Open Air Market

Every Friday morning just up the street from our apartments there is an open air market. A whole street is blocked off and everything is sold from paper towels, to flowers, fruit, nuts, eggs, fish and even clothes!

Every stand is manned by usually a middle aged gentleman, hollering in Greek. It sort of reminds me of those guys at baseball games who make up a little call to sell their peanuts or beer. You also have to be very careful, because little Greek women get feisty at these markets! They wheel around little shopping carts that pull behind them like suitcases in the airport. It's easy to get your toes run over. Ouch!

It's SO fun to go and walk around, to experience the sights and sounds, and to buy yummy, fresh, and very inexpensive produce! Anyway...It's best explained with pictures... enjoy!

Olives! Too bad I still don't like them.

Grapes! This has been my favorite purchase. I buy a whole bunch of them and split them up... half in the fridge... half in the freezer. The frozen ones last all week and they're such a yummy snack!

Beautiful flowers! Not for me though. I'm on a strict budget. :)

My purchases the first week. Onions, apples, tomatoes, limes, grapes, eggs and cucumber (Although cucumber here is weird... there are hardly any seeds.... definitely not zucchini though, so honestly I don't know what I'm eating.)

The first meal I made using my market purchases. Tilapia  (which I bought from the grocery store... I'm not brave enough for the fish market... they come with heads, tails and scales. Yuck, no thanks.) and veggies!

οπα!!!

Many of you may be familiar with the title of this blog. OPA!!!! Is probably how you would read, or yell it while performing a traditional Greek dance!

As another part of our orientation course (which was quite a while ago now, whoops!) all the BCA students went to a dance studio where we spent three hours learning some traditional Greek dances. Many of the dances are performed in circles, generally somehow connected to the people next to you, whether it be by holding hands, shoulders, or on to one another's belts.

Music and dances are characteristic of the regions they originate from and each island or region of the mainland sort of has its own flavor. Some islands for example, do everything on their toes while others might stomp their feet much harder and stay low to the ground.

We also learned that men are traditionally much more liberated in Greek dances. Their dances steps are bigger and they will be the ones to jump high in the air, slap their thighs, or to yell things like OPA!

After we took the class, the following Saturday we went out to dinner in a Greek restaurant in a neighborhood near the acropolis called Plaka, where we were made to get up on stage with the dancers and show everyone what we learned. Our group can cut a rug, that's for sure! Here are some pictures!

I am almost directly opposite the camera. The man in the middle in the black was our teacher. He was a great guy and really made the lesson interesting! My friend, Kyle, is "leading" the dance so there is a break in the line between us.

This is a picture of the last dance we learned. It's the only one that we learned that is not performed in circles. This dance was in the movie Zorba the Greek! (Not that I've seen that movie... whoops!)

This is a picture of the girls in my apartment before walking down to Plaka to meet for our dinner and dancing! From L to R Ally (Messiah College), Jen (MC), me, Emily (MC), and Elena (Juniata College.)

Lucky for everyone else in the restaurant, dancers performed traditional dances without us up there before we danced. I think this restaurant was sort of a tourist trap... in a funny way it reminded me of Medieval Times or something, just Greek Dancing Style.

I didn't really get good pictures of us on stage...There we are though! Greek songs are way too long, by the way. I'm just throwing that out there.

A Little Reassurance...

This blog isn't going to have any pictures... just a forewarning.

As many of you know (or may not know... I'm not sure what the news coverage is like in the States) the Athens has been the center of a lot of protests and demonstrations lately, some of which have turned into riots. Greece's financial circumstances are, for lack of a better word, awful and the country is finding itself in need of some pretty serious measures  and some pretty serious help in order to stay afloat.

People are losing jobs, wages and pensions, and taxes are being hiked in order to cover the costs of the public sector. I don't fully understand the situation... I wish I could more thoroughly, or better explain it... but what I do know is that people are very, very unhappy. Protests have become part of the background noise for us in this noisy city... but in the last few days they have moved to the forefront.

Today, and tomorrow the public, and much of the private sectors is staging a 48 hour strike. All public transportation is stopped and almost all the stores and shops in Athens have their front door-gates (like when shops close in the mall at night) shut today. Riot police have apparently been transported to Athens in anticipation of the protests that are happening today. Today, walking to school, big blue school buses (used to transport police officers in large groups) lined a good 1/4 mile of the street leading to Syntagma Square... the location of the Parliament building, and where most of the protests happen. We also haven't had trash collection in the last two weeks because "rubbish collectors" ares striking also... which is pretty gross given that we throw out used toilet paper and don't have the option of flushing it.

BUT... regardless of all that, I want to reassure you that we are safe. We always know where and when the protests are going to occur and as long as we use our heads we will not end up in the middle of them. There is definitely tension in the air, but I have no intention of being anywhere near Syntagma in the next few days and I've found ways to walk around Syntagma on my way to and from school (even though it's way easier and more convenient just to walk right through it... darnit.)

Here's an article I found that covers what's going on for the next couple of days, in case you're interested.

It will be interesting to be here in the next few months. It's definitely history in the making for the country of Greece so that's pretty neat... the turbulence of it all is a little unnerving... but I'm not afraid, so you shouldn't be either (especially you; mom, grandma, and aunts!)

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I'm adding to this blog a day later. Yesterday was the "mother of all protests" as it has come to be called in Athens. It was a pretty scary day, even though we were watching it all on the local news (entirely in Greek) on our tv in our apartment. My roommate Ally and I walked home from school a couple hours prior to the protests really becoming violent, and were detoured around Syntagma Square... but still through streets where protestors were marching from their meeting points towards Syntagma. The marching isn't violent; it's more like a parade actually. When the protestors all meet at the Square... that's when things get violent and dangerous. We weren't ever in danger, but we sure walked fast.

Today we walked to our morning classes (Greek and Writitng for the Professions for me) but my night class, Advertising, is cancelled. The metro was on strike this morning, so we had to walk. The streets are a mess and there was still tear gas in the air from yesterday, so even with my scarf pulled up over my nose and mouth, I'm a little watery.

It is really wild to consider that we are here during this major turning point in Greek history. A little scary. A little uncomfortable. But pretty cool.

Keep this country in your prayers. Pray safety over the people, and for wisdom for the decision makers.  Pray for us too, as students here, that we would make wise decisions and would learn from the circumstance of this country.