I have been waiting for today. It's the day I got to be involved in interviewing Greek students applying for Fulbrights to do graduate study in the US. It was a full day of meetings, and I've never been fond of meetings, but this was different: the opportunity to meet some of the best and brightest Greek students. I was psyched.

This gentleman is Nicholas Tourides, the American Program Coordinator for the Fulbright Commission in Athens. He's the guy who provided me all the pre-departure info while I was still in Muncie.

The other members of the committee who serve with me are, from L to R, Thomas Miller, Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Embassy and Chair of the Fulbright Board of Directors, Antigone Lyberaki, Professor of Economics at Panteion University and Dimitris Sotiropoulos, Political Science Porfessor at University of Athens.

We interviewed 22 today - 20 more tomorrow. The vast majority are in either architecture or law (the hard sciences are interviewed by a different panel). Most of them are applying to

graduate school at Harvard and Columbia. A FEW have applied to Michigan, Northwestern, etc., but for the most part they are Ivy League applications. If not, they are mostly east or west coast instutitions. No one applied to Ball State, although one was wanting to do a degree in Human Development focusing on Digital Storytelling.

On the left is Artemis Zenetou, the Fulbright Foundation Executive Director. On the right is Sophie Cousoula, Senior Program Officer (who organized the whole application/interview process).

So since I worked all day, there's no other new stuff, so here are random pictures and random observations:

I forgot to mention yesterday in my post about TV channels that Star has an incredibly unqiue weathercast. A buxom woman comes out and delivers the 5 minute weatercast, almost as a parody. The weather is real, but she always delivers it in a provocative way. One evening she was dressed as a sultry nurse. Another evening she had on a short cocktail dress and when she talked about the wind, air would blow her dress, which she would hold down and act embarrassed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbGDEHCl0cc

Our landloards, Mark and Martha

Speaking of weather - when we arrived two weeks ago, temps were in the 60s. Lately the highs have only been in the 50s. Still better than Muncie's weather, but we were definitely spoiled the first few days we were here. I know it will warm up again. Then I'll likely complain about the heat.

50s feels pretty good, especially when the sun's out. Yet if you're Greek and used to warm weather, this is frigid. Most people are wearing their winter coats. Martha insisted Kim buy a scarf at the market and is insisting she get a hat, too.

One other random thought: Athens is service-oriented. Just about every food place delivers, not just Domino's (yes, we have one). In downtown you will even see coffee and tea being delivered on trays to local shop workers (I'll try to get a picture). If you spend 70 Euros or more at the grocery store, they will deliver your groceries at no charge.

I spent pretty much the entire day working in the apartment. I had an abstract accepted for the Media 2009 Conference here in Athens. I have until March 30 to write the paper. So, I worked on that today. For today I'm just taking pictures from Kim's camera and posting them. Kim's watching Men In Black on TV, so I'll take this opportunity to write a little about TV here.

This is the church a couple of blocks from our apt. The bells ring at 7 a.m 7 days/week.

There are two main state-run television channels. ET-1 is the main channel, and its a broad-based network that does news, sports and all forms of entertainment. Most of the content is in Greek but there is a little content imported from the US in English, with Greek subtitles. Why they choose to carry Hannah Montana in Greek and Young and the Restless in English I don't know. You could argue it's because kids wouldn't get the English but then why did they run the NBA Slam Dunk competition in Greek tonight?

The second main state channel is NET (used to be ET-2). Their focus is more toward the cultural and informational programs that you would normally associate with public broadcasting. Of course soccer and children's programs are both cultural, so those air on NET. There seems to be less imported product but there is still some: movies, mostly.

There is a third public-owned channel ET-3. The channel is headquartered up north, in Thessaloniki, but except for news programs it's hard to see how it's any different. They carry The Bold and the Beautiful (in English) and Bob Ross continues painting on ET-3 (in Greek). Another north-centered channel is Makedonia TV. Again, news may focus more on Macedonia, but hard to claim it has a regional emphasis carrying English reruns of Bewitched and Married...With Children.

There is actually a fourth government channel, Vouli TV, but it's not operated by the Greek TV service EPT, but rather by Parliament. It's a sort of Greek C-SPAN, but over the air.

Coastal shot. Does this need a caption?

The private channels dominate. Top of the heap is Mega. They use a very little bit of US content - movies - but the rest is almost all Greek. I'm impressed that such a small country (only about 11 million people) has such a robust local television production industry.

Same shot, zoomed out.

Mega is followed by Antenna. They have it all: Greek programs, US imports including Lost and Greek-produced versions of international formats, such as Are You Smarter Than a 10-Year-Old (why the name change I don't know).

Kim bought some "wild greens" at the market.
I'd call them "weeds." I swear she had me pull
the same things out of our yard in Muncie.

Star, Alpha, Alter and Skai all follow pretty much the same process: mostly Greek programs with a few imports: House, Nip/Tuck, Sex and the City, Top Chef and America's Next Top Model all air in English. Oprah they dub into Greek.

This entire counter at one of our three grocery
stores is all feta. Other cheeses are at a different
counter. This one is all different types of feta.

There are a fair number of satellite subscribers in Greece, but no cable television.

Today was a chilly (high today was 47), gray (it rained a little this evening) day, so Kim and I decided it would be a good museum day. We paid a visit to the Byzantine and Christian Museum. The website doesn't have an English version yet, but it does provide nice pictures. As usual mine won't be quite as good, but they're all you'll see posted today. The museum appears to be in a Tuscan villa, but actually the exhibits are below ground, so the villa isn't disturbed and things are exhibited in a museum-like atmosphere.

I had to include this chain mail picture (15th Cent) for Anthony and Nicole.

A few of the articles were copies of the actual artifact, in some cases pillaged and now in Rome, London or some other world capitol museum. You can actually detect the snarl in the voice as you read the descriptions.

In spite of the weather, we took a short stroll through the National Gardens. It's not yet spring but a few things were still blooming. Kim had a good time taking pictures with her (good) camera of oddly-shaped tree trunks and other anomalies of nature.

Afterward we actually trammed back to the apartment to eat, call my mom (it's Sunday) then head back downtown for an English-language mass. We had read that mass was at 7 p.m. and were rather proud of ourselves for getting to the church at 6:30 when we came to discover that from Oct. to April mass is actually at 6 p.m.: the later time is during "season." So we arrived late to a Standing Room Only church. It was about as diverse a group as you can imagine. There were westerners, Africans and Asians.

On the tram ride back home afterwards, a teenage male discreetly graffitied a tram door. An older man saw him and started hollering at him. The young guy smirked a little but said nothing and took a seat as the older man continued to chew him out. A young woman not with the graffiti guy yelled back at the man in defense of the teenager, telling him to leave him alone. A couple of stops later the young guy got off the tram without incident. Signs are posted about the severe penalties for vandalism but obviously no one who would enforce it was around.

These mosaic floors were quite impressive. All different patterns - all from the 6th to 11th Centuries.

I was also impressed with this book of the Gospels, from the 12th Century.

Today's Greek news is about secondary education. There's debate in parliament about reform. College admission is all based on an entrance exam all high school students take. Most middle-class and above students enroll in private prep schools for a year to prepare for the exam. Many of them don't even care about high school and skip lots of days, don;t do homework, etc. It's all irrelevant - all that matters is the exam. Reformers want to change the system so that a combination of the entrance exam, class rank and high school grades is used. Others simply want high schools to do what the prep schools do an "teach the test." Obviously the students aren't being well-served.

Valentine's Day began with me getting a Valentine e-mail from my wife. She normally stays up later than me, so last night after I went to bed she sent me an e-card. I usually get up first and check my e-mail (how sad is that?). Kim had also bought a mold so she could make heart-shaped omeletes for breakfast.

After eating and cleaning up, we got some grocery shopping done (stores are closed on Sunday - needed to stock up) then jumped on the tram to head downtown. A note about the tram: it's incredibly convenient, but not terribly fast. Our trip downtown - about 6 km, takes 35-40 minutes.

The plan was to do more walking around, with a goal of eating after 2 p.m. when a particular eatery in Plaka opened. We started out by stopping off at the Tourist Information office. In Europe they're clearly identified and usually conveniently located. It was unusual that we were in country this long and still hadn't visited it. I attribute it to the fact that we had both Matta and Martha providing us with tourism information, not to mention the maps and information Fulbright provided. When we entered the info office, I immediately remembered the office in Macerata. I was always surprised that the people who worked there never seemed very happy. The two people behind the desk were not really interested in talking. We just picked up a couple of brochures and headed out.

This time it seems we entered the Plaka from the more "normal" entry point. Not only did it look more picturesque (by that I mean "suited to tourism") but we also had to run the gamut among all the restaurateurs trying to talk you into stopping into their establishment. Many of the places looked very tempting, and I'm sure we'll go back to one or two in the future, but today I had a mission. I had read about Damigos, a traditional eatery (dating to the 1860s) known for its fried cod. The restaurant was actually below street level (some might say "basement," but there were stairs down from the street). Unlike the other restaurants, this place had no one standing outside with a menu trying to coerce customers. Although the staff spoke English, we were the only English-speaking patrons. I was going for authentic, and I really believe I got it.

This was our Valentine's dinner out, so we splurged. Got a salad (no lettuce - just tomatoes, onions, olives, feta and cucumbers), fried cheese, falafel and the house wine. We split main courses of the fried cod and grilled swordfish. The waiter kindly tried to teach us the Greek words each time he brought out a course.

After lunch (hard to call it "lunch" when you finish eating after 3 p.m.) we continued our walk, just looking at things and stopping occasionally. We still have a lot of time here, so neither of us has been anxious to start buying souvenirs. I can tell you there were plenty available. But, when I do buy, I'm going to buy from places where the prices are marked. I know you can dicker but I prefer not to. As much as I like to talk about getting into the local culture, there are some things I'm just not equipped to do.

Plaka is just down from the Acropolis and from time to time you can catch a glipse of it. We know the spot on the tram ride into downtown when it becomes visible, and there's even a spot or two in our neighborhood where you can see it.



Don't just look at the top of the hill, but look at how they've pruned the trees in the foreground.

Here's Kim's artistic picture. The reflection of the Acropolis is in the glass wall of the museum below. It came out pretty cool.

Our poor landlords aren't going to make a nickel on us while we're here. When we got back from downtown, Kim switched on a burner for tea and it tripped the main circuit breaker. Turned it back on, same thing happened. It doesn't happen with the other burners. Kim called Martha and told her, and Martha will get an electrician to check it out.

Today's Greek news update: There is a heated discussion about the prospect of an early election. The two major parties, Pasok and New Democracy, are at odds over whether to change the system of allocating seats for members of parliament. Current rules divide 260 of the 300 seats proportionately based on votes. The remaining 40 seats are a "bonus" to the party with the most votes. The proposal is to increase that to 50 bonus seats, and 250 divided.

Friday is market day in our neighborhood, and Kim and Martha felt I should come along to see. Here they are looking at scarves. Unlike the Macerata market in Italy, this one runs exclusively along one street. Stalls line both sides and people walk in the center of the street. OCD person that I am, I noticed the stalls were not uniform in how far they stuck out into the street. In fact some people "extended" their stalls by putting more merchandise on boxes, resulting in bottlenecks to an already-crowded street.

Like the Italian markets, you could buy
everything from clothes to food to housewares.

Salespeople were a mix of Greeks and

immigrants. I don't know what time they opened but they were tearing down about 3 p.m.

This picture shows Kim (second from left) clawing her way to a stand that was shutting down and selling off his remaining stock of oranges for 3 kilos/Euro (that works out to around 35 cents a pound). He became very popular very quickly.

Unfortunately the pictures can't show the length of the market.

Martha wanted to take us afterward for coffee/tea to a place about a 15 minute drive south of us down the coast. Very nice cafe - they even had valet parking. High temp today was only 53 degrees, so we sat inside and looked out. There were a couple of people in the water (I said they must be Germans). Just a couple of minutes from where we had coffee is the picture below: it's a natural brackish lake where the water is warm and supposed to have healing properties (a mineral spring, I assume). Martha said that some retirees actually get their pool fees paid by getting a doctor to prescribe the treatment.

Finally I'll close with some Athens news. When I was in Italy I noted all the immigrants. Because of Greece's location, it has

even more of an issue. Greece is an entry point to the EU for Africans from the south, Eastern Europeans from the east but also middle-Easterners and Asians. Obviously a large influx of immigrants causes a drain on the social system. Unlike the US, if a child of immigrants is born in Greece that is no guarantee of Greek citizenship. In fact citizenship has more to do with heritage than it does with location. There are Greek citizens around the world who have voting rights in Greece yet someone born here who is over 21 may not.

I already told you that Matta was coming for dinner last night. She has a master's from Ball State from 20 years ago and found us our apartment. Kim had two appetizers (artichoke dip and stuffed mushrooms), her terryaki chicken pizza with a Sicilian salad and homemade brownies (although Betty Crocker mix is for sale in the grocery across the street). We had a very nice evening. We gave Matta a gift we had brought her from Martin as well as one we had brought. Matta provided me with a SIM card for the cell phone Professor Sorogas lent me (Kim and I both now have cell phones with Greek numbers) and gave Kim a silver ring that she had

designed and made herself. (Sorry for the blurred picture but I can't get close with the simple blogging camera.) Matta makes a lot of jewelry for fun, and would love to be able to sell it but in Greece to be legal she would have to apply for a tax number and pay a hefty fee, so unless she gets into it in a big way, it really wouldn't pay. Matta knew as Americans we would want to eat early, so she suggested she would arrive at 8 and we could eat dinner at 9 - about an hour earlier than she does normally.

This morning one of the things I had to figure out
was how to open the phone to get the SIM card
in: more difficult than you might imagine. I had to

go online to find out what to do. Then I went onto the SIM company's site to find out how to change all the settings so it wouldn't block incoming calls. A minor accomplishment, I admit, but I did feel as if I made progress.

Kim had had coffee at the marina a few days ago with Martha and had been dying to take me, so we hopped on the tram and went. It wasn't the best of weather but it wasn't raining, so we were able to walk among the amazing yachts. Martha had told Kim that some of the richest people in
the world dock at the marina and I certainly
believe it.

I am reminded of the importance of time abroad for seeing the world from other perspectives. For example, the subject of bailouts came up in discussion, and there was a little bit of disdain for the fact that the U.S. was considering "protectionism" in providing bailout money. The U.S. is not the only country suffering from economic crisis.

Long-standing scars still exist. It's interesting to hear Istanbul still referred to as Constantinople. The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey is still a sore subject. It's a centuries-old conflict. News reports in the US focus on ethnic disputes in other places because it's "calm" here, but the roots of the dispute are extremely deep.

I need to digress from Greece to return to sad matters on the homefront. Our family lost a cherished pet. Ŝiŝka was part of our family for 13 years and we will all miss her, but no one more than Nicole. They grew up together and were best of friends. I truly regret that I was not in Muncie to hold my daughter tight at this very difficult time.

I mentioned yesterday that Kim and I were attending a concert at the Hellenic American Union. Here is Professor Sorogas introducing the evenings' events. He's president of the "alumni association;" 800 Greeks with degrees from US institutions. All the speeches and vocals were in Greek, but it was very good music. The atar of the show was a Greek-American from Chicago who played piano and sang. Various singers came out on stage to join in for one or two songs. The place was standing room only (seats 200). I've included a brief clip so you could get an idea. We left after 2 hours, and they were still going. No idea how late they went.

HAU has some really great activities. Later this month, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple is delivering a lecture.


Today Kim spent most of her day preparing for dinner. Tonight we are having Matta over. She's the woman who found our apartment for us. She was a graduate student at Ball State decades ago (long before we arrived). Martin was still in touch with her and contacted her on our behalf. She not only found the apartment for us, but she came to pick us up at the airport when we arrived. So today we shopped, cleaned and prepped. Obviously Kim did much more than me...but I helped!

Here's a picture from last night's premiere of Frost/Nixon. The ambassador sat up above in a reserved balcony. We were actually only a few feet away from him as he and his family came in, and watched from up close as they posed in front of the movie poster for pictures, but we never got the chance to meet him. Maybe next time.

People who know me know I'm not a big fan of going to the movies, but this was different. It was almost a documentary rather than a film. It was also an opportunity to see a Greek theatre. Very nice. The "concession stand" was a room to the side of the lobby.

Today we had to take two documents to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get the officially translated (9.5 Euros each). We had to bring a notaried copy of our marriage certificate and a notarized copy of a letter from BSU explaining my medical insurance. Each of those I had to have an Apostille affixed to in the US. Because that's done by Secretaries of State, I had to do the insurance letter through Indianapolis and the marriage certificate in Missouri (states can only provide apostilles for documents by their respective notaries).

Once we found the Ministry office the procedure

was pretty painless. We had free time before my 2 p.m. appointment so we wandered around, including through this central market. I don't know whether you can fathom the size from these pictures. The first photo is ONE of the meat aisles (there were several) and the second was seafood. Pretty amazing.

At 2 I met Professor Sorogas and he, the dept. chair and I chatted a little while about responsibilities. Prof. S had suggested I compile a list of courses where I felt competent to guest lecture. He provided that list to the chair. The chair's suggestion was that instead of me being a vagabond, going from class to class, that he and I could team teach his comparative media systems class, where we could cover the various topics (media law, news reporting, etc.).

Prof. Sorogas and I were joined by Dr. Karatza and headed to lunch (yes - lunch at about 2:30-3 p.m.). She's Greek but spent her early years in Australia and schooled in the Netherlands. She suggested that I might collaborate with some of her Dutch colleagues in Greece. I said I thought it was funny to go to Greece to collaborate with Dutch, but she rightly pointed out they're all Europeans.

Prof. S walked us past the main university building but it was locked. He explained it might have closed at 2 p.m but it may have been due to the loudspeakers and group forming in front of the building. He said the space in front of the main university building was similar to the spot in front of the White House as a place for protesters to gather as a free speech zone.

Prof. S invited Kim and me to a concert this evening at the Hellenic American Union. He's president of the alumni association there: 800 Greeks who have degrees from US universities. Wow - social events two nights in a row. I sure don't do this in the US ;)

Here's a short video of a children's choir we saw performing Sunday in Syntagma Square.

Went downtown today on a few matters of business. First I want to mention the cat-and-mouse game played by the police and the immigrants who illegally sell on the street. Unfortunately you can't see in the photo, but as these cops walk down the street, the sellers take off running. The cops don't make any effort to run after them or anything. They appear to do it just to disrupt them. It worked exactly the same way in Italy. Salesmen lay out their wares on blankets so as to be able to collect them quickly and run. It's kind of comical.

This picture shows a few things. First you can see the immigrants selling on the sidewalk (no cops around). Second you can see the graffiti spray painted on the side of the building. The university was the central staging area for the student riots in December and there is still cleaning up to do.

Kim and I got invited by Professor Sorogas to attend the Greek Premiere of Frost/Nixon. The US Ambassador will be there. I guess it's a big deal.

This morning Kim and I headed north of the downton to try to attend a Roman Catholic mass in English. I looked online for listings and found three different lists, each of which listed different churches offering English-language mass. We decided to try the only one with a morning service. We took the tram to the subway and walked right to the church, thanks to Kim's navigational skills. Unfortunately, the mass wasn't in English. Oh, well. Next week we try one of the other two. Afterwards we got on the subway and went back south, stopping a little before reaching the center and walking back. We were able to wander aimlessley, just looking at

stuff. Until we got to the Plaka - an area just SE of downtown. We weren't terribly picky about where we ate - we just wanted some place where we could get authentic Greek food. So, this became our first stop. Surprisingly they had pork, chicken and beef, but no lamb. We "settled" for one pork, one chicken.

If you read the link to Plaka that I have above you don't really need to read through anything I have to say. Still, I'll tell you that we saw lots of interesting stuff. Kim already pointed out the bracelet she wants for our wedding anniversary
(in May!!!) though it's unlikely I'll ever be able to

find my way back to the same shop through all the winding streets. It was rather crowded: I wonder if it's more or less so on a weekday. Talked with one shop owner who had lived in Boston for 25 years. Finally decided that if he didn't return to Greece right away he never would.

While some of the shopkeepers were subdued, many others called out to passersby to coax them into coming in to see the great deals. They had an uncanny knack for knowing the native language
of whatever person walked by. One elderly
woman followed Kim around for several minutes

(seemed longer) trying to sell her a tablecloth.

Some of the sidewalks were almost impassable.

We were having a lovely walk when Kim stepped funny on the uneven pavement and wrenched her back. Not so terribly that she couldn't move, but enough so we decided that it was time to start walking in the direction of the tram station to head home. It was just as well because by the
time we made it back, we had been out for about
six hours. Don't want to push too much this early
in the trip after Kim's still recovering from the
trip.

Kim insisted on taking this picture of this knife rack. It sells for 158 Euros. I think I should be afraid that she was so amused by it.

The plaka has more than just food and shops. This is the excavation associated with Hadrian's library.

Nothing much else to report. I talked with my mom this evening. A Sunday can't pass no matter
where we are. Florida's had a cold snap - it's been
much warmer here in Greece.