Does Barry Manilow Know That You Raid His Wardrobe?

Dearest blog world

I am on the boat back from the beautiful island of Naxos. It is sad to leave but I’ll go over the hilarious negatives soon to make me feel better about it.

First, we took a boat to Paros as a class to have the one-hour class session looking at one church. It was interesting, I’m not taking away from that, but it was clearly ridiculous to go all the way to this island for class. Which is why I love this program. Just a vacation for the past few days. No one was really paying attention in class. Most didn’t have a necessary item like a pen or spiral. Some had neither. I had both but this guy who is much very studious and anxious than me forgot his pen and to avoid that panic attack I gave him mine. Everyone can thank me later. Well, the funny thing was I took my pen from Caroline actually who thought she had an extra. She didn’t and didn’t even care to steal mine back. So she didn’t care not having a pen because she thought I’d want it more than she would need it and I freely gave the pen away without even being asked. Caroline and I get along so well.

So that’s all I have to speak of class related. Afterwards, we went to the beach and just relaxed and swam. It was very nice and gorgeous there. Except Kramer wearing a Speedo. That wasn’t so pretty. We went out to dinner as a class where we made fun of the grammatical error on our professor John’s tattoo, looked through all our cameras to find the most embarrassing photos of everyone. After dinner, we sat on this patio thing where we could get Internet and barely talked. This caused the old people to call and complain about us several times. They suck.

The next three days were free so some stayed on Paros, some traveled to other islands, some went to Athens, etc. I went with five others to the island of Naxos. The myth behind Naxos is that Ariadne got dumped here and Dionysos found her. Pleasant. After everything she did. It’s fine, Ariadne made a comeback in Inception. Probably the same person.

I stayed in a basement room with two girls. It was a really nice place, very close to the beach. Of course the shower was outrageous. First, the light in the bathroom was out so everything had to be done with the door open. No complaints about that. I’m weird. Then you had to hold the showerhead, which is common, but this one had coil wrapped around it that came uncoiled towards the end. Caroline has a large gash in her thigh from this. The first time I showered I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get it from the bath faucet to the showerhead. I ended up just sitting on the floor. It was simple but whatever, I still argue that it wasn’t working for me. “Oh you just pull that knob up like you do with every shower anyone has ever come across? Never would have tried that…”

We spent our days on the beach. I was wearing high-waisted shorts the first day on the beach so I have a hilarious tan line from those. I also got super sunburnt but avoided passing out from it, maybe because I didn’t get out of bed the next day. It was raining, lay off me. Had some delicious food, felt like my mom because I ordered off the kid’s menu multiple times. This hilarity was enhanced by the time I ordered an inappropriately named drink to go along with my kid’s pasgetti. The waitress actually came up at one point and said “Here is your kid’s ice cream aaaaaand a free shot of Ouzo.” Of course.

The night before we left for Paros, one of our many bartender friends told us she was working on the rooftop bar. We had to go, of course. It was a shame we hadn’t been there yet. It was so pretty because it was small and just a lot of nice people and seat cushions on the roof that was so close and a perfect view of the Acropolis. Talking to Kathy, the bartender, I told her about how I want to continue traveling and the one place I’ve truly always wanted to go was Ireland. This was a fun conversation because Kathy is from Ireland. We’re facebook friends and she told me to keep in touch and that she would love to road trip around Ireland with me if I came next summer. Something to think about. From there I decided it would be fun to go look at the old Olympic Stadium down the block. Realized there is so much left to do here and I’d rather not leave.

I forgot to mention this in the last one but it was much too funny to ignore. In Thessaloniki we went to a restaurant called (in Greek) “Souvlaki with a Degree.” This was a place opened by two university graduates who could not find work after desperately looking for a few years. The entire place was school themed. The sign was a picture of Einstein with a tongue piercing. The outdoor seating was actually school desks and chairs. The menu was surrounded by protractors, pencils, erasers, and all sorts of school supplies. The food was served on a tray that was similar to the ones found in school cafeterias. Not only was it clever, it was delicious. John told us about this place but sadly, my favorite funny aspect of the school theme was no longer used. Instead of just using plain parchment paper, they originally wrapped the gyros in photocopies of their university degrees. I found that absolutely brilliant and wanted to steal a bunch to show people at home but now it’s just simple paper. Ohh well, the idea is still genius and they were funny people. Once again, their response to me telling them I’m from Chicago was, “Ohh the Bulls! Michael Jordan!” so they were more than alright with me from the start.

We have just arrived in Sparta. Which means it will be a few days of only quoting 300. Our bus actually had a picture of that movie poster on it. Well, this is Sparta. It’s really hot here which is a nice change but hopefully we don’t have to go anywhere that makes us wear pants. That’s what Christianity is. The voice that demands you to wear pants when you’re hot and don’t want to.

This hotel is weird because it’s a lot like an American hotel with the regular elevators (still too small though) and the keys that you insert into the door slot. It threw us off for a little bit. Not used to that.

In other news, I just recently saw the video for the song “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO and would appreciate it if everyone could watch it. They do the running man the entire time. Every day I’m shuffling as well, LMFAO. Also, I need, not want, need, one of those shirts with the person doing the running man on it.

Sean Combs has decided to further his career no longer as Diddy Dirty Money, but instead Swag. Which sucks because that is such a great word. Swag. It’s applicable to most everything in life. That’s two strikes against the word “swag” for me now. 1) When a boy told me I was “Hella dope swag” I nearly peed my pants. What a well-formed, sincere compliment. 2) The artist formerly known as 55 different names, Puff Daddy was my favorite and clearly the best. Why couldn’t he just pick a nondescript symbol like the artist formally known as Prince did? He had to go and ruin the fun for the rest of us.