my life among ruins...

We had a short stint in Sparta... just enough time to see the "highlights". And by that, I mean a few rocks and foundations mostly from the Roman period. When our professor brought us to the top of the Spartan acropolis, he jokingly said, "this is Sparta?" We had started our day off right with our customary hiking and even made a trip to the Olive Museum, but the best part of our stay in Sparta was celebrating Kristen's birthday and staying at a fabulous hotel. It even had a tub! Now that's luxury! :) In celebration (of Kristen's bday, not the tub), we had a free lovely dinner at the hotel complete with yummy cake! The food was great and the conversation was even better! All of us teachers sat at the same table and gabbed away late into the evening. That's about all I can say about Sparta because there isn't/wasn't much there.

Today was a fantastic day. My favorite days are when we go to a fun site and then our professor lets us loose to explore on our own. We did that at our two main sites: Mistra and Methoni. We hiked up to Mistra and then spent two hours wandering down the mountain to explore the different ruins along the way. There were several monastaries and old buildings along the way until we reached the bottom. I had so much fun. We also got to explore the Venetian fortress of Methoni, which translates to 'drunken ass' in reference to the great wine that is made in that region... it's so good, the fumes cause the donkeys to get intoxicated by the fumes?? :) I capped off my day by playing frisbee and enjoying the beach (despite the body numbing cold water!). We will be in Pylos for the next couple of days, so it should be a fun stay!

My roommate here is Suzy, who is one of the funniest girls I've ever met. She's the other asian girl in the group, and the running joke is that because we're both asian, you can't tell us apart... this is only because one of the other girls mistakenly called us by the wrong name a couple of weeks ago. Suzy's pretty funny and she makes some of the less interesting things that we do on this trip more exciting because of her comments. She's pretty fun!

Well, here's hoping for another exciting day tomorrow! We'll be taking a boat ride to Sphacteria, so that should be quite an adventure! Until next time...