Ελλάδα και Αθήυα according to Libby...

Today I was reading through some of my emails from Athens. I journaled on my computer and sent everything to a few close friends and my parents. Here are some bits and pieces of my big fat Greek semester:

January 26th: "Call me crazy, but I am enjoying the language barrier so far. Today I went to a grocery store to buy some deli turkey (we don’t have very many groceries yet). I can't speak any Greek, so I pointed to a hunk of meat, put my thumbs in my armpits, and wagged my elbows up and down. The turkey wasn't great, but I sure had fun purchasing it!"

February 3rd: "I am in love with Coke Light. Addicted. All three of my apartment-mates have - on separate occasions - told me that I have a problem. I wonder if they have a 'Coke Light Anonymous' (CLA) group in Athens. My name is Libby, and I have a problem. Today I was talking to Kara as I sipped my Nalgene-full of Coke Light. I told her that I can’t imagine life without Coke Light and concluded that I will probably die of cancer. They are bound to discover that aspartame and Splenda, like all other calorie-free sweeteners, are indeed too good to be true and cause cancer in laboratory rats. Of course, they give those rats ridiculous amounts of artificial sweeteners before any problem develops. However, I consume ridiculous amounts daily, so I’m going down with the rats. Then we were talking about Nalgene bottles. Both of us have heard that Nalgene bottles can cause cancer, especially in women, when they are scratched. There’s no escaping my fate: Nalgene + Coke Light = cancer. Oh well, I'll be with Jesus when I die."

March 15th (Crete): "On Monday we headed to the bus station early and hopped on the first bus to Irakleio. (I’m not sure if the spelling is right on that, but in Greece it seems like there’s 80 different English spellings for everything, so I’m all about guessing instead of looking it up.) The drive was 1.5 hours. When we first got on, I sat down and put my book bag on the seat next to me. I was in one of those 'I need my personal space' kind of moods. Much to my chagrin, a girl who got on two stops later needed my extra seat. When I scooted over (in my mind, it was a very reluctant move) and shoved my (very full) book bag under the seat, one of my little FIF emo pins flew off and nailed me in the forehead. Then the girl whipped out her cell phone and started talking very loudly (as all Greeks do). I’m not gonna lie…at that point, I was getting really irritated. So I curled up against the window, taking up a lot less of the seat in order to avoid being touched by this girl's flailing elbows. I also put on my headphones (praise mix again) in an attempt to drown out her cell phone yelling. Then she got off the phone and started having a yelling conversation with her guy friend who was sitting 3 rows ahead of us. I turned up the volume. At that point, she heard my music and proceeded to lean up against me in order to hear it better. I'm not even exaggerating…she was leaning on me. By this point I had been listening to my music long enough and was relaxed enough to be alright with the situation, but experiences like that make me miss home. Americans respect personal space a lot more that Greeks do. This perfectly normal Greek woman in her early-mid 20's had no qualms about taking up more than her allotted space and leaning on a complete stranger. I felt really selfish for being frustrated with her, but I just wanted to be separated from my new siamese twin."

April 20th: "I called Marms (a.k.a. my mom), and it was great to talk to her. I didn’t tell Mom this while we were talking, but a dog pooped in the bushes near me. At first, the smell wasn’t noticeable, but then it came… For most of our convo I was standing in a cloud of poop molecules. Stupid dog.
[...]
Traffic in Greece is quite a chaotic experience. But now that I’m used to it, it’s just entertaining. Because they have no parking lots, everyone parks on the side of the road and the sidewalk. On many streets people can’t walk on the sidewalks because the cars are so close to the buildings. Instead, you walk in the street to get around them. So funny. And then there’s the motorcycles… Don’t even get me started on the motorcycles. They are obnoxiously noisy, and there are TONS of them. Motorcycles pretty much ignore traffic laws. Cars aren’t completely law-abiding either (akin to Greeks’ inability to wait in line), but motorcycles don’t drive in lanes. They either drive on the road lines (in between lanes) or on the sidewalks. Watch out pedestrians!
[...]
Oh man, when I was almost home, an old Greek man (who was driving by in a car) scolded me as I blatantly jaywalked. That’s right, pick on the American. Greek people could care less about jaywalking, laws, lines, or anything that imposes order on their chaotic society. Whatever dude! I’m partaking of the jaywalkage."

May 4th: "Ten days is probably the average amount of time that people come here to vacation, so now I can just pretend to be one of the tourists, with the minor inconvenience of two finals in the middle of my vacation. No thanks… I’m not into the tourist thing. My dad has always been anti-tourist-ish, and now I understand his reasoning. Tourists run around for the week they are here, take their pictures in front of the big monuments, and then hustle to the next site… They spend money unnecessarily b/c 'that’s what you do.' But in the short time they are here, they gain only a superficial understanding of the culture. And considering the fact that most of them stay in the touristy area of town, 'superficial understanding' is a generous term."


So there's a little bit of Greek culture according to Libby. Leave a comment.

~ Leebee

Song of the day: "Believe it ot Not" - Seinfeld (George's answering machine message)