almost.

"If I could go back
That's the first thing I would do I swear that I would
Do my best to follow through
Come up with a master plan
A homerun hit, a winning stand
A guarantee and not a promise
That I'll never let your love slip from my hands"

-If It's the Beaches, The Avett Brothers

I just love this song so much.
Only 2 more days of classes.....

adorable.

My boyfriend's better than yours because he made this shirt all by his lonesome.

boring.

I went into a gas station the other day and came out with teryaki beef jerky and a grape Kool-aid squeeze it.

Middle America at it's finest.

Also, I bought five books at Half-Price Books this past weekend.
Fall Break in 3 days!

maybe i needed you.

I wish I could go back to the night the fireflies screamed “Joy!” with their bulbous glow. All nine years of me had never seen such a wondrous sight. Hundreds of fireflies hovered in the humid night air, as if they were all perfectly placed and secured to the sky with thin pieces of spider silk. You came and stood next to me, smiling down at my pure, un-jaded happiness.

Where did they all come from, Dad?
I don’t know.
Will they stay forever?
Forever’s a long time baby. They’ll probably be gone tomorrow.

Oh.

You went inside and talked loudly with my mother, but I just couldn’t pull myself away. I stood barefoot in the yard, sticky hands outstretched trying to catch at least one magical baby between my sugarcoated forefinger and thumb. If only I could just keep one for forever. Slowly I treaded across the lawn, feeling every separate blade of grass on the soles of my feet.

Coooome on baby bugs. Just let me hold you for a second.

They didn’t listen. I reached, they flew. I grabbed, they ran. The loud talking inside was growing rapidly in volume and I worried that it might make all my beautiful friends leave.

Please Mr. lightening bug, can I keep you for just a little while? Maybe I need you. Did you ever think about that?

He froze as if my small words and youthful breath had charmed him into submission. I reached forward slowly and held his glowing body between my fingers. Pure joy.

And just as soon as it formed, the bubble of that magic moment was abruptly popped. My friend flew away, startled by the sound of our squeaky screen door slamming shut. Disappointed, I turned and watched You stride rapidly across our porch and down the steps. Your full, distracted footfalls caused a commotion among my miniature flying stars. Slowly they all began to fade, disappear into the surrounding forest of trees. I ran around the yard begging them all not to leave but nothing I said helped. Dirty tearstains on my soiled my cheeks mapped the sorrow of my little heart. I ran to the edge of the driveway and called to the back of your retreating head.

Dad.

You needed to know how devastated I was.

Dad!

Without turning you got into your car. I watched you pull away just like I did every morning you went to work, your car leaving a T shape in the sparkling gravel of our drive. Your bouncing, fading headlights, fireflies in quick retreat. I stood in the same spot where every afternoon I eagerly waited to see your approaching car. Except this time I never got to celebrate your return. You were right- forever is a long time.

frands.

we have phun.

family fotos.

baby.

My sister found a kitten in the road outside my parent's house and now it is my son. I love that babybabe to death. His name is Oskar after Oskar Schell in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, of course. There was a bit of confusion about his gender at first so his name was Lu Ellen for a couple days but its whatever. ha. I'm not allowed to have pets at my house so hes living at Tj's for awhile. He's the best kitten ever.



Also, I moved into my new house last weekend and it was the worst move in day ever. Too many things went wrong. But! I'm moved in now and I love my room so its all good.

Also, I have the best friends ever. They bought me this dress for my birthday and it just came in. so cutttttee.

ridin' dirty.

I have this problem where if I'm eating a food that I like, I can't stop. It usually only happens with frozen corn, granola, and mushrooms. but still. bad.

Operation bike gang has commenced and its a huge success. Ream, Megan, Jenny and I all have Schwinns of some sort. and matching bells. next: lights and possibly colored chains.

We ride around this town like we own it. We'd probably be more intimidating if Ream could turn corners and Megan didn't fall and Jenny didn't run into everything. but we can do a sick rectangular formation and these mean streets of muncie are no match for our matching swardigans.

i need more leotards.

too-huge world.

So I'm back in Muncie and its weird. I got into the nasty nati (Cincinnati) around 9:30pm on the 1st and then drove hooome with teej. Somewhere along the way one of us read the directions wrong and didnt realize it. it was probably me. So we ended up in Indianapolis and added an extra hour onto our drive. lolz. but its a-ok. It was hard to say godbye to everyone that I had spent every second of the past 5 weeks with, but we're already planning a reunion. Plus its good to be back.

It pretty overwhelming being here though. I spent so much time adjusting to Grecian traditions that now that I'm back here I dont know what to do. It mostly just little things but it's just enough to make me feel a little bit displaced.
For example: water is a low commodity there so the showers have pretty much no water pressure. also youre only supposed to use the water to rinse and have it off the rest of the time. When I got home and took a shower I felt like I was wasting so much water and I felt really bad. Also, the plumbing in Greece is pretty terrible so youre not supposed to flush your toilet paper down the toilet. you have to put it in these trash cans in the stalls which makes the public restroms there just so disgusting. the worst ever. I look for a trach can everytime I use the bathroom now. ha. Also, free refills, Dr. Pepper, a billion different options for any kind of food I want to eat, and the ability to split a check are super awesome things about this country that were not available in Greece. among other things.
Overall, I had an amazing experience. It was ridiculously fun and I really did learn alot about both the cultures of the past and the present. I aced my art and archeology final with a phat 96%. So now I know pretty much everything about Early Classical art, Mycenean culture, Minoan art, Kouri statues, and amphoras. see, smart.
Hello lazy Muncie summer...

"What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks disappearing? - It’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. "

-Kerouac

P.s- Its my birthday tomorrow. No more baby teenager!

picktuurz

Tholos tomb

Scary Cistern

Roman Forum

Sifnos

Stargate.

Delphi

Polygonal Wall

Bellybutton of the world!
Kouroi

Milos

cave splorin' on Milos

Napflion

laundry time

knowledge.

I'm so bad at keeping up with this. Part of the problem is that internet service sucks here majorly. anywayssss. Since the last time I wrote I've been to Sifnos (which was awesome because we had a beach right outside of our hotel), Milos (which was beautiful and had a beach that looked like the moon), Delphi (which kinda sucked because its really just a fake town leading up to the big archeological site of the ancient city), Olympia (which was a little cooler than Delphi but not by much. Although the Ancient cities at both places were really neat to see), and Napflion (which was really neat because it had cliffs we could jump off of into the water).
In Sifnos we stayed in the little town right by the port. This was definitely the most old fashioned and quaint Greek city/Island that we went to. Sifnos is known mostly for its food and pottery and both were awesome. Unfortunately I wasn't able to purchase any of the pottery but it was all really beautiful. Its tradition in Sifnos to eat chick pea soup every Sunday afternoon for lunch, so we were able to do that. It was my first time trying it and it was delicious. very very good. Like I said before our hotel here was right on the beach which was really nice because we could just go hang out there between classes/excursions. We bought a football one afternoon and played a game of two hand touch football. Which turned into tackle because its more fun that way. I had bruised knees, cut legs, and sore muscles for days afterwards but it was so worth it. The next day we played a game of volleyball against some fellow Americans we met on the beach. We lost which was dumb. We took a bus tour of Sifnos which wasn't as fun as the bus tour of Naxos but it was still cool. We drove through the hills up to the main city which was very similar to Mykonos but unique in other ways. Though all the walls were whitewashed, they incorporated pieces of the ancient city into the buildings such as old columns or pieces of old walls. It was very neat. Overall, Sifnos was pretty great. Just don't talk to the boys that ride motorcycles.
We took a day trip to Milos one of the days we stayed in Sifnos and it was such a good idea. I cant remember the name of the beach we went to but it looked like the surface of the moon. The white rocks were formed from compressed ash and there were caves and craters everywhere. It was gorgeous.
After Sifnos we went to Athens for a couple days which was nice because it was somewhere familiar. By this point most of us were craving something/anything American so we went to the big mall in Athens in search of American food. The boys made us go to Hooters which was dumb because the food was overpriced and tasted weird. Greeks don't know how to make barbecue sauce, ranch, ketchup, or any condiments really. We were going to see a movie in the big movie theater they had there but we didn't want to miss the last metro back to our hotel. so that didn't happen.
We left Athens via bus (no more ferries everrr! so awesome.) and stopped in Delphi for a night/day. This was probably one of my favorite archeological sites that we went to. The whole city was built on a mountain so it was pretty tiring getting to the top where the stadium was located and also where we had class. I just loved seeing the little parts of the city that remind you that it’s not just a pile of rocks, but a place where real live people used to live hundreds of years ago. After studying so many different facts and scientific studies, it's easy to write history off as just an epic tale . Its easy to lose the human; the parts that made everything happen. But when you stop and realize that you are standing in the same spot where someone else, hundreds of years ago, lived their everyday life- it's pretty surreal. It makes you wonder what parts of our cities and cultures will live on. What are we leaving behind? Anyways. We also saw the Castalian Spring at the Delphi site which is pretty cool if you know much about mythology.
Olympiaaaa was next. We only spent a day/ night there as well. We went to the museum on the archeological site the first night we were there and it was pretty alright. All the museums really have the same stuff in all of them- lots and lots of pottery. But there was a really cool, very large circular disc there that was originally on top of one of the temples (I think it was the Temple of Hera but I'm not sure) that was awesome because it looked like a stargate. I love stargate. Also there was an armed Aphrodite statue which was pretty badass (it was either here or at Delphi I cant remember). And I decided that if I had to be a mythological creature I would be a centaur because there were also some really sweet centaur statues. The archeological site of Olympia was pretty similar to all the other sites as well. Except there was a large amount of straw and pine cones on the ground which cut my foot. It still hurts. While there we saw the stadium where they would perform their running races. So we totally raced. I didnt win but its whatever.
Next stop was Napflion, which is spelled a billion different ways but I'm just going to stick with this one. Napflion is right on the coast and our hotel was in the port so we had a really beautiful view of the water. We found a place here to jump off of a walkway into the water, which was about a 20 foot drop. It was super scary but definitely worth it. Oh, also probably 3/4 of the group got really sick here. Like vomiting uncontrollably for a few days, sick. Only me and few others somehow dodged it. It was pretty much like 28 days later except no one died.

On our way back to Athens we stopped at Acrocorinth and a few other small archeological sites. All were interesting but pretty similar to each other. However, the coolest one- Mycenae, hands down. Maybe I just appreciated it the most because we studied so much about it in class, but probably not. it was just cool. First, it had the Lion's Gate which was epic. The pictures I post will not do it justice. Second cool part, it had an empty underground cistern used to store water and that was the scariest coolest place ever. It was basically 3 flights of stairs down into a black abyss. Chris and I went down before all the tour groups got there and overcrowded it. So it was just us and a flashlight and I got attacked by a pack of gnats and almost peed my pants because it smelled so weird and was so dark but it was pretty great. Third cool part- There were three huge excavated Tholos tombs that we could just go into. The first had no roof, but the second had been fixed up a little bit so it was covered. It had the coolest acoustics in it and we spent forever just being dumb and stomping our feet and saying weird things so we could hear the reverberations.
Noooow we are back in Athens for 3 more days and then we leave for the airport at 3 am on Wednesday morning. Its going to be a looong trip home and I'm dreading the 4 hour layover we have in Germany, as well as the 4 hour layover in Chicago. Gross. Welllll I will post pictures later when the internet decides to work better. Oh Greece <3

hot rocks and hotter ferry rides

Hello! I’m writing this from our ferry ride from Naxos to Piraeus. I’m beginning to dread these boat rides, because they are so long and hot. We travel on these huge ships for like 6 hours, packed in with a billion other people, and there’s very little breeze. It suuucks. But anyways. We went to Santorini from Monday until yesterday and it was great. The island is one big mountain so you have to ride a bus/car up these tiny winding roads. Which when you have 13 people packed into a tiny 8 person van its so scary. I felt like Santorini was geographically one of the prettiest places we’ve been to so far, but architecturally it really wasn’t anything special. I only saw a few of the blue domed buildings that it’s known for. I felt like Athens and Mykonos had more beautiful buildings and places. But. We went to the red sand and black sand beaches on Santorini and they were so awesome. Well except that there was no sand at those beaches just red and black rocks, which get sooooo hot. For the red beach we had to hike over part of the mountain to get to it, but it was so worth it. The hills and cliffs were stained with red rocks everywhere, and there was actual sand on one section of the beach, and it was black! It was very cool. On our last night in Santorini we all ate at this restaurant and had probably the best food we’ve had in all of Greece. I had a cuttlefish dish that was served over rice with tomatoes and onions, and some of the other dishes were, a salad with a piece of grilled cheese and a sundried tomato dressing, linguini in a cream sauce with zucchini, mint, and soft goat cheese, some sort of veal dish, some baked eggplants stuffed with peppers and feta, and lots more. So good. Also, Santorini had a little stand where you could get falafel gyros (and regular ones) that were the best ever. Overall, it was a good trip. I’m looking forward to getting to Siphnos tomorrow and seeing what that city is like. I'll post some more pictures when I'm on a faster internet connection tonight.

Bus drive up the hill

View out the window

Black Sand Beach

It moved...

Red Sand Beach

more fotographs.

Mixed grill

Greek potato salad

Calamari

On the Aeropagos overlooking Athens

On the ferry to Delos