Sunsets and Churches

Our first day of orientation was today, and the first time that we were able to get up to the school and see the campus. It is about a 20 minuet drive from where our dorms are and is more on the edge of the city. It is a beautiful campus and has some great views of the city. It is a rather small college but it is part of Anatolia College which includes a middle school and high school as well. Most of our classes will be in two buildings on the north side of campus. The student affairs office has several trips planned throughout the semester that I am hoping to get to take. It is limited to the number of students that can go but I’m going to try and get to at least one. One of the first trips is to climb Mount Olympus which is on the top of my list. If I can’t go with the school hopefully I can go at some point with other students here.

The city is beautiful. There are nice shops and restaurants along the streets and right next to them are ancient ruins. The mix of the modern and the historical is really amazing and something that I’m not used to in Boston. Boston has a lot of history but it does not go back nearly as far as it does here. The culture is so rich here and you can see it in everything. I went for a walk today with my roommate Jamie, and a few other girls. There is this old castle up on the hill behind us that we can see from our windows. At night when it gets lit up it is really beautiful and we keep saying we need to figure out how to get there. We asked around and were told that we can take a bus to it, so we tried that tonight.

We took what we thought was the bus we needed but turns out it wasn’t. It didn’t matter though because the sun was setting and we were too preoccupied with the views the city below us. We stopped and took pictures the whole way down constantly amazed at each turn of the road. Since we live down closer to the center of the city it has been hard to tell how big it really is, but on top of the hill you could see how far it stretches. We walked by this gorgeous church right on the side of the hill and watched the sun set behind it. Some nice Greek travelers walked by and we exchanged group pictures. It is definitely a spot I will be coming back to during the semester, a nice get away when you need to relax and just take it all in.