Missing an entry or two is really tough. It means I have a lot more I want to say, if I can remember it all.

Monday afternoon my old Circle K friend Beth (center) and her friend Trish came to visit. They had spent a week in Italy on vacation and stopped in Athens on their way back home.

Unfortunately for me, I was ill Monday. It may be related to something I did that morning. A pigeon likes to roost on our air conditioner and we can hear it there in the early morning hours. Since we're not using the AC, I was taping a cut plastic bag around the AC to lock out the pigeon. I carefully washed my hands after, but I know you can get sick from the fumes. Anyway I didn't have any breathing trouble, just sickness. By the time they arrived (just after 3) I was well enough to walk around a little with them. Kim and I took them down to the sea, then we took a tram and went down to the center of Athens. Monday was a holiday (Clean Monday) so a lot of places were closed. A Clean Monday tradition is kite flying and we saw plenty. Tried getting a sky picture with 10 kites in the shot, but even Kim's good camera couldn't do it.

It's kind of funny - after one month, we're the ones watching the tourists taking all their pictures. It was funny to watch Beth and Trish taking so many pictures. But, if I had less than three days in Athens, I know I would be doing the same thing.

Once we got going Tuesday morning, the first stop had to be the university where I had to drop off a copy of a book proposal. I was correcting the English for a non-native speaker. After that few minutes of business we wandered around. We showed them the Agora (the big market with all the meats, seafood, etc., watched the changing of the guard in front of the Parliament building, and stopped in several shops. We hopped a tram back to our coastal suburb for our "lunch" reservation at 2 p.m.

We wanted to do a meal just like the one we had when we arrived in Greece, and we did. We ate mezedes at the same restaurant on the shore. It was a perfect, sunny day. Kim, Beth and Trish returned to the apartment. I jumped on the tram and headed downtown to meet Professor Sorogas at his office. We was going to walk me to our documentary class. It was in a building I had not yet been to.

This Olympic monument is on the shore not far from our apartment.

The classroom building was also a building that had been occupied during the riots. Some of the students were waiting in the building lobby when we arrived. We went up to our third floor classroom. It was clean and well-equipped (I am guessing it's been worked on. The graffiti in much of the rest of the building was not in this classroom, and a projector, tv, flat screen monitor were all there). For the first hour of the class, Professor Sorogas and I sat and the desk in the front. He spoke some extemporaneously, some from notes. He asked me occasionally for input. We took a "halftime" break and he showed me an extensive collection of world cinema they have on tape. After the break, I was to teach the class solo. Professor Sorogas went to the office and I took over. I started by asking them what they hoped to do after graduation. Similar to the US in that some don't know and some have a very definite idea.

We had 10 students in class when we started and only 6 after the break. I could speculate that they knew I was going to take over so they left, but that wasn't the case. It's not unusual for students to attend part of the class. The six who stayed, though, were great. They participated. In my limited teaching experience in Europe, it has been difficult to get students to talk in class. That was not at all the case here. They were actively engaged, and I am hopeful about the class. When we ended they asked if I was going to be back next week. I told them that if I wasn't thrown out of the country, I'd be back. I hope they asked because they wanted me back and not because they will stay away if I return. I guess we'll find out next week.

I got back to the apartment about 9 p.m. Kim had prepared a "light" dinner (not). Afterwards we played a couple of games of euchre for the first time in months. We haven't yet found any Greek euchre players.

Today we're off to the acropolis for the first time since arriving in Greece.