Meteora is an awesome little town in Northern Greece that has a whole bunch of, as I describe them, ginormous boulders that people decided hundreds of years ago would be the perfect location to put a bunch of Monasteries. It was a field trip for my Byzantine Art and Ideology class... my first field trip since middle school... and it was an overnight too!

It took us five hours by bus to get there and we didn't leave until 4 p.m. so it was pretty late when we got there (thank goodness for my iPod and Eat, Pray, Love). There wasn't much to do in the little town we stayed in, which I regretfully have forgotten the name of ... or maybe I was never told the name, but anyway... so we snooped around for about an hour, looked in the local shops that were all closed and went back to the hotel where we watched episodes of Alias (in English) and Disney's Pocahontas (in Greek) until we were tired enough to fall asleep

Saturday was our fun day because we got up at 9 a.m. to go to the monasteries. I, being the oh-so-practical person that I am, decided that I was not going to bring a skirt... which is mandatory for all visitors to the Monasteries to have on... so I got to try the spring collection of wrap-around and elastic waisted skirts that the Monasteries always have on hand for westerners such as myself. I personally preferred the black and white rectangular block pattern one I wore at the first monastery, but the faded black and grey bandana pattern one I wore at the second monastery is a close second.

I don't know whether or not I was just tired, but I was not really there during the visits to either monastery, and especially not the second one... well, at least not when we were touring the actual chapel, which was why we were there in the first place... to look at the wall paintings (because every inch of wall surface was completely covered in paintings, which is slightly overwhelming).

My favorite part of the entire day was getting to walk through the a few of the gardens at the second monastery (which is all nuns, so technically it should be called a convent or a nunnery, but they're Orthodox, so it's a monastery). It was just so peaceful and oasis like. I allowed my brain to stop thinking for about 10 minutes and it was just pure heaven.

We were all tuckered out when we got back to the hotel, so it was naps all around for about two hours. Then we tried to go shoe shopping, but all the stores with really cute and cheap shoes were still closed!

At six, we met outside the hotel and followed our professors up a massive hill to a church where we attended the vespers service. For those of you who don't know, vespers is a service held in the late afternoon/early evening and is usually a lot shorter than regular services.

I really enjoyed the service personally. We met the priest beforehand (you know, just to make sure it was ok that non-Orthodox people were at the service) and I liked him immediately. Couldn't understand a word he said, but his tone of voice, inflections and body language just told me he was a jolly guy who liked to talk to people and had a happy disposition. (Yes, I got all that from watching a three-minute exchange between him and our Prof.) The actual service was really cool too... for those that don't know, in the Orthodox church, the altar area is for the priest only and there is this wooden "screen" (which is more like a wall) between the congregation and the altar. The only time the congregation sees the altar area is when the priest opens the doors. The priest spent half of the service behind the screen chanting (he was doing a back and forth call/chant with a guy who was standing in the front of the church on our side of the screen), ringing bells and lighting incense.

The majority of our group remained sitting the whole time cause we didn't know when we were supposed to stand or not, but at one point the priest had come out with the incense and was blessing everyone with it and as he was going to bless our section he smiled (with a little glimmer in his eye) and discretely motioned with his fingers for us to stand up. So, of course, something like 12 of us stood up all at the same time; almost like we planned it. I thought it was cool.

A few minutes later (after he put the incense away) he motioned for us to sit again (again, he did it discretely) and then as the service was over he motioned one last time for us to stand, smiling and laughing to himself the whole time. I think my favorite part of the whole service was at the very end. He said the words in Greek, but I heard loud and clear, "Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord."

The rest of the night went as follows... after that awesome church service we went to dinner at a local taverna... they served us a fixed meal and it was scrumptious... then we went out "dancing" at a local club that Niktarios (my teacher) likes and we danced and drank (not me cause I didn't feel good, I think I had bad wine with dinner) and had a good time... the group slowly trickled out until it was just me and my roommates (Amanda, Aubrey and Therese)... it was almost 2 a.m. and we were getting tired, so we were about to head back when the bartender stopped us and handed us a check for 56 euros... 56 EUROS!

We had been paying for our drinks all night... so it wasn't our bill... turns out that about half of the kids in my program had wandered out without paying for at least one of their drinks... and they left us with a ridiculous amount of money to fork over... well, didn't have that kind of money on us... so we called Anna (the other teacher on the trip) and she got out of bed, walked all the way across town to the bar and paid the bartender with money from Arcadia... we were absolutely livid... couldn't believe how irresponsible our fellow students had been... Aubrey even remembered one of them telling her she was walking out on her bill cause she didn't think she should have to pay for a 5 euro drink that wasn't even that good... ugh! I used to wonder why Americans have such a bad reputation abroad... I wonder no more

If any of you out there are students who will be going abroad in the near future... please, please, please never ever walk out on your check, especially if you have friends still there who don't want to pick up your tab for you. It's not a very nice thing to do

I'll leave you with some pretty pictures though ... cause on a whole, the trip was a good one