Things so far: day 1 and 2

I wish I knew the way to be poetic and informative, but I don't. So sorry for the dryness of some of this. Also, it's going to be long. Anyone reading this knows I run verbose. Very verbose...

I spent a lot of time on airplanes yesterday, or at least it feels like it. Our plane from Chicago took off about quarter to five, in the light. I said a mental goodbye to the skyline of downtown as we taxied and then we were off. The first few hours of the flight were spent with Andy and I coming up with the great idea of a party plane- it's a party bus, but in the air. There can be themes and everything. Turbulence wouldn't occur, it'd just be the bass. And that point it started to get dark. We basically flew into night. The stars look beautiful at that level; I felt like the big dipper was my companion. I slept maybe an hour, I don't really know, I just know that I started listening to a Buddy Guy album, then all of a sudden there was no music and I was waking up.
But eventually we were flying over land again, but I couldn't tell at first. Then I saw the dawn break from 4000 feet up after an abridged night. We landed in Brussels and it was morning.

We had to go through security again in Brussels and no joke, it was terrible. It was just unorganized and hot and I wasn't pleased about it as my body felt like it was still 2 am or so. But then we got through that and the airport was fine. They actually had a lot of really nice stores like, oh you know, a Ferragamo store and a Burberry store in the airport. We found our gate and waited. The flight from Brussels got delayed about an hour; although at the gate it only said 20 minutes, we didn't end up taking off until around 11:30. Our next connecting flight was schedule to take off at 12:50, and it was an hour and a half flight to that connecting flight. I spent that flight pretty much freaking out about what we were going to do, of course getting some quality John Mayer listening time in trying to calm me down (didn't actually work). When we finally did land, we checked the board in the Budapest airport and thank God, the flight to Thessaloniki was delayed an hour as well. We got our boarding passes for the flight and proceeded to figure out European payphones to call the study abroad coordinator to let her know our flight had been delayed and to expect us later.

As we were descending into Thessaloniki, my classics nerd brain started going a little berserk. This is the damn Aegean Sea! it was shouting, this little mini-Sienkewicz/Mrs Longhenry crossbreed person in my head, This is the birthplace of Western Civilization! The rest of my brain was like "this is where I can get some damn sleep!" We landed and get off the plane onto the tarmac, and I sort of feel excitement in my first step, or I want to feel it. I really was exhausted. I was thinking excitement in the first step. We got our luggage and then we met the study abroad coordinator and then we were in taxis being taken to our apartments.

My impressions of Greece from the taxi were as follows: Wow, it's Chicago in a different language. With a TON of graffiti. I saw an Anarchy symbol and a pot-related piece or art amongst the other tons of Greek words tagged on the side of everything. I mean, everything. There were apparently a lot of rallies and the like here this past weekend because the Prime Minister was down here and people were demonstrating their unhappiness to him. Not violently, but just demonstratively haha.

I got dropped off at my apartment and shown around and within minutes I was on my own again. Cue the panic. I could get online really easily though so I emailed my mom and updated all my stuff and then realized that Twitter was going to be the way to get a hold of Andy until I get a Greek cell phone. I then eventually figured out how to get to Andy's apartment and got to use my Ancient Greek knowledge to try to communicate to a lady that I'm American and don't speak Greek but I'm looking for this street that I had written down. It was the next street over, which I had thought but I was confused.
I also got virtually locked out of my room because these keys are so effing difficult to operate so I had a fun time going to a room above mine and asking for help, but that's how I met other people. Met a few more people last night and eventually just went to bed.

My roommate got here at 8:45 this morning and I s hella confused by the doorbell because at first I thought it was my alarm clock. Nope.

But that's all I have time for, Andy is here.