How did she GET there?!

Hello again! So today was very fun but different. It's really late, so this blog will be brief. We woke up, ate breakfast again, and then we had our Bridging Cultures seminar again. This time we talked about budgets and basically realized we will all be broke when we get home. Yaaaaay, foreign transaction fees... We also learned about cultural shock and all the things we will probably experience and yet not recognize when it hits us. But maybe it'll pass me by! So anyway, after our seminar we ventured out to lunch at a cute restaurant where we had bread (of course), salad, and an Italian dish of our choice. I got the 5-cheese penne, I think. It was very cheesy! We then met up with Kostas again and he took us to the Byzantine Museum of Thessaloniki.

That was very pretty with lots of columns and tombs and pottery and ANCIENT HAIR! I actually remembered something from my anthropology classes: organic objects don't last the test of time. So the fact that they had HAIR is super amazing. I think it was from Egypt and was preserved with the intense heat.

Hair, ewww.

Then we walked around the city a bit and saw some painted bikes. I read about this project in the magazine on the plane. It's a city project where people donate old bicycles and then they get painted and placed around Thessaloniki to make the city more beautiful. Each color represents a different aspect of the project (like a green bike means there's not enough nature, etc).

So anyway, we walked around some, went to dinner for our last group (and therefore PAID FOR) meal, and then went out for a "cultural event"! We were given tickets to Rock the Ballet: Dance Boys (I think?) and it was pretty cool. It was a weird sort of modern ballet dance with 6 guys and 1 girl. The guys were muy cute (although probably gay) and we enjoyed utilizing the binoculars that our program leader provided. They played American music, lots of Michael Jackson, Queen, and Prince. The theatre was beautiful, though.

So when we got home, we had to celebrate Adrienne's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIENNE!). So we congregated in our hotel room and talked girly stuff. And I'll not repeat what was said because contrary to popular third grade belief, secrets secrets ARE fun. So that was about it today!

Oh, the title "How did she GET there?!" comes from a homeless lady that resides outside our hotel. She's always sitting on the sidewalk and it looks like she doesn't have any feet (really sad, sorry.) But today we passed by a loooong ways away and she was sitting on the sidewalk playing with her Nintendo DS. Fishy? Yeah.

So since it's like really late now (don't look at the time I posted this, mom...) I'll say goodnight. Below is a nice picture I took when walking around.

Emily