Just in case any of you were wondering why it's been a while since I've posted, it's because I've been spending a ridiculously large proportion of my days in my room studying--not very interesting blog material, I thought. More like devotional material, actually. In these days of study, I've been learning more than just Greek. If anything, it's my frustration at spending hours upon hours a day on Greek and still not learning it as well as I would like that has been teaching me.
Even though my journeys here of late have been mostly internal, a few interesting things have happened. At dinner on Wednesday, I met a Physics teacher from London who was fascinating--it was neat to compare school systems, and to hear his comments on the Anglican church.
I won't lie. After all the trouble it's taken to come here, I spent Thursday and Friday more or less sequestered in my room, studying. I studied so hard, it felt like my brain had gone through a wringer. I was forced to leave the room and get some air on Friday afternoon for a little fourth of July celebration. Our teachers treated us to Pizza Hut and McDonald's, so that we could still feel American on our day of independence. Seeing these American restaurants in the middle of Glyfada fascinated me, how the world economy allows for such a thing. I come all the way to Greece, just to find it to be not too different from home.
After dinner, I wandered with some of my classmates to a random toy store, where I bought my first actual souvenir of the entire trip--a game of Scrabble in Greek, so as to study my vocab better. Sad, almost, how I have to justify something as a study aid to myself before I can purchase it as a souvenir. On the train back, I discovered that I had been spending four or five times the amount of time on my studies that my classmates had put in, and they were shocked at how much time I'd been spending. Likewise, I was shocked. . . for all that effort, I do believe they were still doing better than me.
Sabbath could not have come sooner, all in all. It felt good, to come to church with a proper chocolate cake to give to them for potluck. Church was a much more enjoyable experience this time around because, wonder of wonders, it was actually translated into English. . . from Bulgarian, of all languages, but still, it was nice to know what was going on for a change, and it was refreshing to get away from the Greek for a bit. We rounded off the day with dinner upstairs for a change, overlooking the sea--it was moved there out of necessity, because of a wedding in our usual dining room, but the change was welcome.
Afterwards, my cabin fever was such that, against my better judgment, I went with some of my classmates into Athens to check out the nightlife. The street performers were really neat to see, and the Acropolis looked beautiful, lit for the nighttime, but I was so tired already, it was a bad idea for me to go with them. Another of my classmates had the same thoughts about the upcoming quiz, and we high-tailed it back to the hotel. There, the wedding was still raging on in the dining room, and it was entrancing to watch the bride dancing a traditional Greek dance before I crawled upstairs and went to sleep.
Yesterday, I found out that most of the rest of the class had stayed out much later--3:00 AM, 5:00 AM, even, and was glad I hadn't stuck around that late. Even so, it was hard to concentrate, and I got so fed up with my studies. . . well, I'm not proud of it, but I had a bit of a breakdown. My room mate, bless her, caught me crying into my pillow, and practically marched me into Glyfada to get some food and ice cream. That got a lot of sense slapped back into me, and gave me a much healthier attitude towards this morning's test. It's not about the scores and the grades, it's about learning. Finally I find that I do not care what grade I got on the test; what's more important than the score is that I learned from it.
Grades are not what's really important, after all. . . what's important is that I have all of you, and that despite being isolated in study here, it truly has been a great experience. And now, without any further gassing on about this little epiphany, I'll let the rest of you get on with your day--and wish it to be a truly marvelous one.
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