January 27

Man, yesterday and today have been very boring. All I have done for the last 48 hours is study, take tests, and think about the tests I had yet to take. I’m now the most tired I have been over the past two weeks. But I do have the energy to write this blog.
Yesterday was the free day and, as I said, all I did was study. Today should have been different, if we had stuck to the schedule. We were supposed to stay in the hotel until 2pm, then go visit a museum on our way to Heraklion, where we would have gotten onto the ferry at 6. But, there was a change of plans because of the strike by the orange farmers. Apparently, they are not satisfied with the subsidy offered by the government and they were planning to block all the main roads with their tractors. (Given the number of oranges I’ve consumed since leaving the States, I guess I’m pro orange.) So, we decided we didn’t want to spend the next few weeks trapped in Crete and left the hotel at 9:30 this morning. That meant that we cancelled the museum plans since there was no opportunity to finish taking the tests this morning. This cancellation meant that we had about 6 hours to kill in Heraklion. That turned out to be pretty boring and expensive. Since all there was to do was hang out in cafes and study, I spent mucho dinero on coffee and tea.
Just to let you know, when I say tests in the plural, it is not an accident. This semester abroad trip covers four classes: art and architecture, history, literature, and archaeology. On test days (there are four over the course of the semester) we take four individual tests, each of which takes between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. So all this means that test days are miserable.
But I’m finished. Yeah! Now we are on the overnight ferry to mainland Greece and we will travel to Marathon and spend the next two nights in Thebes. We will have to take back roads because of the orange farmers, but Spiros is the man and will get us there. We will have another 6am departure from the ferry, but this time there is no hotel to go have breakfast. I’ve got some fruit in my backpack, but I imagine a morning without coffee will not be fun.
If anyone has a skype account, let me know because I now have an account and my own headset. When I find a free wifi hotspot (unfortunately they are few and far between), I can give you a call!