"There is no path. The path is made by walking."

So walking is exactly what we did!

Map of the National Garden.

Inside the National Garden

Our first night sleeping in Athens was sort of a tough one. We were all jet lagged and slept poorly. I was awake around 3 am. Amber and I joined a group of students who are training with us for a Marathon around 7am. Our first jog was about 8k. We live very close to the National Garden, so we ran the perimeter twice. The City was already in full swing by then. There were street vendors and Athenians walking all around. There were also a ton of police officers and solders stationed at each side of the Gardens. It was interesting to see that many, although certainly not that surprising, considering the Congress building and presidents house are all around the area. Some Athenians definitely gave  us some funny looks. People usually run in designated areas like Gyms or the top of the Stadium. At the time, we didn't know we had access to the Stadium. 

It used to be filled with Monkey's and other exotic animals!

The side walks and roads in Athens are not in the best condition. The medium and style of the sides walks changes a lot from bricks to tiles to cement and back again. This made it a very painful surface to run on, and needless to say, I got my ass handed to me. My shin splints were reeling by the end of it. I am not used to distance running seeing as I did varsity sprinting for 3 years in highschool.. I am going to have to re-learn how to run in a way that won't cause me some serious pain.

After our run, we had to get read for our first official day at CYA. We began with one of many orientation sessions. After wards, we were split into 3 groups and sent on to our first of three Modern Greek Crash Course sessions. Our teacher for my group was really nice, but she cruised through the material. The Greek Alphabet is pretty different from ours. It has 25 letters, with multiple "e" sounds. It is lacking actual letters for glottal consonant sounds like "b," "d," "g," "v," etc. Other letters have different sounds. For example, Greek "V" is English "N" sound. It makes reading/pronouncing seriously difficult. And if I though my French accent blew, me speaking Greek is even worse! They roll a lot of consonants and I can't even roll my "r's" Over all, its a pretty language, and I hope to pick up on it. I need to get more confident in speaking it. Whenever the teacher called on me to pronounce something, I would just freeze. If I look at the letters long enough, I can get the gist of the pronunciation but I definitely can't do it on the spot like that. I have picked up a few phrases like "My name is. . ." "Goodmorning/Afternoon/Goodnight," "Please/Thank you" and a few others. Now I just need to remember to use them when I am out and about. Greeks speak English, French, and Spanish in addition to their native language. They enjoy knowing multiple languages. They also really love when non-Greeks try to speak their language. Unlike the French, they respect that we're trying and appreciate the effort. They're very accommodating in terms of helping you pronounce things or telling you what something means in Greek. It makes things a lot easier. 

After class, we had our first CYA lunch. The food is usually really good. I'll be posting pictures of it so you all can be jealous! :)

Produce Shop!

It's super cute.

Tuesday was the most laid back of all the days of Orientation, I think. Some students were still arriving from various parts of the world, so things were somewhat calm. My roommates and I took this opportunity to do some real exploring and shopping. We crossed our own street and turned down some random side streets. I've found that the majority of the City is just crawling with these little shops full of all sorts of different things. We found a little produce shop on the corner of one of these sides streets. We all immediately decided that this was an appropriate first stop. CYA provides lunches during the academic week, but other than that, we're provided with a kitchen and are responsible for feeding ourselves. Naturally, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables is in order. The woman who owned the store didn't know much English, but was super friendly, regardless. She was able to communicate what she needed to for the most part. What she was lacking for, her husband was able to supplement. They had a huge selection available. Everything was big and fresh. They cut open watermelon and figs and let us try all sorts of produce before purchasing. Everything just tasted so much better than they do from American stores. The Grapes were just fantastic. We bought grapes, peppers, garlic and onion, potatoes and figs for 10 Euro. We brought all that back to our apartment, and then took a right out of our apartment and headed down our street. We shortly came across a corner grocery store. We stopped in to purchase the kitchen basics while we were there. They had an entire isle for wine and other alcohols, including the revered "Ozo." Ozo is a Greek liquor that EVERYONE will warn you "Drink with Ice or Water" or else it "knocks you on your ass." Every Greek person I've talked to that's mentioned Ozo has warned against its black magic. While trying to decided what to buy, if we wanted to buy something, a man came up to us and said "You're American aren't you?" To which I immediately responded with, "Is it that obvious because we're drooling over the alcohol?" He laughed and explained that he is a  Greek-American, and that even his own people try to rip him off. He gave us lots of advice about navigating the city and which alcohol to try. He and his wife semi adopted us for the duration of our Grocery store experience. They translated labels and helped us find different products. At the check out, he took the bottle of wine we intended to purchase and bought it for us. He wanted to properly welcome us to Greece and wish us well. It was a really nice experience to have right off the bat. Its Saturday now, and that bottle is still sitting in the fridge. We haven't had an ideal time to break it open just yet! On our way back to the Apartment, we stopped into a bakery and bought fresh bread for the house.
This concluded our first official day in Athens. I think we did a pretty fantastic job!