Time to catch up for the past few days

What a busy past few days! We traveled all over the place, feasted, danced and swam a lot. I mean a lot. It started to get into typical Santorini heat here and it's been terrible For our past experiment, we have been looking at species diversity on large and small plants of the same size.

We would watch a plant and record the amount of bugs visiting it and then cut almost all of the flowers off of the big plant and out them on the small plants to see if that affected the amount of pollinators that visited. We even saw a turtle the second time we went up to record. 

Yurtle the turtle! And then we went on a terrifying hike up the mountain to visit an abandoned church. I had to become a goat to get up there. The paths were just big enough for a one person to walk at a time, often not even enough room for that.

Here's the side of the church we climbed to.

Conquered the mountain!

While we were there, we climbed into an old, dry cistern. It was huge. 

And Levi and I found a hallway clinging to the side of the cliff and decided to climb into that. It was really cool, with a beautiful view and little rooms off to the side. I even managed to get a giant thorn stuck under my finger nail while I was there.

On Friday, we had a field trip to a couple different archaeological sites, such as Ancient Thira. The buildings were still in great shape, some of them even went through a volcano.

These are from the first site that is on the mountain right behind our hotel. It was very cold and windy though and I forgot to bring my hoodie up with me. The second place got buried by ash and is kept in a building. 

The weekend consisted of feasting, dancing and swimming. And reading 160 pages of Darwin in one sitting. Over all a good weekend. Then yesterday my professor decided it was snorkeling day because it was so hot, so for two hours, I swam with the fishies. Today is data analysis and writing our second lab report! Not so fun. 

How many pictures of raindrops can you take?

Today was rainy almost all afternoon, which meant that I was finally spared from hiking up and down mountains for a day. Instead we discussed theories and talked about future homework. First lab report due Friday! When we breaked early after a downpour, I discovered that our door shutters were covered in raindrops, which made for perfect pictures. So, have some pictures!

Americans in Greece eating Chinese food.

Yesterday marked the beginning of our regular schedule for classes. We start out with Greek lessons and break for half an hour then my class has discussion and data checking, then an hour break for lunch. I decided to make pasta for lunch. It was really delicious actually. And I cooked in the smallest kitchen ever.

But it all worked out! and I had a wonderful lunch on the terrace. Then we went out into the field again to do the same experiment as the day before. This time, thankfully, we got a gentler slope that was full of grass and flowers, not thorns. 

And the view, of course, is wonderful.

Along the way we worked on our plant identification. So far I've been pretty god with my knowledge of plants, And I'm pretty confident that I can now live if stranded on a Greek island. We then had about a 45 minutes break before hiking, which meant sitting around the pool and listening to music. 

We hiked for about three hours to a church on the other side of the mountain, which meant walking all the way around the mountain. But it  was totally worth it.

The way down had plenty of places for pictures, Which meant that the walk back too quite awhile because we stopped so many times to take pictures.

 

The cats are all super sweet here too and I get the best picture of them. When my one roommate, Katie, and I got back, we found out Mandie had found a praying mantis in our room and trapped it under a wine glass until we could all see it. It was just a little fellow and once we got pictures, it was set free.

Katie and I decided to mix up our dinner and went out to one of the three Chinese places in Kamari. The little old lady was adorable and I decided that I really just want to be an old Asian lady. My hat makes me feel like a little Asian lady which makes me feel happy. Apparently we had a thunderstorm last night that I didn't even know about. Class wears me out so much every day. Today, we will hopefully get done early since we don't have hiking and then I'll be able to go swimming again while it's still warm.

Nothing like the beaches here!

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Today was another tiring day. We started late because it's Sunday but we once again hiking up the sides of mountains. This time we were measuring biodiversity along a 30 meter tape. But that also meant getting the tape straight up the slope to measure... Which to say the least was very painful. The boys in our group volunteered to climb the slope of death and count the plants. Needless to say, they were very scratched up. Us girls also managed to get pretty scratched up just walking to the site. But since the boys had it worse, we decided to buy them ice cream in thanks. 

After we finished, it was time to relax on the beach with our ice cream. Nothing like sitting on the black sand beaches of Santorini!

It's Katie's birthday so later tonight we went out with her. Our whole group decided to throw her a surprise birthday party at a bar and it was wonderful. She never even knew what was happening. Tomorrow? More hiking and more beach! I'm beginning to see a pattern here...

In which I run into a rock and and almost a jellyfish

So started the first day of classes. Our morning started out with Greek lessons with Peter at the cliff jumping site for an hour. We learned how to say hello, thank you, your welcome, and help! Where is the toilet? Among other things. Then we broke off into our separate classes. Ecology class started off with selecting a spot and then recording everything in it in our field notebooks and coming up with questions about it. I found this wonderful weevil resting in a thistles in my section among other smaller bugs. We broke for lunch for an hour, which Kayla and I managed to get a jump off the cliff to cool off before class started again. This time, we climbed up old terraces that used to be gardens to halfway up the mountain it seemed. We were even walking on a path that was thousands of years old! Along the way, Laura, our professor, introduced us to many plants. I found out that I can get free food from the cliffs, such as leeks, thyme, and rosemary. I will be taking advantage of that later on. I also found out that almost every native Greek species of plant is terrifying. They are all covered in thorns, or their leaves are hard and thorn like. 

Needless to say, I got pretty scratched up on the walk. I also managed to run into a rock while grabbing a Caper bush flower and got a couple nice cuts on my leg. So far all my cuts and scratches are on one leg. Kinda odd. We finally made it to this special bush that really only grows on this section of the mountain an no where else. It's also very poisonous. We scrambled down the mountain side to go on another hike. Kayla and Jamie and I all went off road down the mountain.

We managed not to go rolling down the steep cliffs and prepared to hike back up a mountain. This time, we were headed to a church tucked in by a cave system. The stairs were terribly steep. Sure got my work out for the day in. but the little church was beautiful.

In the back of the cave was a little spring, which is probably fed from a pocket of water in the rock, not an actual fresh spring. There actually aren't any natural fresh springs on Santorini. The walk back down was just as hard as the walk up because you had to keep from stumbling down the mountain. 

After that, it was time to cool off and relax for a bit, which meant cliff jumping!

You can get a sense of just how clear the water is here. It's stunning. 

After I jumped a couple times, I decided to look at fish again. There were even more then the first day and the water was a little warmer as well. I was exploring under a rock and started to come back up, and to my great surprise and fright, I almost came up into a jellyfish! Thankfully I had looked up quick enough to avoid it. It was small and pinkish, rose in color with long stinger. And it was swimming where people had been jumping earlier, I can't believe no one hit it. Definitely was not expecting to see it! On the top of the cliff, because the water is so clear I was able to see it, and got a picture, though it's very hard to see it.

You can just make it out on the right side of the pictures. It's so crazy I almost swam into one. After supper, I was so tired I managed to pass out at nine thirty. Well, what to expect when I've been hiking up and down mountains all day?

We finally made it to Santorini!

We did it, we made it to Santorini. It's as beautiful as you would think it is with it's black beaches and crystal clear blue waters and white buildings. The contrasts of this city are wonderful. First thing first, we had another scavenger hunt to get us familiar with the area. Sadly, we only got fourth this time, though that still means we get a $10 lunch with Peter, the leader. Then after that, we hiked up one of the mountains, I'm not kidding you about this.

See the mountain in the background? There's a little dip to the right of it and we hiked all the way up there. I'm going to be to fit by the end of this it will be crazy. 

As beautiful as it looks, it was very hot. But thankfully Zeus smiled on us and for the last half of the hike we were shaded by a cloud while the city was still in sun. It was wonderful and made it so much easier to hike. Today, we will hike even more. Which is good because I need to work off all of the food I ate at the feast last night. As is typical of me, on the way down I took many close up pictures of plants.

I think I need some kind of job where all  do it take macro pictures of plants. Though the foliage here is dangerous and spiky and I got stuck quite a few times.One plant even managed to bruise me where I got stuck by it. I didn't even know that was possible. So far I've been doing good on the staying not sunburned, thanks to a giant floppy hat and sunblock (Thank you Athens airport for tossing my sunscreen...) so I have hope for the rest of the month in being able to avoid the sun and it's scary side effects. After hiking, my roommates and I decided to go to the beach but ended up seeing some other people cliff jumping, so naturally we joined them. The water is so clear you can see the bottom from the top of the little cliff and watch fish swim around the rocks. It was also a rich blue, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. I worked up my courage and jumped from the smallest cliff. It was freezing cold. It's still early in the summer here and the water and air aren't as warm as they'll be later in the month (Kill me now if it gets hotter) I gave up on jumping for now until it warms up, but I was able to get someones goggles and I went exploring under water. It was seriously like watching the Discovery Channel it was so crystal clear and the fish so colorful. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, (Though I couldn't have taken pictures underwater anyways) but it was so  beautiful. There was little rainbow colored fish and red ones with blue fins and other tiny little fish all over the place. I even had a staring contest with a fish on the sea floor.  He was only inches from my face and wouldn't back off, so naturally we just stared at each other. It was an experience you have to have. We then went and feasted (So much food and wine) until about eleven. Today, we start course work. It's going to be a blast