Prayer, Politics, and Protests

We've done quite a few things over these past few days that I deemed to be blog worthy!

Greek Orthodox Church:

For Theology we were required to visit a Greek Orthodox church service on Sunday morning. It was a completely new experience for all of us. It was a smaller church with elaborate decorations covering every inch of wall space. The women sat on the left and the men sat on the right, and there were very few children. We were warned in advance not to cross our legs because that's deemed disrespectful in the Orthodox church. We stood in the back of the church (so as not to take anyone else's spot) for the entire service which was over an hour and a half long. It was all said in Ancient Greek too so it was all complete gibberish to us. There was so much standing up and sitting down, people making the sign of the cross, kissing icons on the walls, and just utter chaos. It was a stressful experience, but I'm glad we gained a better understanding of the Greek Orthodox faith.


Greek Parliament:
We also got the opportunity to visit the Greek Parliament building here in central Athens. This was really interesting because we got to visit amidst the economic and political situations that have been all over the news lately. We got to sit in the chairs where Parliament had just voted the night before about a new government and Prime Minister. We got a chance to see where history is unfolding up close in person. Our seminar class has had several discussions about the crisis and various solutions. Any news site has top stories about Greece or Italy right now, so it's really fascinating to see how relevant all this is to the rest of the world. I'm so lucky to have been able to have lived in both these countries while all this has been going on.







Protests:
Dana and I needed to go shopping the other day for new pants (my only pair of jeans ripped so it really wasn't optional...) so we decided to check out a main shopping street about 15 min from our apartment. It's a street without cars (like the Nicolet Mall of Athens) and even includes a few American stores like GAP, Levi, and H & M. As we were starting to head back there was a group of people marching with red and yellow flags. They were walking toward Parliament where there was a woman singing in Greek into a microphone. I have a feeling this was the first of many more demonstrations we'll see here in Athens (but don't worry Mom, I'm being safe!).