Here, There and Everywhere!

Hello everybody! We have made it to Greece safe and sound! After meeting Thursday morning, we all threw our luggage in my truck, kids in a vehicle, and headed to Denver! Our flight took off Thursday evening and 8 1/2 hours later we landed in Frankfurt, Germany. During our trip we were fed non-stop, drove our flight attendant crazy asking for refills on the water (they should have just given us the whole bottle!), watched Failure to Launch (which was pretty funny and I recommend), and did flight aerobics while Jaclyn mimed along to Kelly Clarkston songs.


Sorry the pics are blurry, but we were doing aerobics....remember?


Our layover was quick and painless...or at least it was for my students. I was trying to get another student added to our flight and ran all over the airport looking for someone to help us after being re-directed a few times. He couldn't make it, but at least we got him all set up to be picked up in Athens later last night.

We met up with another school from the Springs and their three students on the flight, and once we landed in Greece we were added to seventeen students from NM. Our flight arrived around 5 pm local time, which means it was only about 7 am back in Colorado. After meeting our director and getting a short bus tour of the city on the way to the hotel, we finally got to make ourselves at home and take our well deserved showers! I'm pretty sure that was the highlight of the afternoon.

Once dinner was over we headed out for an evening on the town. We got to learn how the subway works here in Athens and then took a look at Adrian's Arch and the Acropolis all light up at night.



Alph Gams, I had to take a pic of the subway sign...notice the first 3 letters!

The man standing by the Arch was a Greek Orthodox monk who just happened to walk by while we were there and stopped to admire the view. Adrian was a Roman General who loved Greek so much he built the arch to commemorate his founding of the 'new' city located the right of the arch, while the 'old' or Plaka District lies to the left. The subway too 15 years to build because when they were digging they kept coming up with a ton of archeological artifacts dating as far back as the 17 Century BC! It was pretty amazing to see some of the artifacts on display.

Afterwards we had an hour or so to check out the changing of the guard at the parlimentary building and Greece's tomb of the unknown soldier. It was pretty impressive. I jumped ona bus and headed back tot he airport at midnight to pick up Marty and hear his layover stories before finally making it back to the hotel at 1:30 and get some sleep!