It was Laura’s birthday today, so I made a card, some other girls made breakfast brownies frosted with Nutella, and we had a birthday breakfast. We had a long day of classes too: first, Greek Language and Culture, then history, and then Theology. For Theology, we went to Father Stefanos’ Church in Halandria. We had a little adventure with that. We knew that we had to take trolley #10 to the end of the line to meet Father Stefanos there, however, our first task was to find the stop for trolley #10. Once we found the stop, we all climbed on and road it to the end of the line only to find that we went to the wrong end. At this point, our entire class was late, but we hopped back on for the ride to the other end of the line. After 2.5+ hours of traveling, we finally found Halandria, and Father Stefanos walked with us to his church. On the way, he showed us the original church of the town, a tiny stone church. His church, St. George Orthodox Church was magnificent! It is a new church and the inside is not yet completely painted. The paintings that are finished are stunning. The image of Christ in the dome is huge and colorful. Father Stefanos told us that Christ’s pointer finger was as long as he is tall, so that gives you an idea of the size of the painting. The icon screen in front of the altar was unbelievably detailed woodcarvings. On either side of the altar room, there are marble baptismal fonts, one for adults (they can walk right into the font), and one for infants. Father Stefanos is a really great professor and such a nice man. I was so glad we were able to visit his church even though we took quite the detour.
After Theology (about 8:00 pm), Sara Kokkila, Ashley Wenning, Laura Krasky, and Sara Kingston and I went to a performance in the Odeon of Herodes Atticas, right next to the Acropolis. An Odeon is a kind of theater in Ancient Greece used especially for music events and poetry reading. The performance that we attend was called “Once Upon Smyrna,” and took us through the history of Byzantine and folk music of Smyrna. The theater is outdoors with an open roof and tiers of stone seats with cushions. It was full, but we found seats near the center and because they were tiered, we had an excellent view. The night was a little chilly, but there wasn’t a bug in sight! That was nice for different. The first half was mostly Byzantine chant music sung by a choir of men and women. Two narrators accompanied by a flute and a bouzouki spoke in between each piece, presumably about the history of Smyrna and the music, but it was all in Greek, so we couldn’t understand a word. The second half included a semicircle of instrumentalists (bouzouki, flute, violin, and hammer dulcimer), a women’s choir, student choir, and men’s choir and they performed folk music. Dancers even joined in the performance in the space right in front of the stage and danced traditional Greek folk dances. I loved the second half of the performance! People in the audience knew the songs and sang or clapped along sometimes too. The performance began at 9:00 pm and was not over at midnight when we finally decided to leave because we had class early the next morning. What an excellent experience!
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