Our wake-up call was 6:30am,
theoretically, but we never got ours (apparently about a third of our
group didn't get theirs), so it's a good thing Bobby had the sense to
set his phone's alarm before we faceplanted into bed last night. The
shower here had very good water pressure, but only two temperatures:
freezing and scalding. It also was put into the holder at a very
weird angle, and wound up spraying a lot of water outside into the
bathroom. I guess you're supposed to point it at the wall and then
pick it up to rinse yourself, because there was no real way to
actually stand under the water and just soak. All the rooms were the
same in this respect, because I heard several other people saying the
same things about their rooms. The bed was alright. Certainly not
luxurious, but I was too tired last night to care. I was also too
tired to care that instead of a queen bed, they just pushed together
two twin beds in our room. This, also, was the norm. A bit weird,
but whatever. We're not going to be spending that much time in the
rooms themselves, and they're livable.
Breakfast was also a buffet, and also
really good. There were so many breads to choose from, lots of
fruit, pastry with spinach or cheese in them, several kinds of Greek
yogurt, cereal, a few kinds of sausages and other breakfast meats,
eggs, and probably some more stuff I'm missing. I wound up eating
mostly fruit and some pastry with a little bit of yogurt. We were a
little late, but not the last people on the bus. We went to Corinth,
which was about an hour's drive, during which we got a little bit of
history from our tour guides. Most of it I vaguely recall having
learned and then promptly forgotten after the test was over for my AP
Western Civilizations class in high school. The one thing
interesting that I learned was that Ceres was the goddess of the
harvest, and that's why all grains are called cereals, and why they
love their bread so much in Greece.
We stopped at a huge canal that
separates mainland Greece from the peninsula where Corinth is, and
also unites two parts of the Mediterranean. It was pretty crazy
walking over the bridge that goes over it and looking down into a
huge canyon. There were people begging at either end of it, and also
at the two nearby coffee shops for tourists. Bobby was saying he'd
give them money if we'd had any Euros with us (we hadn't exchanged
money yet), but I just ignored them. There are so many beggars
everywhere that I just have gotten desensitized to it. Back home in
New Haven, and nearby New York, the homeless are everywhere, and a
good number of them are either faking it because they don't want to
work, are homeless but will use the money for drugs/booze, or are
just looking for an easy mark to pickpocket. The first time I
traveled anyplace, officials and tour guides all confirmed these
suspicions that my parents had also instilled in me. So, call me a
cynic, but I just can't bring myself to give money to people begging
for it. I've been known to buy meals for the homeless people that
approached me on the green, and if they accepted that offer, then I
knew they were genuine. I've had homeless people get insulted when I
offer to give them food, and at that point, well, I've stopped
caring. Beggars really can't be choosers, and at least if I'm buying
a person food, I know I'm doing them a service rather than enabling
self-destructive behavior. So, at that moment on the canal, I not
only didn't have any money to give them nor to offer to buy them
food, but I'm so suspicious of people begging at tourist spots that I
can't say that I'd honestly have offered at that point anyway. I'm
not heartless, but I'm not a sucker either.
After a brief stop at the canal, we
went on to the ruins of the temple of Apollo and the surrounding
former plaza. It was really cool, though the tour guide for this
portion of the sightseeing had a really annoying voice and after a
while Bobby and I just wandered off on our own. It was very
difficult to restrain ourselves from doing parkour all over the
ruins, most of which were roped off. We each did a couple of small
things on the non-forbidden-to-touch parts, just to say that we did.
One strange thing about the ruins was that there were several
medium-sized stray dogs of all different mutt-like breeds just
wandering around the place like they owned it. They were really
friendly, and surprisingly not as dirty/smelly as one would expect
stray dogs to be. They probably also realized that tourists
sometimes had handouts to give, but they seemed just as happy to get
belly rubs from the group when it became apparent that we weren't
giving them any food.
We went back to the canal rest stop for
lunch, which was a little bit annoying because there were only two
places to buy food, one of which didn't accept cards (we still had
only American money). The other one didn't accept cards either, but
they did accept American cash, so we bought a ham and cheese pastry
thing and shared it. Bobby also bought some kind of Greek gelatin
candy. One box was a fruit medley, and that was okay. The other one
was cherry coconut, which was almost expired when he bought it and
then when he opened the box, the inner packaging had been torn open
and taped back shut. He returned it for a newer one, which was at
least sealed properly, but was still kind of bad he said, like the
coconut had turned. I slept on the bus ride back.
We were supposed to have had time to go
back to the hotel first, but instead we went straight to the
rehearsal again, which was four hours instead of three, to make up
for the lost time last night. The place was again colder than the
outside, and Simon Carrington, the conductor, re-arranged the
sections before we started. This time I wound up right in front of
the over-singing tenor, who hurt my ears several times because he was
so damned loud. He also annoyed the crap out of me because he
mispronounced one of the lines every single time we sang it. If
you're a choral director and you can't pronounce basic Latin phrases,
you don't deserve your job. Seriously, how do I know more about
choral singing than this guy?
Anyway, after rehearsal we had our
supper on the hotel's rooftop restaurant. It was another buffet with
similar fare as last night, but with slightly fancier potatoes,
chicken, salads, and dessert. The chocolate mousse was good again,
and they had this thing which was stringy and sticky but pretty good
that I don't know what it was. I meant to also go back and grab a
fresh fig, but I forgot by the end of it. We wound up sitting with
one of the tour guides and had an interesting conversation about the
differences between European universities and American ones, and
about the various places we've traveled. Alexis was his name, and
he's the guide for the other bus. He seems pretty nice.
After that I slept for a little while,
then woke up and went online on my phone in the lobby for a little
while, went back and slept for about three hours fitfully in the
room, woke up and did some journaling, and eventually it was time for
breakfast again. On to another day in Greece.
