Meteora and Thessalonica (for real this time)

Ok, so I left off on my last blog with the first monastery and the balcony picture spot. Coastes, our guide always says, "We may stop here so you can make picture." It would sound even better if you could hear it in his Greek accent. A quick note on our guide. He is a very knowledgeable man with history degrees and it seems to me that he has extensive training in languages. He is always talking about the orginis of a word, or the Greek root (makes sense, he's Greek). He probably knows more about the Enlgish language and how it works than we do. So we got to the second monestary and I already mentioned how cute it was. We all took a little bathroom break. Some things I have learned about the bathroom in Europe. 1. They are called water closets. I don't know exactly why. But you search for the letters WC if you want to find a bathroom. 2. You cannot flush toilet paper. I didn't figure that one out for a few days. My apologies to the Greek plumbers. 3. Many toilets here do not have toilet seats. I don't know why that is. When I told Dad that, he thought it was only in the men's rooms. We joked one night at dinner that the lack of toilet seats was the root of the financial crisis in Greece. 4. Men and Women's restrooms are not always seperate. We have been to several WC that have a small wall dividing the two side, so sicne the women's line is longer and goes beyond the men's side, we just turn our heads. Very awkward, but apparentently not for them. So speaking of WC, we encountered our most unique bathroom yet at the nunnery. When I was walking to the bathroom, my Dad was walking out and said, "You must be desperate if you have to pee here." That's not a good sign. I wasn't desperate, but intrigured. So I continued. The women's line was long so I had to time to gather tips from the other well traveled women who have encountered a 'hole' in the ground and two foot holds. My mind was racing with horrible images and I immediately started thinking the worse. I was scared I was going to drop my camera, my sun glasses, my shoe down the hole. I guess sometimes it's best to think the worse, because then it might not be that bad, which was true in this case. The 'hole' was small about a few inches wide (my shoe would haave a hard time fitting down there) and it was all porclein. Pretty nice, I thought. Then it hit me. I didn't ask the ladies which was to face. Forwards or bbackwards. I tried both positions to see which made the most sense. I won't give a play by play here, but it was actually quite easy, especially since I was wearing a skirt. I don't know how it would work if I would have worn pant, but I guess that lesson is for another day. LLet me jsut say, I would take these 'squatty potties' over the outhouse at the Phoenix Gold Mine anyday. (4th grade team mates, you know what I'm talking about). OOk, since none of you thoguht to youselves, I want to read all about the bathrooms in Greece, I will move on to the more interesting, historical facts. We started in the museum which held some really old documents written on parchment apper. The oldest document was from the 5th century. There were many paintings and Rick pionted out a painting of Jesus hholding his hands in the formation like an OK sign. The only difference was his middle finger connected to his thumb. RRick said this is a reverant sign and the Pope is the only one allowed to do that sign to others. Coastas said it means a few things. One, the cirlce means completition and unity. Two, there are three remaining fingers sticking up,w hich stands for the the trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What's interesting is that latter that day II saw another painting of Jesus doing the same sign with his hand. We then went into the church and talkeda bout the paitings in this church as well. I noticed some similar paintings from the previous monastery which I tought was intersting. I don't know why there were some same pictures, but there was. Coastes taught us about the paint that was used. The first kind of paint was fresca, which was painted on the wet plaster. That was the kind of paint in the first monastery. The second kind, used in the nunnery was tempra, which is a eegg yolk, mixed with vinegar and then the colors (either from berries, or dirt, etc). The last kind of paintings, still used today is oil painting. I could defintiely see a difference in the paint. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside so I won't be able to show you any pictures. I'll have to sit down and try to write more about the pictures later. Once we left Meteora, we drove north towards the city of Thessalonica, sometimes spelled Thessaloniki, which is the second lasrgest city in Greece. Lookingat my notes, Thessalonica was the chief city of Macedonia and the seat of Roman aadministration in the century before Christ. Once we got to Thess. (can I just abbrivated it? It's a long city to type, especailly when I am now typing on my iphone not my ipad - too many technology compliplations). Ok, once we got to Tess. we went straight to the middle of the city and found the middle of the ancient town. I thought it was intersting that the middle of the city 2 thousand years ago is still the middle of the city. Upon first glance, we saw a theatre and a huge large grass area. Starting is verse 5 of Acts 17, we read about the place that we were standing right in front of. Acts. 17:5 "But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the market-place (ag-gora, means marketplace in greek, whci is what the area we wwere looking at is called) formed a mob and started a riot in the city. they rushed to Jason's house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd." This ag-goa area was fascinating and has much to be discovered. Coastas thinks there are more ruins under the 'box of flats' (apartments) next to the ag-gora. They have built an enteracne to a museum which was to be underground, but with the financial crisis, there was no money to continue to work there. Then we walked towards the St. Demetrios Church above the ag-gora. One really funny thing that happened here was, Coastes was talkikng to us about the church and what we would see inside. Since we had been by some really loud tourist groups earlier int he day at the monastery, Coastes was warning us to stay quiet and nof lash photography if there is a serviec going on. So he said, "When we go in we are going to be quiet." Not a half a second later, the chruch bells went off right above us. GONG BONG GONG! So much for being quiet. It was litearlly hilarious timing. I happened to also see the preist coming out of the church and watched three people say good bye to him and bow and kiss his hand. It was really odd watching that. Then the priest went to his car. That just extended the weridness. For some reaons, I would think a Greek Orthodox priest would not be so modern. I bet he had an iphone in his pocket. When we entered the church there were women and children begging for food at the front of the church. The unemployment rrate is up to 24% now and of the remaining workforce, half of them have seen their salaries cut in half. They just seeme so desperate. It was sad. Theyw ere trying to selling travel size tissue packs. Dad gave one little girl all the cahnge he had, but it was US money. I don't know what if she can do anything with it. Inside the church, they started going the vespers, which is the chanting. There were about 20 people in the congregation and many areas to light candles around the perimeter. You could also write your prayers on a piece of paper and leave them in a bakset. We walked byt he confessional room which had a glass window and we saw a women talking directly to the priest. They were in the same room and there was no divider. Coastes said that long ago when the Orthosox and Catholic church split, each took some different traditions. Either the lady had messed up a lot or hadn't been to confessional lately, because she was reading from a sheet of notebook paper. Interesting. We then boared the bus and went towards our hotel - the Meditteran Palace in Thess, right close to the water. Coastes informed us of our agenda for the next day and it included a wake-up call of 6:30 and be on the bus 7:30. Coastes told us that there was free wifi which prompted Pasotr Rick to stand up and perform a hail mary. It was funny. Us Americans are obsessed with our wifi. DDinner was interesting. We ate a large dinner table 10 other people from our group. We sat next to Chaze and Chelsea and talked to them about the torndo is Joplin and their schooling. Dinner was served in four courses. The appetizer was a flaky pastery with 'cream of mushroom soup' (as one lay put it) over the shell with small mushrooms in it. It was ok. nnext was the salad. It had brown vinergatte dressing,w hcih was disgusting. Dad loved the salad, but then we saw it had pinon nuts on it. He asked the waiter for a new salad and I asked him to get our guide to tell the waiters exactly what he needed. Even though I'm trained in epi-pens, I don't want to use one. I keep telling Dad he needs to add the word, "deadly" to his standard allergic statment. They need to understand they he will die, not just get a rash. Anyway the new salad came and dad ate most of it and then saw another pinon nut at the bottom. URggg! The main course was pork with a mussel cream sauce. It was ok, but I idn't eat it all. I did get dessert, even thought I thought the waiter might not give me any because I wasn't a good eater. It was basically neopolatian ice cream in a sugar cone cup. Small diced apples were on top of the ice cream and it was quite good. The best thing I ate that evening. I typed for my blog in the evening in the lobby/bar area. Many people were still talking about the Manning deal and I had a great time listening to the radio. Tonight. I am typing on the Messazinine level. Something weird is going on with the bluetooth keyboard, so I ended up typing on my iphone and listening to the radion on the ipad. I just had a nice converstaion with Mindy, who ironically went with my youth group to church camp when I was in about 5 grade. Crazy!! I'm hoping for wifi on the bus tomorrow so I can catch up on my blog. I am only one day behind right now. The day after tomorrow we leave on the cruise for Turkey. Pray for wifi on the boat! Love to all reading this!