Hello,

      I have been here for about two weeks and I am starting to feel settled in.  Although I am still busy all the time, I am starting to get into a daily routine.  As I mentioned last time my Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes it is only me and another girl.  Well my Tuesdays and Thursday classes are much better.  I am taking a Greek class, which all the study abroad students are in it so I pretty much know everybody! Which is awesome because it is going to be a difficult class so it will be great that we can all study together!! Then I am taking a math class which so far is going good.  Then my other class is Political Organization.  This class is very interesting.  I get to hear the Greek views on politics and how they see their economic.  It is especially important because Greece doesn't have a very stable economy right now and they are going through a hardship so I learn why they think they are going through that and what they think needs to change.  It is very interesting.  The first day they were having a debate and it started out in English and then half way through the class they were all speaking in Greek.  I sat there for about 45 minutes having no clue what they were saying!!!  But then after class I told my professor that I don't speak Greek and so the next class period went very well!
      Lately I have been working out a lot and its very fun.  Since we walk everywhere here I need to be in shape otherwise I get tired easily.  So lately my friends and I have been going to the gym and swimming in the Olympic size pool!  SO big! But it is great because the other day I swam in the same lane Michael Phelps swam in... lane 6.  Although it was the practice pool for the Olympics, it is still cool to say that! Some of my friends and I are thinking about running the Athens marathon in November.  Although we haven't signed up yet, we have been working out and trying to train for it.  The marathon in Athens was one of the first marathons ever invented so it would be very cool to take part of that. 
       On Saturday the 14th, the whole group of study abroad students went on an excursion to the island called Hydra.  We took a ferry to that island and it took about 2 hours on the boat to get there.  We slept on the way there and listened to music and relaxed! When we arrived to Hydra, the view is breathtaking.  It is so surreal and beautiful.  We arrived and saw donkeys everywhere because there are no cars on the island.  We could take a donkey and tour the city but we didn't do that.  Although I wanted to!  Right away when we got there the whole group went to a beach for about an hour because we had to meet for lunch at 2.  The water is crystal clear and very rocky.  The color of the water is a clear blue and turquoise.  I tried adding a photo but it wont let me.  If you are my Facebook friend, I uploaded many photos of Hydra.  My friend has a go pro camera, and we took many photos underwater and I cannot wait to see what they look like!!  Then we went to lunch and it was great!! They  brought bread out, a salad, and friend spinach right away.  It was delicious!! Then we had a few different options for what we wanted as our main course meal.  I had Moussaka.  That is like a lasagna with eggplant and cheese and a breading around it.  It was delicious!  Then they gave us watermelon for dessert.  Of course there were seed in the watermelon and so we had a pile of them at our table and we were flicking them across to the other table, acting like little kids.  But it was very funny and we all got a good laugh out of it.  After lunch me and some girls went back to the beach to enjoy the sun and some cliff jumping!  Very fun but difficult to climb the rocks because there wasn't a clear path to climb.  Very scary!  I almost fell so I stopped climbing and jumped from where I was at.  Don't worry I am safe!  Nothing happened to me :) We also got some videos of that on the go pro!  After the beach we started walking back into town at like 7 because we were leaving at 9.  We sat down and had some crepes.  I had a crepe with chocolate ice cream, bananas, and biscuit.  Very delicious.  We did a little shopping but I didn't get anything.  We got on the ferry and didn't get back home until about midnight.  I got in the shower and went straight to bed.  It was a very long but beautiful, enjoyable day in Hydra.  I didn't want to leave.  Now today, I am planning on relaxing all day and doing some homework!!

xoxo Kayla