We are leaving tomorrow morning at 6:59am for our two week field trip through Northern and Western Greece. In order to go on this field trip, not only do I need to pay money, but I have to give a 20-25 minute report on a topic that I do not choose. I have been feverishly reading and writing for the past two days, so I forgot to post yesterday. I finally finished my report and handout around 8pm tonight.
Naturally the only thing for me to write about is my report, so here's a little modern history lesson:
The topic given to me was the Siege of Messolonghi and Lord Byron. After researching I come to find out that there were actually three sieges of Messolonghi, and the Lord Byron is the one you all know who wrote Don Juan. Why is this my topic you ask? Well, we will be visiting The Garden of Heroes in Messolonghi while on our field trip, and that is where the heart of Lord Byron is buried. Yes, just the heart. The rest of his body was shipped back to England where he was from. The siege of Messolonghi is an important battle for Greece, and the fact that a famous poet died there just added to its importance. The Greeks fought the Greek War of Independence from 1821-1832 to free themselves from the Ottoman Empire. The first two attacks on the Greeks by the Turks as Messolonghi were won by the Greeks. The third ended in the Greeks being slaughtered or captured and sold into slavery; however, this was the most important for the Greeks in winning the war because the sacrifice they made for liberty and the harsh massacre the Turks brought fourth caused the other European countries to sympathize with Greece and therefore help them to win the war.
I hope you enjoyed by brief summary. I also immediately noticed a typo on my handout after printing 25 copies.... think anyone else will notice?
In other news:
I got my first ice cream cone in Greece today. It was kind of an ordeal for us. We had walked two kilometers to go to a pharmacy to get tylenol for our trip. Since it is Sunday, not many pharmacies are open, so we had to travel to find one that was. Pharmacies around here are more prominent than McDonalds in the US, so we probably passed at least 6 on our walk, but they were all closed. Since it was 94 degrees here today, we were pretty hot and sweaty, so we wanted ice cream. We stopped at a restaurant that we were told served it, and she had to turn on the soft serve machine, so she said it would be 15 minutes. We didn't want to wait as we had to get back to finish our reports. Next we tried a periptero (a Greek Kiosk), but it was pretty pricey for a packaged ice cream. Then we passed a fancy shop that sold only ice cream, and a small cone was 2.20 euro. Since it was fancy, we got scared and also didn't know if it was ice cream or gelato, so we left. Finally, we stopped at a bakery a block away from where we live, and upon asking some questions walked out with two small vanilla cones for 1.20 euro each. The vanilla is very strongly flavored here, and Bob said the cone tasted like toasted nutmeg. I'm sorry I do not have a picture of it. I didn't have my camera on me, and it was melting. If I'm really being honest, I have a hard time remembering to take a picture of my food because I'm always so excited to eat it. Bob usually has to remind me. I'll try to be better.
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