Further Up and Further In ...: Hummus isn't actually Greek ...

Monday, June 30, 2008

Hummus isn't actually Greek ...

Here we are! In a hotel in Meteora, a place with amazing landscapes – giant rock formations like pillars, and monasteries located at the top! In the past your options of visiting these places included rope ladders or being ‘wenched’ (pulled) up in a rope basket/baggy/hammock type deal – and these are HIGH. I don’t think I would have visited these back in the day. But now we have buses and roads and stairs and bridges, so hooray!

So we are a bit into our tour – we started in Athens on June 26th, and we met up with the rest of the group at the airport (that was a couple hours late) and checked into our hotel, got EXTRA excited about the fact that people delivered our luggage to our rooms, had some free time (for shoe purchasing?), and a great dinner. Our hotel also has a roof garden which is where we watched the Eurocup match of Russia and Spain, and has this view of the Acropolis...

Next was our departure from our hotel to the harbor to begin our 3 day cruise through the Greek islands and to Turkey! I’ve never been on a cruise before, and however cool they may be I don’t think I ever want to do one again. I mean, there are better ways to travel, and I don’t particularly enjoy spending long amounts of time lounging in the sun (or worrying that I’m going to burn) on the boat while in foreign countries – I feel like I can do that at home. That’s my family mentality speaking for me – I know that’s pretty much ideal for most people ... but it was relaxing. Another reason for not doing a cruise again is I felt like I was ALWAYS eating. And maybe I was, but from my family perspective if there is free food available you are going to take advantage of it and if felt wrong not to. So I needed to practice a little more self control. That is agreed. I am also becoming more aware of how my family has influenced me...

We sailed to Mykonos, a very beautiful and tourist driven island; to Rhodes, which is mentioned in Paul’s travels VEry briefly; to Patmos, where John heard the word of God and received the revelation for the last book of the New Testament; and Ephesus, which is the receiving city for the letter to the Ephesians, and has some significance in Paul’s ministry as read in the book of Acts. It was VERY hot in Ephesus, bordering 110 F, but we got air conditioned buses so didn’t have to endure too much. It is so amazing to see these places that are so ancient, and are all in ruins – I wonder what it looked like thousands of years ago, as some of the terrain is different since bodies of water have receded or moved since then. And it almost feels like it’s out in the middle of nowhere when at the peak of its reign it was a bustling hub. Also only a small portion of the city has even been excavated – the majority of the city has still not been unearthed! Our guide says that most excavation work is done in the summer – but that doesn’t really make sense because it is SO hot. Which is probably why when we drove by a patch that looked like archaeologists may have been working, there was no one in sight … popsicle break or something...

Tomorrow we head to Thesoloniki, but tonight we stay at a fabulous hotel – sometimes these package tour deals are worth it. What a contrast to bed bugs and laundry tabs. Here are a couple pic's I've taken lately to wet your pallet ...

A wall photo from the Island of Rhodes - I love seeing these old stone engravings, they've lasted through the years and still remain beautiful. This was along the Avenue of Knights, I believe. I should probably keep better track.

Our boat in the sunset! It's huge, and I still feel like I'm on it at times, and that was only a 3 day cruise! Quit the rocking already!

Ephesus! Hot and amazing. Our tour group is gathering in this photo, I think you can see Gaff. We took a moment and sang 4 verses of Amazing grace in this theater - the same theater mentioned in Acts when Paul was being yelled at because he was preaching against the use of idols. History right in my face and under my feet, just the way I like it.

1 comment:

I am Kate Maxwell said...: jealous. and wearing sunscreen and bug spray like its going to save my life.; 5:38 PM

Post a Comment

I dreamed a dream ...

A place for documenting the strangeness that radiates my imagination while I slumber. Oddly enough it is not due to any medication, go figure ...

18Oct2010
It happened. I've reached a new ... low? I am currently taking a class about the Doctrine of God. We've recently been reading Thomas Aquinas, and discussing the simplicity of God. My dream the other night involved me going for a jog (which I never, ever, do ...) and during said jog I recall a conversation with my jogging buddy, in which I say, "Ah, so the fact that God is good supersedes my ability to comprehend His goodness." That is right. My subconscious is actively processing theology while I sleep.

11March10
In real life, my friend got married in January, but I was unable to attend. HOWEVER, in my subconscious, I dreamed that she redid the entire wedding for us on campus - it was half so we could be there, and half so it would be documented (photography and video) because they didn't do it the first time. WHAT a party.

11/04

Weirdest dream - we are in an alternate universe exactly the same as this one only different. You following? I feel like all the people from seminary here are with me, and we're in some sort of lodge that's out in the woods. It's huge, because it houses like, 400 people comfortably, but this isn't the weird part. We have to be very careful about venturing outside, because there are these evil people out there waiting for us - they want to trick us, manipulate us, and make us one of them. How do we tell who they are? They always come as sets of identical twins. The thing is we somehow all ended up here, and we're trying to get back to our world, so we need to get outside the lodge and search for the path back. But every encounter with these 'people' is SUPER risky, because they are very persuasive - like sirens (the mermaids, not the ambulance noises). It was scary/awesome/crazy.

10/10
IT HAPPENED. I dreamed I was a part of High School Musical live. Along with a couple of my friends here at PTS, we were some sort of dance ensemble extras, but I'll take what I can get. But what I do remember is something more along the lines of not actually being hired to do it, but they felt like they'd let me prance around pretending I'd be in it. In other words, I had no idea what I was doing, but while doing that no one kicked me out ...

22/10
My mom is always paranoid that I'm gonna get that flesh eating bacteria and my whole face will disintegrate. Well, I dreamed that I was checking out a scab that was on my leg, and realized that it had become quite a dent. THEN I saw that I had a scab on my ankle that was really quite deep (although healed, nothing gross, it was all just regular skin) that when I tried to see how deep it was I found out it went ALL THE WAY THROUGH MY FOOT and I could see out the other side. Straight through my ankle. I even caught a glimpse of bone. WEIRD.
I also had a brief dream about this show we were filming that was kind of a contest between nuns and cops - the cops had to run through this kind of supermarket area grabbing the things they would need on doing their rounds or whatever you call it. Since nuns don't really bring a lot of stuff with them on their ... rounds? more like they don't have those ... they had to run around grabbing beads and things for putting together necklaces and rosarys, only they had to attach them together using blue masking tape. The nuns were getting all mad because the cop's task was much easier, and much less tacky.

8/10 (that's october...)
I can't remember all the details, just that it was happening Indiana Jones/National Treasure style. We were doing some sort of ancient biblical treasure hunt (thank you seminary?) and I was traveling alongside this main guy (no idea who) who was dragging along with him two young boys. They had a special title, because they were like, kid geniuses. Innate sense of direction and ridiculously good memory for every kind of fact. The kind of person you want at trivia night. The guy was yelling at them, "Come on! you've got to remember the stuff from Leviticus!" ... ??? I have no clue. We're on some beach somewhere and I'm more or less tagging along for the ride because I think I was initially kidnapped, but now I'm like that girl in National Treasure who's just too curious to leave. I'm sitting on the bank, looking up at this sort of stone wall that runs parallel to the water (not into it) and I end up picking out one of the stones and when I turn it over ... hark a clue! It has a swastika sign on it (hello Indiana influence) with a halo above it ... I don't know how I feel about that, but in any case, I yelled, "I found something!" and then promptly proceeded to wake up ... boooooo.

16/6
Apparently we are family friends with Nelson Mandela. He came to stay at my house, which is a lot larger on the inside than I remember, and the backyard is absolutely enormous. I was also hosting a student group of African American students for a meeting at my house, who were delighted to have Nelson Mandela visit for a little while, and then he went to the kitchen to do some dishes ... I was also called racist by one of the students there because I had used the phrase 'What kind of people' when saying something like 'what kind of people would do such a thing?' which doesn't really sound racist but does ask the question do I categorize people by their actions more than
I should ... anyway, I wish I really did know Nelson Mandela, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let him do the dishes ...

7/6
So I'm working at the INN in Seattle apparently, and Ryan Church asks me to make some sort of interactive deal as a part of his talk. He's preaching about prostitution and the dangers of selling sex or us buying into the current trends that just promote sex, so I decide to make a type of quiz that makes people aware of the way humans function in relation to the reality that 'sex sells' (in case you haven't read it, the book For Women Only has some eye opening facts and figures). He hands me a tape with parts of his talk already prepared, and we're talking VHS, but that doesn't even phase me I just go looking for a VCR. I find on in a common room somewhere, a TV/VCR set hanging from the ceiling and there are people socializing and eating in the room, but I just grab the closest thing to stand on (a miniature trampoline?) and move to put my tape in. I put it in and push play, and realize it isn't rewound as it's playing something taped off the TV, all in German. I rewind some more, and it is a clip from Oliver Twist (I don't think I've ever actually seen Oliver Twist) where Oliver is encouraging another orphan in the orphanage that they aren't stuck here for life, they can be whoever they want to be. This is communicated by the song my subconscious created, which I will entitle, 'You Can Be A Man'. This is what I woke up to - with it stuck in my head ... You can be a man, if you want make a plan, you can be a man ... I can sing it to you sometime if you want. I love that my subconscious is capable of writing songs, it gives me hope for my conscious ...

29/5 (I'm in Europe so I have to write it like that)
There was an ambulence running by outside our hostel this morning, and I think I dreamed that there was an airplane flying overhead that was losing pieces of itself all around us - but in my dream is more frustrating that scary. Like "really? it's losing chunks of airplane over MY street? can't it move one block over?" I am SO proud of my thoughtfulness of other people that may have been on the plane in my subconcious.

27/5
I was climbing a mountain with Bill and Claire and some other WSU students, only the mountain was pretty much a vertical pile of sand for most of the top, and you had to stick your arm in it and twist a little to get a good 'grip' in order to pull yourself up more and more. IT was CRAZy. But I got to the top with the rest of the.