Maura's Famous Walking Tour

Sunday afternoon, Katie and I had the most wonderful time with a ND grad named Maura. This requires a little explanation.

Maura graduated from ND in 2001. She is very good friends with Brian Hart, who also graduated that year from ND, and who happens to have attended Connell High School. When Shelece and I first visited the campus, we stayed with Maura in Lewis Hall because Brian was showing us around.

Maura married a Greek named Manos. Manos was an exchange student who moved to Minnesota at sixteen and played basketball. They met in high school and have been inseparable since. In Greece, every male is required to perform a certain amount of military service. So, Maura and Manos are living in Athens, while he fulfills this requirement. Upon learning we were coming to Athens, Maura graciously offered to show us around.

Yesterday, Maura met up with us and gave us her famous walking tour of Athens. It was spectacular! We found out our neighborhood, Kolonaki, is probably the most central and best location in the city. It is within walking distance of most everything. And walk we did! We saw many, many places and things, such as the Parliament building, ancient Agora, and Acropolis. Maura gave us the tour of Kolonaki (pointing out great places to eat and drink) and Plaka (neighborhood in which there tons of little shops and souvlaki).

The tour ended with mass at the Catholic Church of St. Denis. This church has one English language mass a week at 6 PM. We got there early so we could get a seat. Most attendees are foreigners who's common second or third language is English. It is interesting to note that there is a significant Filipino population in Athens. Apparently, many have traveled here to be "live-ins" or house servants for the Greeks. There were also quite a few Africans and foreign students there. The church completely filled up and many people were left standing during mass.

The mass itself was quite fun. The music was a distinctly original Filipino/African mix, and the choir was pretty good for only practicing an hour before mass. Katie is thinking of joining! It is always fun going to a service in which either you don't know the words, can't read the words, or can't understand what you're supposed to be repeating. [I must add here that we had a terrible giggle loop moment during the Psalm. I had no idea what the response was...and neither did many others, which apparently means the proper response is to replace what is unintelligible with like sounding words...the result of which is another unintelligible group of words that can be very funny for a listener like myself.]

Another amusing aspect was that there is no rhyme or reason to the Communion line and people leave their pews whenever they feel like it. While in line I happened to notice the vast amount of altar servers there were. I believe I counted eight or so. Many of them looked very, very bored, and one in particular was leaning across his seat yawning. They all looked Filipino to me. Some had "asian street gang" hair, otherwise known as a rat-tail. The priest said, "this is the body of Christ" in Greek, to which I replied, "amen." Maura on the other hand said, "εuχαριστw," which means "thank you." Oops. hahaha She's been taking Greek lessons and I guess they paid off!