A Touch of Spice to my Athenian Life!

This morning, I woke up at 5 am to hike all the way to the Acropolis before sunset. I did this so I could spice up the old ruins with some lively background color, but it turned out that the sky was overcast and it drizzled on us slightly. We walked quite a ways and managed to find our lookout spot and I managed to capture some great pictures of the Acropolis and Parthenon. After that, we went out to Paul's Rock that is essentially just this huge rock that looks out over the city. This rock is where Paul (from the Bible) gave a really famous speech in the Bible and addressed the Greek's 'Unknown god.' I thought it was so amazing to stand where paul stood and walk where Paul walked!

After all that excitement, I went back to my apartment to take a nap but ran into a car show instead! There were all sorts of older, classic cars there in all sorts of sizes, years, makes, colors, etc. As someone that loves the look of old cars, this made me very happy and I went down for my nap with a smile.

When I woke up again, around 11, I went out to lunch with 2 of my classmates. We wandered through a new part of Athens and found some delightful little shops and cafes until we finally stopped at a restaurant to eat. We ordered Zucchini Balls for the table and I ordered Mousaka (a traditional Greek dish with eggplant and meat). My Mousaka came in the shape of a perfect square and as I took my first big bite, I realized that it was not really what I was expecting. There was a layer of omelette-like stuff on the top and layers of nearly raw ground beef in-between the layers of eggplant and potatoes. I ended up eating mostly just the eggplant and potatoes (avoiding the in-between layers) while tasting an interesting new part of Greek culture.

After lunch me and the girls I was with decided to go to the flea market for the rest of the afternoon and somehow got lost along the way. We spent about half an hour walking in a completely wrong direction and then another half an hour or so finding out way back (after asking directions, of course). About half an hour after that was when we finally reached the flea market and we were all very relieved and proud that we found our way and made it there alive!

We stayed for another half hour or so before we had to leave again to go to our Sunday Movie Night.

The movie compared almost everything in live to food in some way shape or form and as I began to think, I realized that I can compare my new life in Athens to my knowledge of food. I imagined the Acropolis as the top of a wedding cake because it is the part of the cake that you save, cherish, remember, and that piece of the cake holds history and love even though it is getting old. I thought of Paul's Rock as then being the figurines on top of that wedding cake-top because they stand over the entire cake, looking over it all and being, in a sense, on top of the world. I thought of the cars in the car show as different spices. Each has its own name, year,, look, smell, etc. Each is unique but all are spices used for the same purpose: to give flavor. I saw the Mousaka I ate as a great dish gone wrong thinking, "sometimes you need to make a mistake in the recipe." For me, the Mousaka was a great dish to try but it was simply for that: trying. Mousaka seemed to be the 'mistake' in my recipe but I needed to make that mistake in order to experience a certain part of the Greek taste and culture. Lastly, I thought of getting lost in Athens as forgetting a recipe that you only know decently well. With this recipe, you can usually remember the ingredients but not the measurements, and so you need the recipe to make the dish great. This is how I felt about Athens. I thought I new my way around but knew I would only be able to navigate myself so far before glancing down at the 'recipe.' Getting lost, for me, was like losing this 'recipe' and not being able to glance down and see what to do next. But the three of us managed to eventually remember all the ingredients and measurements and come up with a late, but pretty darn good dish.

And with all of this adventure in one day, I think I definitely managed to add a touch of spice to my experience in Athens.

-Jess