Educational Field Trip #1
We drove off to Plomari as a group with our professors Brendan and Sophia, their kids Maria and Patrick, their friend Helen and Millie, the babysitter. We met up with Kostas, our guide (striped shirt) and took off.
We climbed the 2nd tallest mountain on Lesvos. It was this steep the entire way. And hotter than hot can be. This is Maria (the little one), Kostas, and Millie. We stopped in all the shade we found. Wow, lots of work!
As we climbed, we looked back down and saw a cute little mountain village. Lesvos is not an island of whitewashed houses all pristine like typical Greece. This island is next to Turkey, its located in the upper Eastern Aegean. The "typical" Greek islands are the Cyclades, which include Santorini and Mykonos. More on them later. All the trees you see in this picture are a silvery-green color-- those are olive trees. This island has 30000+ olive trees and makes amazing olive oil!
Here's me and Kara on the hike. As you can see, we have our essentials: camera, water, tanktop. Sweet.
We climbed further up towards Milies (emphasis on the e, not to be confused with Millie) and saw pretty flowers. Basically this place is too pretty for words, so we use pictures.
This is Patrick, Brendan and Sophia's son. This kid- the day we met him, told us what he wants to be when he grows up. Nope, not firefighter or football player- he wants to be a model. A model. How freaking cute is that?? And besides that- when I asked him why, he said it was because he saw Chicago. The movie. Not about models. I don't get it. But he is super duper cute!! Precocious as hell.
Almost to Milies, we stopped for a rest at a teeny church. Greeks build churches EVERYWHERE. They all look like this on the inside, full of incense and candles and icons. Crazy.
Patrick and Maria got tired as we walked up the mountain and started falling back. Kostas, being superman, was walking so fast that he reached Milies, grabbed two horses (maybe one was a donkey? perhaps they were mules) and brought them back for the kids to ride. Brendan is the dude in the red hat. We definitely still had a 10-minute walk to get to Milies once we had horses. Kostas is superman.
Milies used to be a decent sized village. It now has a population of 3. Everyone on the islands is moving to Athens. Sad. Milies is famous for its water, seen on the left. It came out of the mountain, fresh, cold and clear. A godsend on this super-hot day! In between the spring and this little room are steps that we are sitting on below. Peeking out the door is Jason, the missing portion of our group from the first picture.
Here is my proof that this was an educational field trip. This is Sophia, lecturing us.
Good times! Why can't all school be this fun?
We reached Kostas' home atop the mountain. This is the view. It can speak for itself.
In addition to running a productive farm that grows natural eco-friendly plants, Kostas is an avid collector. He has a collection of volkswagons and a giant wire dinosaur, in addition to this boat and these motorbikes- these were used by the S.S. during WWII. Dude.
I arrived at Kostas' place earlier than the rest of the group, along with Sophia, Amanda and Jaime. We wandered around, playing with puppies we found, and enjoying the view. Then I found this adorable donkey. Unfortunately, to get the picture, I had to get close, and he didn't like it, so he started moving. But just imagine how cool it was to see a donkey standing next to a yellow door with a blue window. Sweet.
Mandy, Rachel, Sarah, Laura and Kara atop the mountain. Hott. And I don't mean just the sun!
We left Kostas' place, and headed to a restaurant, on the top of a neighboring mountain. The food was all fresh grown in nearby farms (including Kostas') and prepared using old Greek recipes. Sooooo good. This was also the only meal we ate where we didn't enjoy wine with our food- it was too hot.
As we ate, some goats paraded by with a goatherd. It was funny. There were a hundred or so.
These people (other than Kostas) are not Greek. We thought they were. The younger two are actually Americans, but they both spoke with Greek accents, having heard only Greek-English for the weeks they were here. They work with Kostas as volunteers, stay as long as they want, then move on to another agricultural place. Crazy and ballsy. The other dude was Austrian.
After we ate, we all sat around relaxing, enjoying the view, and waiting for dessert. Kostas and his workers all got in a water fight, which amused us. Then the Greek resteraunt people turned on some bouzaki music (traditional Greek music) and danced. Patrick and Sophia joined in, and it was absolutely adorable.
Kostas brought over his horses/donkeys/mules and Jason took a ride. Marcie and a few other people rode as well.
After a long, hot hike, we all needed to cool off a bit, so we headed to a beach at Plomari. This was one of the sandiest beaches we found. Some people swam, most of us just lay there. I took a nap.
Jason, Maria and Patrick got in a lil fight, throwing jellyfish at each other. These were non-stinging jellyfish, but they kept most of us out of the water.
Jason, Dana and Millie didn't mind, and they swam out to this gigantic rock. They climbed up, jumped off, and chilled. Later that night, Dana and Millie had their first date. He didn't come home until morning. teehee.
We stayed at the beach until almost dark. Near dusk, this boat came in. Sophia told us that boats like this smuggle people from Turkey onto the island for the going rate of $5000. Nice work if you can get it. People come from all over the middle east to get to Lesvos through Turkey, then work in the olive picking business. Cops do stings, but they know when its coming and hide. Sound familiar to anybody?
And that's the end of field trip one. We headed to bed. Phew.
<--Back Home Next-->
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1