Day 29: It's all Greek to Me

Despite the heavy workload, I like the idea of two class days followed by 14 days off.  We arrive in Greece tomorrow and will be there for 5 days.  The day after departure will be "Turkey Day" followed by our stint in Turkey.  Classes and whatnot all went well today, nothing new and exciting to report.  In Infectious Disease we had to make sure and start with Cholera before arriving in Turkey, should be fun.  I think I'll load up on more Bismuth at port in Greece.  We had a "family dinner" tonight and it was good to catch up.  It's nice to hear from faculty and staff that students aren't the only ones lacking sleep and a bit overwhelmed in the whirlwind of classes and wacky schedules.

We're scheduled to port in Piraeus early tomorrow morning and will go through the normal rituals of a diplomatic briefing and customs.  I went to the inter-port student presentation tonight and got some good tips.  The logistical pre-port was mostly focused on some of the rather shaky issues in Greece due to the economy.  There's a chance we might have to deal with strikes, there was a major one last Thursday.  We'll see what happens.  Around mid-morning today we had a military drone do a sweep right down to the ship and circle a few times.  The guess is that it was an Israeli drone looking for a ship that departed Greece a few days ago (you probably have more updates as far as world news goes than I do at this point). That could probably be considered the excitement for the day.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled for a tour of Athens and the Acropolis that departs in the afternoon.  Assuming there's not a ferry strike, I have a full day trip to three of the Saronic Islands (Hydra, Aegina, and Poros) on day two.  Some Greek cooking lessons will take up a chunk of day four followed by some time independently exploring Athens.  I'm on a day trip to Delphi the fourth day.  No plans yet for day five but it will probably be spent around Athens.  Greece is shaping up to be a fun time.  That's all for now, I'm going to go attempt to crash an ice cream social.