We can stay!!

Good news from sunny Thessaloniki; we can stay here!! Monday we met mr Souvlaki and our other teachers and they told us not to worry. Even though the strikes haven’t end yet they will make sure that there will be classes for us and that we will be able to do everything we need to do. What a relieve! This week we have to choose which courses we would like to take and then maybe next week classes will start. Maybe the first week will be taught through long distance learning or maybe in another building. We will see, for now we are just very happy we can stay! The teachers seem to be very nice and do their best for us. Our school is on Egnatia street between two clothing shops. Egnatia street is the main street of Thessaloniki and has many shops. So it’s kinda weird that our school is suddenly there in the middle of the shopping street. It’s approximately a 40 minute walk from Matsi but the sun is shining here so that’s not a problem!

Yesterday, Tuesday, we have been on a Matsi school trip. Everyone felt like going somewhere, because they are tired of doing nothing and just hanging around in the city. So we decided to go to Edessa; a nice place with waterfalls. With 13 people we took the train to Edessa. In Edessa there is a nice park with 2 waterfalls. It’s kinda small and at first we only saw one waterfall that wasn’t really spectacular. But when we moved on we saw the other waterfall that was way cooler. We walked around in the village and we ate something with the whole group in a nice restaurant. It was a nice day.

Sunday we have been to Halkidiki, the peninsula. Since it has been such great weather this past week we wanted to check out the beaches there. We went with the bus with the Dutch girls and some French would come later by car. So we took a taxi to bring us to the bus station. When we were in the taxi we got frightened though; we saw the meter counting every second! In no time we were above the 5 euros and all the traffic lights really slowed us down so when we got there the meter was on 10,26! We were wondering if they maybe have a button for the meter to go faster when non Greeks get in the taxi, coz this wasn’t normal! So we gave the driver 20 euro but then he gave us 17 back. Pffew, we had been looking at the time meter!
We took the bus at 10.00 to go to a beach and at 11.30 we arrived there. The sun was shining but there was a lot of wind on the beach. So you had to lie down so you wouldn’t feel the wind that much. The water was freezing cold of course but it was nice to lie in the sun and we all got a pretty nice tan. The beach wasn’t really clean yet because the high season hasn’t start yet, but it was pretty ok. And according to Marijn’s temperature meter on her balcony temperature had reached 34 degrees!! The weather here is simply great!

Friday night I have been to my first Erasmus party. It was a Beerasmus party with free beer from 10.00-01.00. But since I don’t drink beer it’s not really beneficial for me. A lot of people from Matsi were there so it was really nice. The Erasmus parties are in X club. However, in Holland we wouldn’t call it a club; it’s more like a rather big café. Fortunately the music is better than that what you hear in Dutch clubs, so I had a good time.