Olympia (July 16)

We are sitting on the bus en route to Olympia and I’ve decided to make the most of the free time. It’s a four hour trip and I slept the first half, but now I’m too uncomfortable. It’s a pretty bumpy ride; the roads literally wind around the cliffs.

We got to sleep in until 7:15 today, a whopping half-hour! We packed up and just left our luggage in the hall for the porters to take to the bus (this I could get used to …). Had some breakfast then loaded up.

Demetra just gave a talk about the ancient Olympics, which I found pretty interesting. I can’t wait to see the site; I’m going to write my research paper on some aspect of the games, but I haven’t narrowed it down yet. They started in 776 B.C. as a competition to honor the Gods – namely Zeus who lived on Mt. Olympus. Cities would send their best warriors to the five-day event, which started with ceremonies as we have today, and ended on the last day with all of the first-place finishers being recognized. Second place finishers were such a disgrace that not even their own dog would look at them. Oh yeah … and everyone participated in the nude!

More to come …

So we arrived in the small town of Olympia around 12:45 and grabbed lunch because we were all starving. We went to Café Olympia, which was similar to what we’d call a “diner” in the states. It had sandwiches, Greek specialties, and tons of ice cream desserts. I had cheese pie and tzasiki (can’t spell that), which were both very fresh and delicious. We walked around for a few minutes and I made my first souvenir purchase – two bracelets for myself, a total of 4 euro. I did find some things for my mom and brother, but realized I couldn’t buy anything because I hadn’t notified the bank that I was abroad.

We took about an hour-and-a-half tour around the Olympia Museum with Demetra, which was pretty cool. Most of it is original statues from the grounds that date back to the B.C. times. I can’t even wrap my head around that. They had the actual helmet of Militiades who fought in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, as well as tons of other helmets, pots, figurines, tools, and weapons. It was kind of weird though because we don’t have any of those things in the modern games, so I didn’t really associate what we saw with the Olympics. At least it was air conditioned …

After the museum, we drove five minutes down the road to the hotel, which was not nearly as nice as the Amalia in Nafplio. It was totally 70s retro with stucco walls inside the rooms and lots of bugs everywhere. We immediately spotted a spider on the ceiling and recruited one of the boys to kill it. And all of the cots collapsed! One of the girls sat on hers and it just folded in half. I was so grateful that we only had to stay there for one night.

I laid out by the pool for an hour or so until I was dripping with sweat and had to go in for a shower. At 6:30, we had a lecture with Niki on public education in Greece, but it was really just more of a discussion. You wouldn’t believe the school system here! It was hard to understand with her accent, but it sounds like elementary/high schools are very similar to the U.S., but it gets very strange when it comes to college. At age 17, they spend a year studying two books word for word in preparation for the college entrance exam. There is no such thing as multiple choices, so on the test they answer in full sentence form and it must be word for word, or it’s completely wrong. They can take the test only three times and where they score determines what they’re allowed to major in. For example, political science and archaeology require very high scores, while education not so much. Universities are almost all public and paid for by the government so students pay nothing. I wonder what effect this has on graduation rates? I feel guilty skipping class because my family is paying.

The bigger problem though, is after college in finding a job. Whereas we have co-op at our school and most students do internships, it’s not that way in Greece, but employers still require experience. So Niki has her degree in archaeology and a masters in communications but is almost 30 and unemployed. With all of the excavations here, she’s never set foot in one of them. If someone doesn’t pass the college test by their third try, their only option is private school, but that costs 12,000 euro/year and the average Greek person makes only 20,000. It sounds like the system needs some work …

After the hour lecture was dinner, which was pretty much the same as the last Amalia hotel. But the dessert was definitely better! We hung out by the pool and I finished off the wine I bought a couple days ago. There were huge cicadas and grasshoppers everywhere. I’m talking mutant creatures! So Sarah and I headed in to bed around 11 and I just watched some TV on my laptop.

Tomorrow we have the actual Olympia site and then transfer to our hotel in Delphi.