The biggest significance about today is that it marks the first time since our arrival that the temperature in Muncie is actually HIGHER than the temperature here in Athens. According to Yahoo today's high in Athens was 49 while Muncie's was 53. Things don't get any better tomorrow when our high is predicted at 47 and Muncie's reads 54. Shame on me, but I'm glad to see Muncie's high on Friday is only supposed to be 38 while ours will be 54. I'm sorry, but I feel like our temperature here should be higher.



But here in the southern suburbs, we have it far better than those people in the north. Sophie, the senior program officer at Fulbright here in Athens, lives in the suburbs north of the city (in the hills) and provided this picture of her street yesterday (she didn't make it in to work). They got 7 inches of snow! But here, we got nothing. It's really amazing how much difference in the weather in just a few miles.



Kim's head is still bothering her and she can't move too well. She's pretty certain she has a concussion. She went online to see what should be done, and the advice was pretty much to take it easy and there's nothing else that can be done. Needless to say, today was not one of the more exciting since we arrived. It's a shame, but better it happened now than when we have guests.

Today's news item deals with the aftermath of the prison escape I mentioned a couple of days ago (scroll down if you didn't read it). Prepaid phone cards are big in Europe - much more than in the US, I think. Kim and I are both using cell phones with prepaid cards. Anyway, one of the issues with Sunday's jail break was the fact that the perpetrators used prepaid cell phone cards. When you buy them (available from any kiosk on just about every street) they don't any personal information so there's no way to trace calls back to the user. A few people are proposing that people buying the cards ought to have to provide identification information. I think it's just talk; I don't think it will ever fly.

I meet the Comparative Media class tomorrow. Professor Papathanasopoulos and I will team teach the class, although he's really letting me take the class over after the first session. He expects it to be a small class but we really don't know. In most of the European system, students sign up for the exams for a class, not the class itself (attendance is not compulsory) so we could start with 10 or 20, then go up or down from there. I'm looking forward to it. In addition to the Greek students we should also have 4-6 Erasmus students, i.e. students from other European universities spending a semester or a year in Greece. I'll give a full report tomorrow.