Adventures of the last twenty-four hours

one: Apparently, my roommates think that I am the last person in the world one would suspect of going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I forget how it came up, but when we were talking last night, somehow the topic of conversation got from handwashing laundry to Rocky Horror, and they were really surprised that I love dressing up and seeing it. Sometimes it's amusing what assumptions people make about me.

two: In what was possibly a bad idea, but not so bad as it sounds, as Athens is a pretty safe city, I went out last night and wandered around for a few hours. Somehow I managed to get to Plaka via Akadimias Street and Syntagma, both of which are about 90 degrees separated of where Plaka is in relationship to my apartment. Then I found my way back to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I ended up going the long way around, and from there up the Vassileos Konstantinou back to Kolonaki. (I know that the place names mean nothing to anyone who hasn't been to Athens, but you could look it up on Google Earth if you're really interested). It was a really long walk. I set out at about 10:30 PM, and got back to my apartment about 1 AM, by which time my roommates were worried sick about me. It didn't help that when they tried calling me, I didn't hear my cellphone ring because apparently the last person who rented this phone left the ringer on this quietish ringer called "Elves." I kid you not, it sounded like something composed by the strongest proponent of the light and beautiful school of portraying figures from the otherworld. Anyway, things that I saw last night on my journey:
a) The Waiting For Godot cafe/bar. Closed, of course.
b) Many stray dogs and cats.
c) People filming some sort of movie or commercial or something. I saw them near the beginning of my walk, on Akadimias Street in front of this neoclassical building, and then near the end of my walk on the Vassileos Konstantinou in front of the Kallimarmaro. That last one was exciting, because they were filming some scene where people with guns were talking with people in a car, and I saw the guns before I saw the cameras.
d) The outside of the Numismatic Museum, which is housed in this beautiful neoclassical building. One of the arcades on the outside was lit up, and I could see these gorgeous paintings on the ceiling. I want to go back there and actually see the building by daylight from the inside.
e) An archeological site with part of the original fortification wall of Athens.
f) The Athens Hard Rock Cafe.
g) Hadrian's Arch.
h) The outside of the Byzantine Church of Saint Catherine. Another building I want to see the inside of by daylight.
i) People skateboarding in Syntagma Square, listening to hip-hop music on a portable boom box.
j) The outside of the Athens Green Design exhibition in Syntagma Square.
k) The soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens in the dead of night.

three: This morning, I went to the Museum of Cycladic Art with my Aegean and Ancient Greek Art and Archeology class. It's a small museum, but there's a lot in it. The class spent its time on the first floor, where all of the Cycladic art is. It was really cool to see the Cycladic figurines in real life. You get a sense of scale to them that you don't get from seeing pictures, even if the picture captions tell you how big they are. There were also vessels from the Cyclades, some tools that they used, and a few examples of Cycladic "frying pans," which may have been used for making salt cakes. I got to choose one of the objects that really drew my attention, sketch it, describe it, and think of what I thought its purpose might have been. I chose one of the late figurines. My sketch from the front actually turned out decently, but the one I tried from the side/three-quarters view didn't turn out quite as well, but it got the idea across. I think that the figurine I chose was probably intended for display somewhere, possibly in a shrine, because it looked like it was intended to stand upright, unlike most of the other figures which you couldn't stand up if you tried. After we finished looking at the Cycladic art, I decided to explore the rest of the museum, since I had already paid my admission and I didn't have anything else that I had to do with the morning. The second floor was closed for refurbishment, but it normally holds a collection of Ancient Greek art. The third floor has temporary exhibits, which at the moment was a display of Ancient Cypriot art, ranging from the Chalcolithic to the Roman periods. The fourth floor had another exhibition of Greek artifacts, focusing on how they were used in everyday life. That one was fun. Then I went down to the new wing of the museum, which was randomly hosting a temporary exhibit on Russian avant-garde art of the 1910's-1920's. It was fun to look at, but a big contrast from the exhibits in the rest of the museum.

four: Upcoming: see whether washing clothes by hand and hanging them up to dry in the apartment is less of a time and labor investment than hauling them 1.8 km to wash in an hour and a half cycle, dry in dryer for two hours, and then have to haul them back 1.8 km, still less than dry, to hang in apartment to dry completely.