Andros and a Nunnery

Greetings from Greece! It's been a crazy couple of days, but I wanted to share a few pictures with you of some things we have gotten to do the last few days. There are so many beautiful sights here, and we are having so much fun! A couple of days ago we got to go to the island of Andros. It was a lot of fun! We went into the city and walked around some cool shops. Nikki and I also had an adventure. There was an old lighthouse that was really pretty but to get to it, you had to climb an old stone bridge. We had some help, and the views were worth it.


After lunch, we got to go to a beach and swim and snorkel in the Aegean Sea. The water was FREEZING cold, but getting to say I was in the Aegean Sea made it worth it. In order to get warm, we had some fun taking pictures. Here are two of my friends jumping around!

We were at the Batsi Beach and were leaving at sunset. These next two pictures I took at dusk and it give you a good idea of how beautiful the area was.


Today we went into Athens to go shopping. For those of you who have asked, the protests in Athens have affected us indirectly. The Greeks keep going on strike, and they have days where they strike different things. Yesterday there was a transportation strike, so we couldn't get into the city on the bus system because they weren't running. Typically, Greeks do not strike two days in a row, so today we got to go into Athens. We have heard rumors that there is going to be an electricity strike on Monday, so that could be interesting. It shouldn't affect us leaving on Wednesday and the protests are not causing problems for us directly. It just causes us to sometimes have to come up with creative solutions to get around depending on what they do.

After shopping this morning, we had lunch at a delicious restaurant in downtown Athens and then came back to the Bible college for a little while before going to visit a nunnery. Everyone in Greece is Greek Orthodox, so seeing an active and working nunnery was interesting. It was beautiful, and I was able to get some good pictures before we got yelled at for doing so. Here is a sample for you!


Inside of the church, there are icons that surround the entire thing that tell the story of the Bible in pictures. It ends at the top of the ceiling with Jesus in heaven. Here is a picture of that.


Finally, here is a picture of a pretty area that was outside and of me and Nikki in our long dresses.


Tomorrow we are going to Corinth, and I am SOOO excited!! We get to see lots of historical stuff and swim in the Ionian Sea. Pictures and updates to come soon on our continuing adventures. Class is finished, so everything that is left is getting to sightsee, which will be very cool. We are having a blast, and I am so thankful that I am getting to share this trip with Nikki and some of the most awesome people! Happy Thursday! :)

The Acropolis

Today we went into Athens and got to walk around the city and eat a delicious authentic Greek meal for lunch. The food was AMAZING. They have this fried cheese stuff that you squeeze a lemon over and eat. Oh my goodness. I'll try to find out how to spell all of the delicious things we have gotten to eat so I can fill you in, but fried cheese works for now. We were supposed to go right from lunch to the Acropolis, but the weather in Greece had other ideas. Right before we were to start the walk up, it started POURING rain. We thankfully were right by a big overhang, so we got there with minimal rain damage and ended up spending the next two hours there waiting out the rain. There was crazy lightening and thunder and lots of rain, all of which is supposedly very out of character for Greece at this time of year. We must have brought the typical Florida weather with us. The weather finally cleared up, and we got to go to the Acropolis and see the Parthenon and Mars Hill, and it was incredible. Pictures simply cannot do it justice, but here is a very futile attempt to try. I only chose a few of the many I took because I must get some sleep, but enjoy these views of ancient history!

This is the Acropolis, and this picture was taken while I was standing on Mars Hill. Mars Hill is the spot Paul stood when he preached to the Greeks. Due to the architecture and such, when one is standing on Mars Hill, you can hear what is said on the Acropolis and down in the market place as well. Many debates took place there.

Speaking of Mars Hill, it is the rock behind me in this picture, taken while I was standing on the Acropolis.

This is what the ceiling looked like in the original Acropolis.

Here is a picture of me with my two professors who are on this trip.

This is a picture of the Parthenon.

These next two pictures show the cool sky that was present because the weather was still kind of iffy and it rained off and on.


Finally, a picture of me and the Roommate. We are having a great time getting to share this together!

Tomorrow, we are going to Andros Island and spending the whole day there. This is where we will get to see the white washed houses with blue roofs and I can't wait! More pictures and adventures to come soon!

Greek Greetings!

Hello to all of my fabulous friends and family who are nice enough to read this blog! This has been a very long day, and I feel a little delirious, so pardon any madness that may appear in this entry. :) Also, my fizzilicious professor is sitting next to me while I am typing this blog so who knows how distracted I will be. We are also watching Mamma Mia - it could be bad!!

Anyway, last night we went to a little Irish pub up the road, and it was so cute and quaint. The walk there was beautiful. It's so peaceful and quiet here, and the scenery is gorgeous. For some reason I never imagined that Greece would be as mountainous as it is. I figured the islands would be with the white buildings and blue roofs, but Athens has some mountains too. Here are a few pictures to show some of the scenery.


And here are some pictures from the pub last night. It was a beautiful little retreat kind of in the middle of nowhere.



I think we are going to go back there for dinner one night next week. I'll try to take more pictures then. Be sure and check out Nikki's blog from today because she is putting up lots of pictures of where she has gotten to spend the last 2 days. With being in class, I haven't had the chance to do much or take many pictures. But tomorrow we are going into Athens for the day, and I can't wait! Then Monday we will be on Andros Island all day, so many pictures and stories will be coming your way soon. Until then, I am going to go finish singing along to all the songs in Mamma Mia and then go to sleep. Have a great day!

Identifying The Smell

Hi everyone! I've had a really busy day today and haven't had time to download pictures to share. I still have some work to do and must go to bed as soon as possible, so this is going to be a short and sweet update today. I'll try to get more posted tomorrow after class. I just wanted to share my one deep thought for today. In a previous post, I mentioned that you can't flush the toilet paper here. I have been trying to figure out what our dorms and the bathrooms smell like for a couple of days, and it has finally occurred to me what the answer is.... Everything smells like a pet store. It's fantastic. :) I'm sure it won't take long for me to get home and start taking for granted being able to flush toilet paper, but those first few flushes are going to be amazing.

Tomorrow is my last day of class for a couple of days and then we are doing a lot of traveling on Sunday and Monday. We are going into Athens on Sunday and will see the Acropolis and other amazing sites and then we are going to Andros Island on Monday. We'll have our last classes on Tuesday and Wednesday and then the rest of the trip will be spent traveling and sightseeing. I'm looking forward to that and there will be many more pictures for me to share with you! So until the next time, this tired girl is wishing you a very good day!

Inappropriate Laughing Due to No Sleep

So.... apparently the effects of jet lag hit worse on the second day. I did not sleep hardly at all last night. Most of my classmates didn't either, so we were all kind of in a fog today. I'm hoping and praying that I will be able to get a good night's sleep tonight, which I will be attempting to do as soon as I finish this blog. The lack of sleep is your warning that when you are exceptionally tired, you might just happen to take a few inappropriate pictures. Welcome to Greece!


Hahahaha....I am amused. ANYWAY, on to other topics. I had class today and tried to get some work done. We have a lot of projects and such to do, plus a lot of journaling everyday, so I'm staying busy. I also found out that one of my closest friends from college passed away early this morning from his battle with cancer. Please keep my friend Emmett's wife Wendy and their 3 year old son Quinn in your prayers as Wendy and Quinn navigate this tough road.

Tonight after dinner, we walked about 2 1/2 miles to a place called Alma's to get ice cream. The ice cream was delicious, but the walk home got a little precarious as we tried to cross the street and not die. Greek drivers don't stop for people, so you can't get in the road and assume they will stop. They will run you over. Thankfully we all made it safely home! Here are a few pictures from tonight and last night of fun times with friends.



Anyway, I must go try to get some rest, but that was my day in Greece. Hope everything is going well wherever you are, and I'll post new updates soon!

Greece Day 1

Did you know that when you are in Greece and go to the Google homepage, everything is written in Greek?? Kind of cool.... Anyway, greetings to you all from Greece! We have finished our first day of class and will be eating dinner in about 45 minutes at 7pm. I am quite tired but feel like I'm getting close to being adjusted to the time difference. I think tomorrow will be much better. Even though getting a decent amount of sleep last night helped, my body is still getting used to that it's evening time here and still in the morning at home. Being outside helps because when you are in light, your body thinks it should be awake, and eating meals regularly helps too. I have actually adjusted a lot faster than I thought, so that is good, but it was tough to sit in a class all day. This class is going to be awesome though. I'm sure I'll have much to process about it as the days go by, but for now suffice it to say that we don't think about a lot in our culture or why we do what we do until we're challenged about it. More to come on that topic later.

For now, here is a little tour of where we are staying. We are at the Greek Bible College here, living in dorms. Here are a couple of pictures of the buildings and our room. This is the entrance to our dorm. Honeysuckle lines both sides of it, which makes the air smell quite delicious!


Walter the bear made the trip with me. He has been on every trip I've gone on since I was a freshman in high school. He is enjoying his first international experience!!

One thing about Greece I do not love so far is that you can't flush toilet paper down the toilets. I've never thought about that as I use a bathroom in the US, and it's weird to realize some of the things we take for granted. It's not that big of a deal, but for some reason, this totally grosses me out! I just think it's nasty, especially when you consider what sometimes occurs when one is on the toilet. :) This picture shows you our bathroom, and all toilet paper goes in the trashcan. Yes, we change the trash at least once a day.

It's really pretty here, and there is NO humidity, which is a very refreshing change from Florida. We eat all of our meals outside at little tables like the one below or picnic tables. The well picture is there just because I thought it was pretty.


Here are some of us earlier today...

More cute pictures....


So there you have it! Tonight we are having dinner and then going to a cute little place right down the street called Coffee, Tea, and Sympathy. Then I also have to write in my journal and read some for class. Tomorrow we have class again all day, with a few fun things mixed in. These first four days are pretty much just class and then we'll start having many adventures. I am loving being here with Nikki and I think this trip is going to be amazing. Those who are guests get to hang out and do other things while we are in class, so if you want to check out Nikki's blog, (just click on her name in this sentence) you can see her pictures and things that I am not getting to do.

Hope you all have a great day, and I'll be in touch soon!

In Greece!

Hi everyone! We have made it safely to Greece, and I am typing this blog from the lounge in our dorm. My computer hasn't switched over to this time zone, so as I write this, it is 1:11pm your time. Here it's 8:11pm, and my poor body is trying to figure it all out. We have been up for about 36 hours and are under strict orders to not go to bed until at least 9 to try to get used to the change. Nikki and I are counting down the minutes until we can crash, so if this blog doesn't make much sense, you can blame it on the total lack of sleep.

I have no pictures to share with you right now, but I'll get some taken tomorrow. We left Monday morning (I think that was yesterday) at 8:30am and drove in a bus down to Miami. Then we took an 8 hour flight from Miami to Paris. I got my very first stamp in my passport in Paris!! That was very cool. The plane food was actually pretty good, and we watched the Justin Bieber movie while we flew across the ocean. It helped kill a couple of hours and was actually kind of interesting. :)

I don't have much brain power left to share anything of significance at this time, but I wanted you to know that we were here safely. I think it's going to be an amazing trip, and I can't wait to experience the adventures! For now, I have learned that it's weird to not know the native language of the country you are in, eruo money looks cool, there is an Ikea when you land at the Greece airport, there are some quite pretty men in France and Greece, and they eat lots of yummy food. Hopefully there will be more substantial learnings to share once I get some rest. I'm off to attempt that now. Talk to you soon!

Goin' To Greece!

Well, months after first hearing about this trip to Greece and making the decision to go, the time is finally upon us! Nikki and I leave in the morning to go to Greece, and we are SOOOO EXCITED!!!! We will be arriving at school at 8 in the morning, where we will get on a charter bus and drive to Miami. We will fly from Miami to Paris and Paris to Athens, arriving at our destination sometime on Tuesday evening their time (we'll be 7 hours ahead of all of you). Mixed in this trip is of course a class I will be taking, but there will be plenty of time for sightseeing, adventures, hanging out with friends, and taking lots of pictures. Picture taking is actually one of the things I am most excited about. I can't wait to pull my camera back out and take some amazing (hopefully!) pictures of a beautiful area of the world. And yes, I'll share as many as I can. It is my plan that I will be able to update my blog on a hopefully daily basis with pictures and stories of what is happening in Greece so you can all follow along on our adventure. Since I'll be traveling all day tomorrow and part of Tuesday, this entry will have to hold you over until I have access to the Internet again. :)

To start my journal of pictures, I have a couple to share with you. Before I share them, however, I have a story to tell you. Nikki and I have known each other for 8 years now. In the early years of our friendship, we used to talk about how we wished we'd known each other earlier in life so we could have been roommates. We had so much fun being friends, we figured it would have been really fun to live together. We also had grand plans of traveling together - going as couples to backpack across Europe (something we all wanted to do) or doing stuff as families someday. Obviously our stories didn't evolve how we wanted them to. But God has shown us such great love and mercy in the gifts He has given us instead. We are about to start our 3rd year of being roommates. (Yes, it has been as fun as we imagined it might be!) And tomorrow, we will be going overseas and taking a trip together. It might not look exactly like we thought it would, but God is still at work redeeming our stories and allowing dreams to come true. And we are grateful.

With that said, here are two pictures of Nikki and me from four years ago, right before I moved to Boston.


At the time, we had no idea what God had in store for either of us - we were just trying to survive. Now four years later, we are living proof that God really does bring beauty out of ashes. Steven Curtis Chapman has a song that is called "All Things New". Below are part of the lyrics...

"Then the world was broken, fallen and battered and scarred
You took the hopeless, the life, wasted, ruined and marred
And made it new

You make all things new
You make all things new
You redeem and You transform
You renew and You restore
You make all things new
You make all things new
And forever we will watch and worship You

You turn winter into spring
You take every living thing
And You breathe Your breath of life into it over and over again.."

I am thankful that God is continually at work, redeeming and transforming and making all things new. I invite you to join us on this journey as God keeps breathing life into us in new ways over these next 16 days. Thank you in advance for your prayers for traveling mercies, safety, and an amazing time with old friends and new! God willing, my next entry will come to you from Greece!!