Katie's Update

Because I'm a super-nice friend, and because Katie is funnier than I will ever be, I've opened up my weblog for her postings as well. Enjoy.

[Katie's opinions by no means necessarily reflect that of the site manager. :)]

I said I would keep in touch with everybody, but I understand that my storytelling habits may be overpowering (this word here means, "too time-consuming to be worth following"), so I won't blame you if you delete these emails. My own dear dad and my godfather have lovingly nicknamed me"DWOP," which is short for "Dialogue With Out Plot." Although they themselves can't generally remember the acronym they've given me, their analysis has at least a little truth to it, so please don't feel obligated to stick these emails out to the end.

Last Thursday, a bunch of us in the College Year in Athens Programs got together in small groups of about eight people and went with some of our professors to local tavernas for our first BIG Greek meal. It was awesome; after an ouzo toast, we had eggplant salad, tzatziki (cucumber sauce), feta cheese, a fabulous Greek salad, meatballs and sausage, more feta cheese, wine-soaked octopus, and calamari (DELICIOUS fried squid). Most shocking to me was the fact that I sat between TWO genuinely NICE guys from the University of Michigan. I never would have dreamed this was possible; I may have to reconsider the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

On Friday, I reached a break through in my Modern Greek acquisition. After several hours of writing out the alphabet and trying get over the fact that what I know as the letter "p" sounds like "r" here, I finally found myself semi-capable of reading street signs. I did a victory dance.

On Saturday, Noelle and I caught a bus to a Carrefour, which can best be compared to Super Target. We acquired a few provisions (bread, olive oil, chicken, feta, three different kinds of olives, flan-in-a-box mix, etc.) and trekked back to our apartment to find that our other roommates had stocked the kitchen with frozen pizzas, macaroni & cheese, taco supplies and three different kinds of peanut butter. Our poor roommates are kind of struggling. "People magazine is like my Bible," one of them recently moaned. "I just don't know how I'm going to make it without that. And my miniskirt." Yeah, life's pretty rough for some of them. They're definitely not fans of the new cuisine, or of the Greek people, for that matter . . . But they love the bars here, so I'm sure they'll do just fine.

Speaking of silly struggles, though, Noelle and I made cucumber and feta sandwiches for dinner on Saturday. We had been really proud of ourselves for piecing together enough Modern Greek in Carrefour to recognize the word sodium on a spice shaker that looked like it might contain salt. Boy was I surprised to find myself sprinkling baking soda on my sandwich. Yummy.

Sunday was the pinnacle of our weekend, both in action and in hilarity. Noelle and I met up with Maura, a friend of Noelle's who graduated from Notre Dame. Maura's husband, Manos, is a Greek man who came to the US as a transfer student when he was a junior in high school so that he could play basketball in the states. They're living in Athens now because Manos is still a Greek citizen, and all male Greeks are required to serve in the military for at least nine months. Well anyways, Noelle and I met up with Maura, and she gave us an awesome walking tour of the heart of the city. She showed us some places to get delicious, authentic souvlakis and gyros (delicious Greek sandwiches on pita) for dirtcheap, and she pointed out some fun local pubs. The she took us up to Acropolis Hill, which consists of the remains of really, really ancient Athens. We stood on a huge rock upon which St. Paul supposedly gave his first sermon in the area, and the view was amazing. We were in the shadows of the Parthenon, and we could see both the sea and the immense, sprawling city as we watched clouds rolling over the mountains.

Then we met up with Manos and went to church. Since no actual Greek person in this town is ROMAN Catholic, mass was a hilarious little adventure in subculture. It turns out that there's a huge Filipino contingent in Athens; probably half the church or better consisted of families of women who work as live-in servants here in Greece. I was delighted; my best friend Anna-Lisa is Filipino, and oure xtensive families have spent YEARS imparting various aspects of Irish andFilipino culture to the two of us, so I felt right at home. The beauty of the situation, though, was that most of the other half of the church was made up of African people from at least a couple different countries. So there we were, the African people speaking French and Greek intermittently, the Filipino people bouncing here and there with snippets of Tagalog, Greek and English. The priest was British, which wouldn't have been so funny if I hadn't watched nearly so much of the cartoon VeggieTales with my little brothers and sisters. This priest sounded just like the big old whiny asparagus. (If you've never been so fortunate as to have experienced VeggieTales, just imagine a British man with a high-pitched, nasally voice scolding a cartoon cucumber with the words, "Stop!Stop! Stop! You can't say 'everybody's got a water buffalo,' when everyone doesNOT have a water buffalo! We’re going to get nasty letters . . .”)

Well, to make a long story somewhat shorter, we dumb Americans and the priest were probably the only people in the church who spoke English as a first language. Mass was something that seemed almost really familiar, but just a little garbled. The whole thing was delightful pandemonium, a nice break from the uptight, single-file, no-maracas-involved fare that my parish dishes up (That’s not a complaint, though I myself am a huge fan of maracas). The cantor, who had an awesome voice, performed a very dramatic, near-sobbing rendition of the psalm that went something like this: "and-da-Lord, he thwart theWEEEEEcked, he-will-smite-them-for-der INE-E-E-EQUITY." The priest's homily involved the following line: "What Jesus is saying is that people won't go to hell for not following the Ten Commandments. I mean, they WILL go to hell, but not for that." And by the end of the service, all six of the little altar servers were dead asleep in their chairs. It was hysterical, and I really, really want to join the choir.

I’m sure that there will be more to come, if you can handle it. Until then, cheers and “kaλnμερα,” which means, “Good day.”