The focus for our class today was wisdom. That is how our topic became experiential wisdom: teaching others what you have learned through your own experiences so that they know who to live in the world. What first came to my mind when he gave us our blog title was ordering food in greece. Not only do we show up to a restaurants knowing very little greek we also come as an intimidating group of 15. What I learned was that making al list of what everyone wants for lunch and handing it to the owner of the store not the waitress. The waitresses in greece all tend to women who answer to the owners who have to my wisdom been all men. In the end if you give your paper of orders to the man in charge, all will be happy and you will leave well-fed.
As we wandered around Athens exploring a new place to eat lunch we ended up at Stya. To my mistake i held the door open for a greek man and instead of a thank you i got a death glare followed by what i think was "please shut the door" and then proceeded to re-open the door for me to walk out of. Experiential Wisdom #2 women do not hold doors for men, only men can hold doors for women. So yet again i am visiting a place where men and women are not equal, but at least they are not as extreme as Ben Sira who believes men should lock up their daughters and sew their wives mouth shut to avoid embarrassment!
For dinner we all decided to order pizza. Without thinking we made plans to meet at 6 for pizza and nice conversation. What Markell and I soon realized was that we faced to issues 1) to order pizza you need a phone and 2) typically ordering pizza over the telephone in english when the person on the other side cannot speak english is terribly difficult. So Markell and I made our way with our map over to the pizza store and after 20 minutes of learning how to read and say pizza ingredients we left we three pizzas in hand. Experiential Wisdom #3 learning how to read a map in Greece will get you far because many alleyways in Greece are considered streets with their own street names and it very easy to get lost without a map and buddy, #4 Being able to work through a menu patiently with your waitress you will get gain knowledge of greek language for example Tupi means cheese!
I hope my experiential wisdom has taught you some valuable lesson on how to live in Greece.
Love,
Alex
P.S. At the end of the night we went to the top of a mountain to a cafe which gave us a view of the entire city of athens! It was the most spectacular view i had ever seen, i almost cried. (See below)
As the trip continues to day four, i have come to realize that our class has become more of a family now.
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