Santorini!

Hello! I'm writing you from the beautiful Santorini island, the furthest greek island away from Greece. I took a seven hour ferry to get here on Tuesday, and it was really enjoyable. I found myself disapointed when I arrived and am looking forward to the ferry ride back to Athens. It was just very relaxing; four friends and I spent the morning sitting in a glassed-in part of the upper deck profiting from the beautiful views of incredible cobalt blue sea and misty islands off in the distance as well as the green-house warmth of our spot just away from the wind. We spent the hours reading and they passed in a flash. We arrived in Perissa in the afternoon and got picked up from the port by a cute old greek guy named John, who took us up the winding road to his hostel. In Santorini now it's off-season, so the fifteen people in our hostel make up most of the population, but it's been really relaxing. We have found really good food for the lowest prices in Europe, become well aquainted with a 24-hour bakery, and walked to "center" (a couple of tiny super markets and a go kart track) for a whipped coffee. Today I went on a fabulous day tour with a couple of my friends. We hopped on to this pirates-of-the-caribbean-ish boat with a senior tour and enjoyed the day out on the sea. We first stopped at a beautiful volcano and had great views of the main island and the vast blues of the sea and sky from the top of the volcano. We felt a few hot steam shoots and threw around the light lava rocks. Our next stop were "hot springs." We jumped off of the boat into FREEZING cold water in order to swim to the luke warm pockets of water. By the time we made it back out to the boat, our bodies were so numb that it was actually kind of nice to be swimming around. It did take a little bit of time after the swim for the system shock to wear off as parts of my de-numbed one by one. Our next stop was Thirassia, where we took donkeys zig-zagging up the steep island cliffsides to a little village of two-hundred people. We ate the only meal offered at the only restaurant up there on a patio looking out over the ocean and the islands (gorgeous!!!!) Our last stop was Oia for the famous sunset. Unfortunately it was cloudy, so we didn't get to see the sun set, but the town was really cool. If you've ever seen the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you might have a good idea what it looked like, because the Greek part of that book was set on Santorini island and the movie tries to capture the look of Oia.

Now I'm back in Perissa, with a little bit of sunburn, ready to say hi to our twenty-four hour bakers, and spend a night in reading! I just got to talk to my dad a little bit, and I'm ready for bed! I hope you're all doing well! Love, abbie

A couple minutes in Athens

Hello friends and family! I'm now writing you from Greece! After showing up to registration time for next semester's classes I have just ten minutes left of Internet time before getting the boot. Athens is fabulously warm. Today we marched to the top of the Acropolis (with the Parthenon and all of the ancient theaters dating back to before Jesus' time) and then went to the beach where I was the crazy Minnesotan who jumped in the salty Mediterranean. Tonight and last night all five of us stayed at a couch surfer's apartment (the cheapest way to travel through Europe) and we have 7 am boat tickets for our 7 hour long ferry ride to Santorini.
I just left Paris, where I spent the weekend with Mom, Will, Liza, and Will's friend Olivia. We did a LOT of walking there—we only took two metro rides the entire weekend! We saw the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, the Eiffel Tower. Paris is MUCH more beautiful in the spring than in the rainy winter and it was really nice to walk along the Seine river reciting poems I know on the Seine in my head (La Seine a de la chance, elle n'a pas de souci...)
The week before Mom spent in Montpellier. We made it to the beautiful city of Avignon and the cool industrial fishing town of Sete (the biggest French port on the Mediterranean). Her favorite meal was eating salad and fish with my friends at my apartment.
The weekend before that I met mom and Will in Milano—a gorgeous city! (if expensive!). It has the best window shopping and people watching in the world I think. Italians let their kids be loud and their dogs play. I really enjoyed sitting in their big park and climbing the thirty meters of spiraling stairs to the top of the Duomo.
Well, sorry this post is just stacked events, but, yipes! I only have a couple minutes left!
I love you and miss you all and will be home bientot! (I cannot believe how bientot!) See you soon!

I can’t believe how fast time is flying by; because of the two week spring break, I have just three weeks left living in Montpellier, and my mom will be here for one of them (she is now in Europe! I’m meeting her and Will in Milan on Friday morning). I hope you all had a lovely Easter—mine was pretty low key, I went out to the Creperie with Rachel, saw Juno, had a chicken nugget happy meal for dinner, and skyped the fam. I loved getting to be in contact with everyone at my house on Easter! I was super bummed that I couldn’t figure out the video thing at first. I figured it out while talking to Sophie and Alyx, and let me tell you, discovering Olivia sitting quietly there on that bench gave me such a happy surprise that I’ll remember it for ten years! She told me about ballet and Cinderella, and I told her I liked her haircut, and we gave each other kisses through the webcam—it was fabulous! Then I spent a couple hours skyping Will and exchanging funny stories. I really enjoyed Easter.

Monday Rachel’s friend Sara flew back to Rome and my friend Miles came for a visit. He goes to Macalester, is best friends with Liza’s boyfriend Mike, and is studying in Denmark. He mostly came to visit our Macalester friend Diana, but I was happy to host him for the week.

Liza came on Friday night! It was the best weekend I’ve spent in Montpellier. Not only did she pick our first nice-weather Saturday, she picked Francois’ birthday weekend so she got to meet almost everyone. We spent Saturday at the beach collecting shells and digging our feet into the soft sand, and then we got to eat at our friend Diana’s host family’s house! She got to see our Dr. Seuss music park (that’s what I call it), eat dried strawberries from les Halles, get a Crepe at Café du Theatre, and be “disco” with all of the frenchies. And I dragged her into my favorite stores—a lamp store and a children’s bookstore called Nemo that I spend hours in.

Some things I may not have written before: only café’s are open on Sundays, so you have to make sure to buy enough groceries on Saturday for two days. If you forget groceries, you can survive with the cafes, but Rachel and I have had more than one miserable Sunday because we forgot to buy toilet paper. Toilet paper is mostly pink, and ours smells like peaches (though I hate the scented toilet paper, it’s my turn to buy the next pack, and I’ll just go for the plain pink paper). At home my goal was always to get rid of my coins, here my goal is to get coins—and there are many! There’s the 2 Euro coin, the 1 euro coin, the 50 centime, the 20 centime, the 10 centime, the 5 centime, the 2 centime, and the 1 centime. The 1 centime’s are useless; I don’t know why they exist. And the 2 centimes annoy me too. On the other hand, at least they’re marked! Our coins in the US have no numbers on them, so foreigners must have trouble!

Well, as I said, I’m meeting Mom and Will in Milan this weekend. Then mom will come home with me, and we’ll meet up with Will again in Paris. From Paris I’m going to spend a week in Greece with my friends for spring break! I have one more week of spring break after that and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I think I’ll try to go to Normandy beaches and see another region of France. I’ll see you all bientot!