A Long, Good, Hot Day

John Camp - Athens, 6/13/2007, 4:27 p.m.

So, today we did some really neat stuff. We met a man named John Camp who literally wrote the book on the excavations of the Ancient Athenian Agora. (Really, it was required reading for the class.) He has just started a new set of excavations and we got to go and walk around the site! We also got to walk where the Stoa Basileus is, which is where Socrates would have gone when he was indicted on a charge of impiety and corrupting the youth. We got to stand where Socrates did! Woo! Then we met an english man who is an epigrapher. Basically, his job is to look at all the surviving inscriptions and translate them and tell us what they mean. He was really, really nice and VERY smart. There is the National Epigraphical Museum and so we went there with him. It was SO interesting to hear what he had to say!

Then we made our last trip to the National Archaeological Museum and saw mostly funerary stele (monuments.) They were very cool. Some of them, huge!

We went to H & M again and i bought a nice shirt. I needed one anyway.

I can't believe our time here is almost up! It seems like yesterday that we got here! OH! This is something I have been meaning to blog about for a while. Apparantly, there are no traffic laws in Greece. Everyone drives as fast as they want down the roads with no real respect for people/lanes. And then the mopeds/scooters! They drive on the sidewalk! The number of times that we have almost been run over is astronomical!

There are also tons and tons of pigeons. I wonder -- where are pigeons native to? I mean, they're EVERYWHERE here and in places like New York, so where do they come from? There are also lots and lots of stray dogs. People feed them and they don't do any harm to people, but they're all over the place!

Well, we've got an exhibition to go to tonight, so I'd better go and shower for that.

Much love to everyone! Missing you all!

Xoxo,

Ally