We're Headed Home!

Well, it's officially here. Our month in the Mediterranean has come to an end, and it's bittersweet. We're so ready to come home and see everyone, but we never imagined we would make as close of friends as we have, and saying goodbye is gonna be tough. We've packed, swapped over 3,000 pictures (get ready), and "cleaned" our apartment. We'll be heading out of here about 2 am to head to the airport to catch our flight at 5 am. We've got right at 24 hrs of traveling ahead of us, so it's gonna be a long Saturday...especially since we gain a whole 8 hrs. Can't wait to see you all tomorrow!

Love and Miss,

Kam and Christi

What a whirlwind! There’s so much to tell, so I’ll try to make this concise. We’ll start with the cruise:

Friday: We ported in Mykonos first, which was the most picturesque night in Greece we could have imagined. We had dinner by the harbor with all the boats lit up, and we sat down just in time to see the sun set.

Saturday: We arrived in Turkey early in the morning and took a bus to the city of Ephesus, home of the Ephesians. We traveled high into the mountains to visit the last known home of Mary. After Jesus’ resurrection, John took her to the mountains as a refuge, where she would be safe from Roman persecution. It was such a surreal feeling to pass through the bedroom where Mary slept, and tradition holds that she and John are buried in the mountains. On the way out, we passed by the Wishing Wall where thousands of people have written their wishes. The landscape was so much more beautiful than we expected. In the afternoon, we visited the ancient city, which was still very much intact. On our way out, we visited the ruins of the Temple of Artemis—one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Pretty amazing.

Patmos was our second island for the day. This is the island where John was exiled and the island where he had the dream vision that later became the Book of Revelation. We visited the actual cave where he had the dream. Inside, you can see the place where he rested his head, as well as the crack that resulted from the earthquake documented in Revelation. We also visited his monastery to round out the day.

Sunday: First stop was Crete, which was pretty disappointing. We were surprised because it’s such a large island, but the place where we ported made it pretty much impossible to see anything but the industrial side of the city. Santorini made up for it though. We sat on the uppermost deck as we neared the island, and it was honestly the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. The islands are exactly as you would imagine them, and of course the water is crystal clear. You are required to go up the mountain somehow – either on foot, on donkey, or in a cable car – because the entire city is on top of the mountain. Of course we opted for the donkey ride, which was hilarious. Ironically, I got the most competitive donkey who raced to the top, and Kam’s was a lolly gagger. He would stop in the middle of the street whenever he pleased, and Kam used ever trick from movies she’d ever seen to make a horse go.

Oh, and as for cruise ship entertainment, we saw a Latin dance show. Think sequin thongs for all and Latin men who took themselves very seriously.

Monday: We spent most of the day in an airport because our flight was delayed for four hours, so we made it to Rome just in time for dinner. We went with a couple of our friends to a restaurant and bar downtown that Elyse’s uncle suggested. Apparently a good friend of his owns the bar, and sure enough when we got there, Elyse’s uncle was smiling at us from a picture on the wall. Small world. We had a great dinner, and it wouldn’t have been complete without being given roses by Italian men J

Tuesday: No one, under any circumstances, should attempt to see Rome in a day. In twelve hours, this is what we did:

· Took a tour of the Vatican

· Saw the Sistine Chapel

· Saw St. Peter’s

· Visited my old apartment on Borgo Pio

· Took a tour of the Colosseum

· Walked through the Roman Forum

· Saw the Pantheon

· Threw our coins in the Trevi Fountain

· Visited the Spanish Steps

· Shopped on Via del Courso

· Survived

Neither of us even remembers laying down in the hotel last night.

Wednesday: Today was another travel day. We’ve been in airports and on buses all day, so we’re heading home to crash. We’re sorry the blog is so brief, but we’ll be sure to have pictures ready when we get home. We’ve resorted to washing underwear in the sink, so we are officially ready to be home. We miss you all tons and look forward to seeing you Saturday.

PS. We have requests for dinner, so be sure to ask us when we skype ;)

Love and Miss,

Kam and Christi

Last Day in Athens

Good news- today was much more low key than our last adventure. We spent the day shopping in Athens, and this afternoon we went to see the Olympic stadium. We've had about all the Greek food we can take, so we hunted down a true blue American restaurant and found TGIFridays. Burgers, check. Chicken strips, check. Five happy campers, check! Oh and what are we doing tonight? Calling it an early night and watching The Body Guard in our hotel room. We may be missing the comforts of home a lil haha. Tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for our cruise. We're pretty sure we won't have internet, so we'll be out of touch til Monday when we get to Rome. We'll check in soon!

Love and miss,

Kam and Christi

One for the Books

If there was one thing our parents told us, it was this.

"Whatever you do girls, STAY TOGETHER!"

And that's exactly what we did...

5:30 am came early Tuesday morning. We all lugged our suitcases downstairs, loaded the bus, and fell back asleep- but not before Constatia, our leader reminded us to check for money, passports, ids etc. We've got them, we're out. About halfway to the airport (30 mins down the road), Kam wakes up, looks at me and says, "I forgot my purse." She runs to tell Constatia, who does absolutely nothing to hide her panick. It's too late to turn back, so they decide that the only option is to call Kam a cab and have them pick her up where we are, take her back to the apartment to get her purse, and then bring her to the airport because we can't risk everyone missing their flight. So naturally I grab my thing too, and when I step off the bus behind Kam, Constatia panicks again. She asks me where I'm going (it should be pretty obvious) and says, "But what if she misses her flight!" "Well," I said, "I guess I'll miss it with her, won't I."

So, the bus drops us off, Constatia waves and basically hopes we'll make it. Best part, they didn't even bother dropping us off at the exit. They literally dropped us on the side of the highway. So we walked to the next exit and waited, for thirty minutes, for the cab to come get us. Of course, we would get the SLOOOOOWEST cab driver in Cyprus, who made countless wrong turns and refused to go faster, regardless of how much more money we gave him. When we made it back to the airport, we flew to the gate, only to be told we had missed it by five minutes. Our plane was still on the ground. Not what we wanted to hear.

So...we regrouped. Booked another flight to Athens, got some lunch, bought a movie, and relaxed. We jumped in a cab in Athens, told him the name of our hotel and hoped we got there. As we got into the city, we realized that the cab couldn't take us as far as our hotel when he more or less pushed us out and gave us "directions." So...we wheeled our suitcases through Athens, for a ways, and finally found our hotel. From the side of the road all the way to our hotel in another country...you should be impressed.

The city is more beautiful than we could have expected. We're right in the heart of Athens, and it's not hard to imagine what this place looked like centuries ago because so much still survives. Today we visited the Acropolis and Parthenon, or the Temple of Athena. It was so incredible to see the forum where Athenians met to discuss their future. This afternoon we hiked one of the highest peaks in the city, and it was worth it. The views from the restaurant at the top were breathtaking. You could see from the mountains all the way to the coast, and the city sprawled literally as far as the eye could see. We're heading out tonight for the downtown district with some friends to enjoy the nightlife. Tomorrow's free, so we're gonna do a little shopping and go see the Olympic stadium. Sorry there are so few pictures, the internet isn't so great (what else is new). We'll check in soon.

Love and Miss,

Kam and Christi

Leaving tomorrow!

Hey everyone,

well, it was an eventful day! We took our finals, and we're pretty sure we walked out of both classes with a perfect score. Kind of a joke. I had to meet with my Christianity teacher today to go over the corrections I asked him to make to his article. After his "Oh my God" comment the other day when he saw all my red marks, I started to feel like a teacher after all :) But we went over his revised copy today, and he asked if he could cite me as his editor. I feel very official now, and he's sending me a copy in September. So cute.

We had our graduation ceremony tonight...hard to believe we've been here four weeks. We also had our graduation dinner, which was said because we had to say goodbye to some friends tonight. This is the point in the program where we all go separate ways, and we were a little surprised at how close we became with everyone in such a short amount of time. We really have made some amazing friends.

We leave tomorrow bright and early at 5:30 am for the airport. We'll be in Athens for the next few days, and we should have internet, so we'll do our best to keep you up to date.

PS. Pics from tonight will be posted tomorrow.

Love and Miss,

Kam and Christi

Weekend in Protaras

We just made it back from our last weekend at the beach. It's hard to believe we take finals and go to our graduation ceremony tomorrow!

Leaving the city on Friday was a little more of an adventure than we had planned for. We reserved a travel bus to come pick us up. Basically, they pick a lot of people up and drive in one general direction (in this case, towards Protaras) and drop people off at their individual destinations. Sounds like a good deal right? We thought so too. Our cab driver ended up being the overweight, angrier version of Jack Sparrow. He drove like a maniac and was completely rude to everyone on board. Finally a 90 lb. Greek girl had the equivalent of a "Come to Jesus meeting" with the man in Greek (with much more attitude than we're capable of) and he straightened up pretty quickly.

We made it to the hotel alive, got dinner, and spent the rest of the night in a karaoke bar. I might mention that Kam did a lyrical interpretation of "Devil Went Down to Georgia." Alone. On the bar. The crowd loved her. Also funny....lots of people speak Greek to her. We tell her it's because she's brown.

Saturday was spent laying out, and last night we went and watched all three hours of the USA vs. Ghana game at an Irish pub. We opted for a private taxi today and made it home in much better time. We're gonna spend tonight studying for our finals, writing papers, and getting things ready for our trip to Athens and Rome. We leave on Tuesday at 5:30 am, so we have a lot to get done in the next day and a half.

Check in tomorrow for graduation pics.

Miss and Love,

Kam and Christi

Meze Night

Hello all! Well, last night was our last dinner with all the girls. We decided to go out with a bang so we went to this restaurant that was supposed to have the best meze in town. Remember, meze is the thing where you pay a set price and they bring you course after course after course. Well, it was definitely the best! We tried EVERYTHING including the snails you see above. Note: snails do not in fact taste like squid as some would imagine. They actually taste like mud and are not pleasant. We were all pretty tired (especially after we got out bellies full) and went home fairly early. We'll get to see the girls on Monday night at graduation so it's not too sad yet.

It's actually raining in Cyprus today, which never happens. I think I had actually forgotten what rain was. It's a nice change though. Well, we are off to Protaris for the weekend. It's a nice little beach town not too far from here and we're hopin to get a little R&R. On that note, however, we won't be able to blog again until Sunday afternoon. We hope ya'll have a good weekend and we miss and love ya'll!

Kam and Christi