Celebrating the End of our Program

What a fun night! I just got home a while ago from a jolly evening celebrating the end of our program and our successful final presentations.

The day started with Maggie and me going to buy jersey t-shirts for the Olympiakos soccer game tomorrow. I now have a nice red and white Olympiakos jersey with a big, fat Vodafone logo across the front. Pictures of this when we go to the game tomorrow.

Other than that, the day was spent working on our final presentations and papers. Jordan and I finished writing ours, and then we just spent the rest of the afternoon marveling at how much rain there was. It's still raining!

In the early evening, we hosted our Metamorphosis Conference that Taso puts on every year to showcase our research findings. It's also a chance to invite folks who've supported our program such as folks at the Norwegian Institute as well as a number of folks we interviewed like Doros, Georgina, and Maria--all of whom were so kind as to accept our invitation. Knut and Christopher, our Norwegian neighbors upstairs as well as Maggie's mom and Nektaria, one of the teachers from my education focus group, came for our presentations too.

After some lovely hor d'oeuvres and white wine, we presented our findings and then had a great open discussion with our audience. It was actually quite intriguing. We actually continued some of the discussion well after our presentations over more snacks and drinks.

Finally, we invited everyone to join us for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. I was able to finally buy my aunt the t-shirt she'd been wanting from there. : ) It looks good!

Dinner was delicious. I had an S.O.B. burger, which actually stands for South-of-the-border burger...quite spicy. It was great to have almost all of our guests join us for dinner as well. We got a few great pictures!

After our dinner, a few of us decided to head out for drinks. Mike and Nas joined us at this point (although Nas was able to make it in time to grab some food from the Hard Rock Cafe). We all then headed out (in the pouring rain) to the James Joyce Irish Pub I went to with Maggie and her mom yesterday.

Mike's part Irish and part British, so he was quite insistent on going there. I didn't mind except for all the water dripping on our table outside. I don't know what's gotten into the weather...it's been pouring rain for the past day or so!

I am actually extremely happy about today's presentations, and I'm thrilled that so many of the folks I personally invited actually came. I had such a blast hanging out with them, and I even made new friends. I didn't know Christopher all that well even though he lives above us. Among our neighbors, I've gotten to know Knut the most, but I found out that Christopher actually lived in Berlin for quite some time and speaks German.

So...we spoke in German for about ten minutes. It was awesome! I was honestly quite shocked that I understand 90% of what he said and managed to understand the conversation even without catching every word. Then when I spoke, it actually came out quite nicely, and even Christopher mentioned that I was pretty fluent. Yes!

Oh, and also, when we were having our beers, we were talking about his American friends who spoke German with a thick American accent. So I asked if he heard an American accent in my German, and he said, "No, not at all." Imagine that...well, I'm thrilled that my German isn't quite as shoddy as I thought it was. : )

Anyway, Christopher was quite an accomplished scholar already as he's probably around 30-35 years old and is now working on his post-doc studies. He finished his PhD earlier this year and is now traveling in Greece and hosting a lecture next Wednesday. I believe Taso's trying to make it.

I am aiming to hang out with all my Greek friends next Wednesday as it's my last night in Athens before I return to Seattle. It should be a blast. For now though, I must go to bed so we can roam the city tomorrow, buy a few more things, and get ready for what should be an amazing soccer game.

Toodles,

Sam