Birthday to Today

The day of my birth was the one day that week we had seven hours of class. I haven’t done that since high school, and at least at RUHS I could leave if I really wanted to. But I’m actually interested in this stuff and the last hour and a half was traditional Greek Dance class anyway. Greek dance is a lot like Israeli dance. A lot of circles, and hand holding, and cross stepping, and kicking. We got a little too wild, I think. The teacher actually said that we were some of the worst students she ever had, but our “natural talent” was amazing. I think Johnny got told that he needs to focus more at least four times – but we were having fun with it, so whatever.

That night we started out with a chill dinner at a “Tex-Mex” place called Poco Loco. Now I know you’re spazzing out all like, “you go halfway around the world to eat Mexican food,” but lay off. There are four Californians here, the Seattleites enjoy their (different but equally good) Mexican food too and we’re all having withdrawal of sorts. I mean, Taco Bell is like a food group at home – you can’t just cut that out. Anyway, the food wasn’t terrible, wasn’t great, and wasn’t Mexican. The only thing that was “authentic” were the nachos pollo, which, when Johnny ordered, the waiter responded “Okay, one Nachos Pole-Oh.”

Culture note – birthdays are not a big deal in Greece, and here’s why: the custom is that on your birthday YOU BUY EVERYBODY ELSE DRINKS! I didn’t. Sue me. Over here, your Name Day is the big deal where your friends get you plastered for free. Anyway, went to a couple of the same clubs we’ve been going to and kind of kept it low-key until…

Dimitri’s Bar
Dimitri is one of the University of Ioannina bus drivers. Occasionally he’ll be behind the wheel of our bus when we go out on excursions (like to that cave, or the Zagori village, for example). More frequently, he bartends at this place I can’t remember the name of. And no, it’s not because I blacked out – that didn’t happen (or did it?). The bar is a Greek word with twenty or so letters. Thus, it is referred to as “Dimitri’s Bar.” Anyway, Dimitri bent the birthday/name day rules a little bit and bought me (and all of my friends, actually) a bunch of drinks. I think he just likes seeing us make asses of ourselves in the bar. When one of our group accidentally elbowed a glass off of the bar Dimitri made a big thing about how it was no big deal, don’t worry about it, blah blah blah, I’ll clean this up right away. And by, “I’ll clean this up” he meant, “I’ll go in the back and grab the teenager we pay to clean this up.” No wonder he didn’t seem to mind. Got home, went to bed. Anticlimactic 21 Run, but loads of fun nonetheless. I’m sure my friends stateside won’t let me get away without a redo in Seattle and again in LA.

Wednesday we tried to go to the site of the Dodoni oracle. This thing sounded really cool. The Oracle’s answers used to come as a rustling of the leaves, or a flight of a specific bird. In later years, visitors would strike a copper object and take an answer based on what kind of sound it made. The latest version a statue sat atop a pillar holding a tri-whip. After a visitor asked a question they would wait until the wind caused the whip to strike one of many metal objects placed around the base of the pillar. The answer depended upon which object was struck and what sound it made. Apparently this oracle was used for more trivial questions like “did I lose my wallet or was it stolen.” But, like I said, we tried to do this. It was closed when we arrived. Rescheduled for next Wednesday.

Had a painfully boring lecture on ancient Greek antiquities. Somebody lectured at us in Greek over a microphone, but we had to wear headsets through which some out-of-sight heavy-breathing lady translated. Occasionally she would burst out a sentence of Greek that one of my group mates translated for me as “I can’t do this anymore, he’s talking so fast and I don’t even know what about.” Her and I, both.

Friday we took an excursion to the island in the middle of the lake Ioannina sits on. There’s a lot of history on this Island from during the Ottoman rule, and a good deal of Jewish history as they were the master silversmiths in the region. A lot of mosques converted into museums and mausoleums for Ottoman governors that have been sufficiently defaced. Saw an ancient church tended by an equally ancient nun (What is the Greek Orthodox term? I don’t know). Frescoes in there were awesome, aside from all of the usual Jesus as God, Jesus as Man, Saints, life of Mary type of stuff there were some really gnarly ones of hellfire and people being skinned alive and all that good stuff. Someone almost fell down a well outside.

Yesterday took a nice hike up to the top of the hill with all of the houses on it you can see in the pictures from my dorm window. Actually, we were a little to the left of that – it’s higher up. Took a couple of hours and we would have had a great view from the top if it were a clear day. Looks like we’ll have to do it again sometime soon.

That’s it for now, more pictures on my flickr. I can’t create any more sets without paying for an account, so looks like you’ll have to click through them all to get to the new ones.