar that looked closed down. Their whole top shelf was lined with these empty bottles of Jagermeister. But I chose to put this photo in for class since it was different. I personally liked how you couldn't see the whole name of the label, but the bottle next to it has the name right on the side of the bottle.

Here is an ashtray. It is even complete with clothes pins and used Q-tips. I bumped up the red in this picture some, and it really brought out all the dust that was on the ashtray. When I was editing stuff I really noticed just how almost everything was covered in dust. It makes everything look so much older than it really is.

I stumbled upon this cactus and it made me laugh. I just loved how it was "JK." It was probably supposed to symbolize peoples' names, but all I could think about was "just kidding."

This pretty much has been our whole situation the entire time here. This wasn't taken in Kamari, but our beach is pretty dang close to our hotel. Since we are on an island I thought it would be appropriate to throw in a picture of a beach indication.

This is my low perspective shot of "Tonys Art" There was another word, but the was just too much space, so I cut it out of the picture.

This was drawn on the side of the wall in Perissa. I just like how it can be interpreted in a few different ways. It was really awesome coming upon this.

We are now in Fira, which was actually harder to get pictures in than I thought. I didn't to just go around and take a bunch of random photos of signs, so I had to look for the more random and unique ones. This was a more unique looking one.

So I bumped up the orange on this one some, but it was already pretty much this orange today. It is just being built, so the sun hasn't had time to bleach the letters yet. I also chose to take this shot from an angle because it really gave it some movement to it, even though it is completely stationary.

This was the logo for a random store. You think it would be for some fancy jewelry or something, but it was just a generic souvenir clothing store. I turn the color down, so it wasn't blindingly white. It actually brought out the marbling in the stone, so that was awesome.

This was a store called Milo, clearly (pronounced "Mee-lo"). Milo is the Greek word for apple, so it is actually quite funny that they have an apple next to the name. All the tourists who can't speak Greek will know this place because of the apple, but all the Greek see the apple with the name and think, "no duh, milo is the word for apple."

Photo Day

Today we did some exploring. Today for photography class we went to Perissa and Fira to snap some photos for our signage project. We also were to take some photos for our final six pictures that we will then select from for a gallery this fall at Concordia.

We wandered the back streets of Perissa and even caught a shy kid on camera. I always love exploring the residential areas here. They have so much more character to them. While in Perissa we mostly just aimlessly wandered, snapping pictures when they came into our sight. We then moved onto to Fira. Being a more touristy city they had something different to offer. We got a little graffiti, but there was also much more signs in general. They were everywhere. So I got of those, but they all still need to be edited tonight, since we will be turning them in tomorrow.

We got back late and missed the hike to the monastery. To be honest we weren't too heart broken, but we all still want to go. After being in the sun for pretty much 5-6 hours we were already spent. We all decided that if we are here we are just going to herp-derp (take our time) our way to the top. This also gives us all time to get our pictures onto our computers and edit them before we need to turn them in. So I am off, hopefully the internet isn't too busy tonight, but you never know. Stranger things have happened while I've been in Greece.

Day 20 Pictures

Okay, so I was out shooting for: Lines, Shapes, Textures, Patterns, and Negative Space. This road leading into distance has some good texture in the middle ground. I had to lay on my stomach for this one. This one also has some lines in that are pulling you forward to the destination.

So I'm not sure what this falls under, but I really like this photo. I edited this one and the previous one. Actually, all the photos today are edited in some way, minus the last one. I may go onto my professors computer and clone stamp that little plant out of the way, but I like the circular shape, but I also like the line that is pulling your eye all the way to the end of the tube.

The other part of our assignment was signage: license plates, signs, graffiti, advertisements, etc. This clearly is a license plate. I snapped this one because I liked that it was close to being something. It was close to being the word "Yes" and it was also close to being the numbers "3333." Each of these is just one letter, or one number, off.

Here is another sign. I cropped off the pole some since it wasn't really needed. I brought out some of the texture in the sign and saturated the colors a little bit.

I have a mild obsession with locks and stuff. This was just a great chance to snap a picture. I like how the wood of the door behind the lock still looks new and fresh, but you have the lock attached to it with rusty hooks and whatnot.

This picture is for the texture of the rust. I personally like the photo when it is bigger. You can really see into the little parts of all the rust. I also like the little cobweb strand that is hanging down right in the middle.

Here is my attempt at some negative space. Personally, when I zoomed in my eye was bouncing back and forth between the actually pattern of the bricks, and then also the pattern where the bricks are not. I may crop this some more later.

Here is some more texture. This comes from a palm tree. When new parts of the tree branch out it gets all hairy and whatnot, so you get all these strands coming from the tree. I also like how it looks like there is this strand sticking out of the tree and the rest of the tree is trying to reclaim this straying branch.

This was on a car. I personally just loved that is said "Picasso." I cropped it so I only got the word "Picasso" in the photo and nothing else. This will also be in my signage photos.

Here is some patterns. I cropped the photo to appear as if this pattern kept on continuing forever and ever. I also bumped up the texture of the pillars. Originally they just looked a little too washed out, but when I toned everything down their textures emerged.

Here is a pink flower that I took a picture of. I have been leaning away from flowers for some time, but I decided to take some more shots of some flowers. This is the one photo that I have not edited. I probably will go back and make some of the colors pop more.