Monday 5/29

 Today was our first day in Greece. We were all very tired from our long travel day yesterday. We had to get up and pack all our stuff and check out of the hotel before we headed out for the day. 

We headed off to Olympia and met up with our guide, Joanna. She was very knowledgeable and told us all about the ruins sites as we walked around. She even showed us some sites off of the main spots that still need to excavated. It was really cool to see people doing excavations while we were there. They cannot use any power tools because they don’t want to risk damaging any of the ruins. Joanna was showing us pictures of what the sites would have looked like when they were built as we went through the sites. I can’t even imagine the buildings actively being used during the ancient games. I really enjoyed hearing about the temple of Zeus. The statue that was built for him in the middle of Olympia was solely to worship him. The statue that was built for him was almost 40 feet tall! I also really enjoyed seeing the stadium where the games were held. There is a walkway leading into the stadium that used to be lined with statues of the cheaters of the games. I love how they made statues of the cheaters and not so much the winners. Then you walk through and arch into this 600 ft long dirt area. The whole group lined up on the starting block to race. We all charged to the end and Kyle won! Some of us then lined up again and did a girls versus boys rely race.. the guys won. 

After the archeological sites we went to the first museum. I really enjoyed the first museum because it had a lot of the statues that were excavated and put back together. It’s amazing how archeologists can piece these statues back together so well most of the time without having all the pieces. My favorite room had the statues from the pediments of the temple of Zeus. There was almost no sculpture that had all its pieces but they were all positioned and put back together so well. The second museum was mainly about the ancient Olympic Games and how they started. We learned a lot about this in our lectures at the beginning of the trip. I liked to see all of the armor that the athletes had to wear. For the races that were in full armor the athletes had the wear almost 30 kilograms of armor!

We then headed downtown and had lunch at a Greek cafe. I have never really had Greek food before and I really enjoyed it. Whens a better time to try Greek food than in when in Greece! We spent some time shopping down town then headed back to the hotel for a swim in the hotel pool. After we dried off we headed back on the bus and drove the Delphi!