Whoops

I woke up three hours after my alarm was supposed to go off this morning. In fact, by the time I opened my eyes and realized it was 11 AM, I should've been halfway through my meeting with my Fulbright faculty advisor already.

This is surely a sign that I am getting old...I can no longer function on less than 6 hours of sleep. I went to bed around 5 AM after finally finishing my now 25-page Fulbright project report and was supposed to get up at 8 AM. Yeah...didn't even hear the alarm.

I called my professor though, and she laughed. She's the greatest. She told me it was no problem, and that we could meet on Tuesday morning instead. Am I lucky or what?

In any case, I emailed her a copy of the report, and honestly, I am not all that happy with it. As much as I enjoyed the project, writing it all up was probably the least enjoyable thing ever. But you have to do that, right?

Actually, I even got notes from fellow Fulbrighters asking me if we needed to write up some final report since I posted a few times about it on Facebook. Haha. I assured them that no, we do not need to write up a report. I was just a Streber and told my professor that I'd write this after we chatted last month.

In all honesty, Fulbright does not require any sort of final project, etc. to turn in. We just have to fill out two reports: a mid-year report and a year-end report. I finished both already, so this paper I wrote was extra and of my own accord. So I really shouldn't be complaining...

Last night though, I also hosted another old HIA buddy of mine who had come to town for our HIA International Conference. He needed a place for the night, so after asking Lenz, he told him he could crash at our place—if he was okay entertaining himself while I slaved away at my report.

So all in all, I suppose it turned out to be somewhat of a blessing that I missed my meeting this morning, because then I was able to catch up with Zach over fried rice.

He's currently a Peace Corps member in Moldova, teaching health education. So I picked his brain about Peace Corps, since I've considered it for a few years now. The more I learn about it, the more I can see myself doing it, especially now that I know even more firmly that I'd like to stay away from academia. The type of hands-on, community-centered projects through Peace Corps seem fantastic, and frankly, I'd love to learn another language.

I can imagine spending two years in a South American country and learning Spanish through intensive, "sink-or-swim" type of immersion language-learning experiences. Or perhaps Portuguese if I were sent to Brazil? Who knows. You can't exactly choose where to go with Peace Corps, so I'd have to select a region. Plus I'd have to pass all the medical and legal clearances. People get rejected too!

Anyway, tonight, our conference starts, so I'm off to Unter den Linden in a short while. Should be fun hanging out with all these intellectuals again. :)

Pictures from the conference later this weekend. Also, I'll upload the report once it's been fully edited and ready for distribution. It's still in draft form, even though the cover looks nice. :P

Toodles!

Sam

Being Studious at Home (Trying...)

I've shut myself at home since returning from Greece, because my Fulbright report for my professor is due on Thursday. Unfortunately, it's driving me nuts as my dislike for doing academic research has only grown stronger through this Fulbright year (sorry to my friends and family who are incredible academics...academia just ain't for me).

Frankly, this morning, I spent more time working on an exciting potential new business venture called Americans Living Overseas and doing work for Scholarship Junkies than I did on my research project. Don't worry though, I made up for it by doing work on my project all afternoon. Everything will be done by Thursday.

Not being able to feel free to go out and enjoy the Berlin summer takes a toll though, so I've been doing my best to cook good food so I don't feel quite so cooped up at home. All I need is some ice cold beer...

For dinner today, I decided to recreate some food Brandon and I made in Athens. I marinated two chicken thighs with olive oil, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper as well as a dab of honey.

I tossed in a few cloves of garlic and then stuck it in the oven for 25 minutes. Man, I could smell it as I made my Greek salad too. Intoxicating.

After quickly making my Greek salad (without tomatoes though), I poured myself a glass of white wine too. Actually, the wine sucked since it's one of those cheap carton kinds you can buy at the grocery store. No more than 2€ for the whole thing. At least it was nicely chilled.

In about 22 minutes, the chicken was cooked all the way through, and it was ready to take out. Smelled, looked, and sounded (crackling) good. And it was.

So even without noodles or rice (as I typically have), I had a very filling dinner. An ice cold German beer right now would be heavenly too. Gotta wait to go to the grocery store with my roommate to pick up a new crate with his car. He just got back from his own week-long vacation to Spain. We seem to always be traveling.

Now, it's back to my report as I have two more full days to finish up this report. I can show you the tentative cover of my report though. I made some changes since I made it last night, but if my excitement in making it is any indication, I had more fun making the cover than writing the actual report itself. Hmm...I suspect that's probably not a good thing.

If the cover looks familiar to you at all, it may be because I drew inspiration from the U.S. Department of Education's publication, Blueprint for Reform. If you're curious, I did not plagiarize. :) I just created my own cover drawing from the Dept. of Ed's cover for inspiration. If you have any comments though, I'm all ears.

In any case, I'll post the final report on my blog when I finally finish it. I warn you now though: lower your expectations. I learned a lot from this year, and I would definitely not do the project the same way knowing what I know now. But then again, that's part of the Fulbright mission—to provide young scholars with invaluable experience abroad in preparation for a productive career.

Anyway, counting down the hours till Thursday...

Sam

Technology Failed

I just found out that those of you on my blog update email list haven't been getting blog updates since June 3. Oops. I don't know what happened, but Blogger failed big time. Go back and read my blog updates since then! There's a lot of exciting, amusing, and plain interesting stuff and pictures in them (especially from Greece)! :)

One More Month

In exactly a month from now, I will be on an airplane flying over the Atlantic on my way back to Seattle. On one hand, it depresses me. On the other hand, it excites me to know I will see my friends and family back in the States.

My last month here is quite packed, even though my grant period officially ends on July 15. First and foremost, I am in the midst of writing my final Fulbright report that I am eager to finish and be done with. I'm not really even bothering about doing things until I finish it by Thursday.

Then next weekend will be busy as I will be attending seminars and workshops as part of the second annual HIA International Conference. Thankfully, it's in Berlin this year, so I really don't need to travel anywhere. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have signed up for it, given how close it is to my Fulbright deadlines. It will be fun to catch up with Senior Fellows from my year (2008) and meet plenty of new ones as well.

On July 4th (Happy Birthday, USA!), Brandon has organized a day of softball and grilling for the Fulbright Diversity Institute, which is a group of students from the University of Kentucky visiting Berlin for a few months, I think. In any case, he invited me to join them, so I'm excited to hang out with other Americans on Independence Day.

After that, I'll be spending plenty of time with Dream Project people, since many of them are coming to town, either through the UW Honors Summer in Berlin program or simply to visit me. I've already promised that I would take them to a beer garden and grilling in a park. We also are planning to watch Harry Potter 7 Part 2 when it comes out on July 15. 'Twill be fun indeed.

Today though, I woke up after sleeping for 15 hours. I guess I really was exhausted from the past week of vacationing that I needed a break from my vacation. My foot felt a whole lot better, and it's been much less sore today. I even went and bought 50€ worth of groceries this morning.

Tonight, I decided to be a bit more adventurous with my food (it's not very adventurous at all), and I combined some ideas I got in Greece and Germany to stuff peppers with seasoned ground beef and baked 'em in tomato sauce.

Here, I'll even walk you through the steps since I was so excited about this. First, I chopped up an onion and who knows how many cloves of garlic. Then I mixed them into the ground beef with olive oil, white wine, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper. You can see that I already hollowed out the bell peppers too.

Then I stuffed the peppers—not too tightly, just enough to fill the space. Didn't want to worry about undercooked meat, you know?

Then I added the tomato sauce and some more basil. I also threw in some of the leftover onions and garlic into the sauce too. I also drizzled a bit more olive oil in.

20 minutes later, the meat was cooked all the way through, and the whole platter was smelling delicious.

I'd cooked up some fusilli pasta too and seasoned that with sesame oil and a bit of oregano. Good stuff.

Delicious. I should've seasoned the beef with more salt though. Otherwise, it was quite tasty and honestly did not take long at all. Boy, if I compare what I was cooking a year ago to what I'm cooking now, I'd say my Fulbright year has been a success. Thank you, U.S. government (edit: and German government), for such a wonderful year of learning and exploration. :)

Now back to work...

Sam

Goodbye (for now), Greece

For the first time this week, I woke up not grumpy, even though I again only got a few hours of sleep. Figures it'd be the day I head back to Berlin...

Brandon and I woke up a bit early to pack up and clean Doros's apartment before heading out to Exarchia to say goodbye to our friends.

Even though it was bright and sunny, today was actually windier than the past few days.

There's the youth hostel across the street, where we saw lots of Erasmus students hanging out, swimming, and grilling. Should've joined 'em at some point, but we had far too much fun stuff to do.

We stopped by Thanasis's shop and had a quick coffee with him. We then took turns taking pictures. First, representing the west side...

Then the east side...

We also stopped by Spiros's shop and shared our condolences, since he just lost his mom. The funeral was yesterday, but we heard it went well. I'm glad we could stop by before heading out.

I rushed from there to Syntagma Square to meet with Taso, so we could grab some food/drinks with his wife, Nektaria. I felt awful for being a bit late, but it was a rush getting there from Exarchia.

Tasos also stopped by to say goodbye, and he ended up joining us for a drink at the cafe. I am glad I was able to see them all before heading back to Berlin. They have each been nothing short of generously supportive of me since they first met me.

After that, I headed to the airport, but not before stopping for a few postcards. I wrote them on the hour-long Metro ride to the airport. I was supposed to meet Brandon at the gate, so I figured he'd be there already.

Turns out, he had a 45 minute delay and barely made it to the gate in time. I had already been sitting there for an hour, using the free WiFi on my iPod Touch when he finally arrived.

This morning when we headed out, I felt a dull pain in my right foot (the same foot with which I stepped on a sea urchin yesterday). I thought it was my bone needing a nice pop, but as the day wore on, the pain got progressively worse.

So much so, that I felt like my whole foot was swelling up on the airplane. I took off my shoe for the flight and had to struggle (painfully) to put my shoe back on when we landed in Berlin. In fact, walking up the ramp hurt a lot.

I had to take a bus, an S-Bahn, and a tram to get home, and each switch was more painful than the previous as the sitting down actually caused my foot to stiffen up. It felt like it was still swelling in my shoe...in fact, on the S-Bahn, the lady sitting across from me accidentally kicked me at one point, and she must've heard or noticed me curse under my breath as she took great pains to walk around my foot when she got off. Haha.

Anyway, when I got home, it was throbbing, so I took some Advil and Googled how to treat sea urchin wounds. Apparently, soaking it in warm water or vinegar is best. The problem: I don't think we have vinegar. So I soaked my foot in warm water for almost two hours. Here's the before and after:

Not sure how much the water helped, but the pain did subside a bit, and now I'm using my crutches to hobble around the apartment. I will buy vinegar tomorrow, and if it gets worse, I'm going to the doctor. Blah, I hate going to the doctor...and plus in Berlin, I will have to explain my symptoms in German. How do you even say sea urchin?

Anyway, I had a blast in Athens, and I will miss seeing all my friends there. But as Tasos told me today, "it's not going to be your last time to Greece, so no worries." I concur whole-heartedly.

Sam

Winnetou und Old Shatterhand retten Griechenland

If you've followed my blog this year, you'll know that Brandon and I sometimes joke around about being Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, the heroes of Karl May's Winnetou stories. In honor of our last full day of fun in Greece, I decided to call this blog "Winnetou and Old Shatterhand save Greece" (with our money saved in Germany). 

Georgina and Konstantina joined us for our day trip to the island of Aegina, and we are so glad they came because it wouldn't have been half as fun without them. We were all exhausted though as none of us had more than 5 hours of sleep last night. But we still made it work.

Winnetou and Old Shatterhand continued their adventures this year by capping off an awesome week with a day on an island.

The original plan was to rent ATVs and drive around, but it turns out I was the only one who brought a driver's license. So we rented a car instead, and it was actually cheaper than renting two ATVs. The problem: I don't drive stick-shift cars. After I tried for about 5 minutes, the guy said it would be okay with Georgina drove, so thank goodness he made an exception. Otherwise, we'd have been stuck with the archaic buses.

The beach we ended up stopping at had rocks and sand, which was perfect since Brandon wanted rocks for good underwater photos and the girls wanted sand. We also found sea urchins again...I ended up stepping on one and getting spines in my big toe. Ouch.

Brandon and I brought lots of stuff (beer, pita, cheese, wine), and Georgina and Konstantina brought sandwiches. Couldn't have been more perfect.

I definitely got lots of sun, and I kept the sunscreen flowing since I was already sunburned. The water was amazing though. It's perfect: every time you feel too warm in the sun, just jump in the cool water. :)

Brandon had more fun with the camera, and he had goggles to see what was underneath too. I didn't, so I only saw blurry stuff. Plus saltwater kind of stings.

There were barely any other folks around, so we had lots of cool places to explore.

Of course, we found fish in the water as well. There were some really cool colored ones too.

Closer to our spot on the rocks, we found crabs. Tasty! Just kidding.

We did eat sea urchin roe though. The female sea urchins have lots of eggs, and it's actually rather tasty. Don't worry, I only had a tiny bit.

Apparently, I also took a three and a half minute long video underwater. It looks hilarious since I had the camera in one hand and was just swimming without realizing I was recording.

After an entire afternoon on the beach, we started making our way back to the port. There was a tiny church near our beach, so we popped in real fast. The view outside was nicer than the inside.

Thank goodness we made it back when we did. The last ferry of the day was leaving in 15 minutes, and we didn't even know it. But no worries. We caught it.

I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the ferry, and Georgina and Konstantina both had to wake me up before I got up. I didn't even hear them. From the port of Piraeus (in Athens) all the way to our Metro stop, I was one exhausted kid.

But since it was our last night in Athens, we had planned a get-together with our friends in the evening. So after quick showers, Brandon and I headed back out to a bar. Georgina and Konstantina were both exhausted as well, but they were nice enough to come by too to say goodbye to us. Nancy and Alison came over too, which was great, since we hadn't seen them since Monday.

None of the guys I invited were able to make it as they each had stuff going on. But I'll see a few of them tomorrow before I head to lunch with Taso and then to the airport. After our drinks tonight though, we were feeling a bit hungry, so we went to get gyros. Nice.

Tomorrow at this time, I'll be back in my room in Berlin, and I'll be sleeping until whenever. I have not slept in for a long time, and I really am looking forward to it.

No question I will miss Greece though. It's been an amazing one week vacation, and it was probably the most fun-filled trip I've had all year (and I've had quite a few great trips this year already). This week was just nuts in terms of how many friends I was able to meet up with and how much fun Brandon and I got to have vacationing in Greece. I can't wait to come back again someday.

One more week of work to come and then my Fulbright project will be officially wrapped up. I will then work on an article in German with my faculty advisor, but that will be fairly straight-forward once my report is done next week. Wish me luck!

Till next time,

Sam

Swimming by Ancient Battle Sites

Yesterday, we spent the day in Athens as we were scheduled to meet up with Taso and his group for a tour of the Acropolis. To our pleasant surprise, that included a stop at the New Acropolis Museum as well. While we waited for the group (they arrived slightly late), Brandon saw this neat piece of graffiti work.

After the museum tour, I honestly was in no mood to walk up to the Acropolis at 3 PM. It was already nearly 100 degrees, and I've visited the tourist site twice before and lived just under it for six weeks in 2009 and two weeks in 2010. I've had my fill.

Nevertheless, it was very gracious of Taso to allow Brandon and me to tag along on this tour, and since Brandon had never seen it before, we went up. After a brief explanation from our tour guide, Taso and I just headed straight for shade to have a one-on-one chat, while the rest of the group went to explore the ancient ruins.

It was a nice chat, and I am so grateful to have such brilliant mentors to connect with all over the world. I look forward to lunch with Taso and his wife, Nektaria, on Thursday before I fly back to Berlin.

After a busy afternoon of errands, Brandon and I went to Exarchia Square to have a drink with Thanasis, Tasos, Jenny, and other Greek friends. As they called it, "Greek yoga." We had a blast chit-chatting, and I'm so glad I got to see Tasos again after he was such a great friend to me last year. He felt bad that he wasn't able to host me at his place this time, because his family was in town. Talk about hospitality.

He offered to take me and Brandon to the beach today though, so we heartily accepted his offer since we were planning to bus it out to some beach anyway. Plus Tasos always has great taste in everything, so we knew we'd be in for something good.

Brandon and I headed back to the apartment, because we'd invited Georgina and her cousin over to our place for dinner. But we all got there too late, and she had to run to meet up with cousin for a drink after all. She invited us to join them, so we decided to have a quick snack and head out, even though I haven't gotten more than six hours of sleep a night this week. Fatty snack...that was the fattiest sausage either Brandon or I have ever cooked. Georgina took a tiny sandwich compared to our gigantic ones. Healthy.

We went to a bar that I actually visited with Doros and Anna last year. It was pretty cool, and we had a good time with the girls. A friend of theirs also came, so we had a nice chat. It was also Georgina's birthday at midnight, so we sang happy birthday and had more drinks. Then they dropped us off at our apartment after promising to come with us to the island of Aegina on Wednesday. Super.

This morning, Brandon and I were woken up by a phone call from Tasos. He was calling to tell us where to meet him, but he also shared some sad news. His good friend, Spiros, whom I know from Exarchia because he owns a convenient store, lost his mom last night. She'd been in the hospital for the last two months, so at least she's now in a better place.

But Spiros was the guy who told Tasos to tell me last year that I had to return to Exarchia to visit them, because I "was part of Exarchia now." Spiros is a good guy, even though we can barely communicate with each other, since he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Greek. Nevertheless, I asked Tasos to share my condolences and told him that we could cancel our trip if he needed to stay around.

Tasos said it was okay though, so off to the beach we went. We drove out east of Athens toward Marathon, where the great Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC. This is an important moment in the history of Western Civilization, because the Greeks defeated the formerly "invincible" Persians. If the Greeks had lost, who knows how the world would be today.

The beach was a place where you paid for parking and a spot on the beach. Compared to some of the beaches closer to Athens, it's quite cheap. And there was the national volleyball championships for young girls going in.

We could definitely get used to this life...

Since we met last year, Tasos has been a great friend, and I'm happy we had the day to spend with him, just like we were able to spend time with Thanasis on Sunday. I think Tasos had fun too. His girlfriend joined us later too, and she's also extremely nice.

The water was very clean, and man, it was just heavenly.

Even though I forgot to charge my camera batteries, it lasted long enough for Brandon to get some funny underwater shots.

I'm so glad I convinced him to join me on this epic one-week vacation. I know he is too, after all this incredibly generous and warm Greek hospitality we've experienced.

Tasos even got us some club sandwiches for lunch. Delicious. The pita and cheese I'd shared with him for breakfast (bought at the grocery store last night) was a kid's meal compared to this stuff.

Tasos is also a man of history, so he had his book with him. Greek history in Greek. I read Greek history in English. Haha.

After an afternoon of swimming and sun, we headed back to Athens, since Tasos was meeting up with Spiros. Plus there was supposedly a protest in Syntagma this evening, so we wanted to avoid any trouble. On the road between Athens and Marathon, you can see a blue line running through the middle of the road—it is to mark the run that the Greek messenger took when he ran back to Athens following the Greek defeat of the Persians at Marathon. It's supposedly what inspired marathons today, and there's a statue to commemorate the guy who ran. You can see it up ahead in the road in this picture.

Once we made it back to Athens, we started to prep food for Doros and Anna. Because Doros was so kind and allowed us to stay at his apartment all week while crashing at his girlfriend Anna's, we told them we wanted to cook them a nice meal.

We made Brandon's white wine pasta dish with a few tweaks. But it was still delicious.

And we baked a few chicken thighs, which were completely and utterly delicious. We also made them Greek salad, which is almost a sin. But hilarious nonetheless. I think they appreciated it, and we had lots of nice Greek white wine to down it.

Doesn't that look yummy?

It was nice to catch up with them and just show our appreciation. I've known Doros for two years now, and we've had the chance to chat each time I've come back to Athens. I'm so grateful to have him as a friend, because to me, he represents what it means to be a "global citizen." He thinks globally and acts locally.

All in all, we had a successful day, and it's hard to believe that tomorrow is our final full day in Greece. It seems fitting that we'll be spending it on an island with Georgina and her cousin. Then we'll try and meet up with all my friends, American and Greek alike, to go out for a few drinks at night before packing our bags for our trip home.

I've thankfully received an extension on my final report, so I've got a week after this energizing vacation to finish up my work in Berlin. Then I will be busy again with the HIA International Conference in Berlin and then spending time with the UW Summer in Berlin program. So much exciting stuff going on!

But first, I will enjoy my last day or so in Greece. I may just want to "miss" my flight on Thursday. :)

Toodles,

Sam