Old Things

Today was a national holiday in Greece, and it was fun. It is the day that the Greeks won their independence back from the Turks. They had been occupied for 400 years, and they finally threw off the shackles in the last century. In addition to that, it is the celebration of Ascension (when Gabriel came to Mary and told her that she was going to have Jesus and the impregnated her). All of the local people went out and had a big parade, it was fun, and I got a lot of shots of it, many of them I think are good.

After that, I went out to eat a suvlake! It was so yummy. I am now addicted to Tziki, and you are going to be eating it for the rest of your life. It is sOOOOOO yummy.

We then met John Pack to get ready to go on our hike. We walked around Paros really. We didn't walk around the island, but we walked around the beaches and then did some pretty hefty mountain climbing. It was so incredible doing it. John surprised us by taking us to the cave that Archilochos wrote it. It was a hell of a climb. He is a classical poet that is credited with the invention of iambic pentameter. Pretty cool eh?

After that, we climbed around the rocks (literally) and went to a section way out on the rocks. It was amazing. Many of us jumped in the water and flopped around for a while. It was freezing though, so the swimming didn't last for long.

When we were done there, we walked back and grabbed food quickly and made it back outside in just enough time to watch the sun sink below the water of Paroikia. That was a nice experience. Possibly, I will go find chocolate when I am done writing this.

Todays topic to take up is the ancientness of the Greeks.

When I was in America, anything from the beginning of the 1900's was old to me. I was really surprised that anything would last that long. When I think about it, the entirety of the history that I know in America is based on the three hundred years that people have been living there. Really, the Salem Witchcraft Trials seemed to be so long ago, but you really get the idea of old when you are here.

There is a little lump of land that I won't bother to call an island that lies between Paros and Anti Paros. Someone recently found evidence of VERY civilized life on that little hunk of land that was from THOUSANDS of years ago. It's just waiting there to be discovered. There are human artifacts that are laying under the ocean from when the landbridge sunk between Paros and AntiParos.

The other day, I was walking along a path next to the school and there were some boys playing there. A ball flew over the fence and they ran out to get it. When I really looked at where the boy went to get the ball from, it was next to a gravestone. I realized that I was walking through an ancient cemetery. I looked up and then I realized that I was standing right in front of several sarcophagi. There were headstones around me that were more than two thousand years old.

I learned in my art history class that people have been inhabiting this island for around eight thousand years.

Last weekend, I went on a hike up a mountain, and after I walked through an olive grove, I came upon a house built on a hill. The house was clearly ancient.

On my way back down from my hike, I walked by some house foundations that were from houses built in the first century BC. They weren't protected or guarded from erosion at all. In fact, there was a donkey tethered in one of them. Heh! It makes me laugh to think about it.

And then there's the fact that there are Greek ruins all over the city, a fort made out of a dismantled castle, a graveyard that's from the fifth century BC (another one) Roman columns everywhere, converted pagan churches every 100 feet and the second oldest church in Christendom.

When I come back to American, I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to say that something is old!