Goodnight, Athens

  New York City, New York
Sunday, December 7, 2008

I'm astonished at how the luggage I took months preparing and days on end to pack up in September could get repacked for home in December in a matter of hours. The plane out of Athens I shared with Black Belt was rescheduled at least four times in the past week, so we had to do some fancy footwork to get to the airport. Black Belt explained the delays with the joking accusation, "It's because you ate that pomegranate!" One more time Famous George's taxi service saved the day, and we made our eleven-hour-long flight.

We touched down in New York and the passengers applauded the pilots for a safe landing. The woman across the aisle pinched the tips of her thumb, index, and middle fingers together to symbolize the Trinity, and crossed herself three times in the devout Orthodox prayer of thanks. This is the last Greek thing I'm going to see on this trip, I thought. That was of course until we got to baggage claim and all the yiayias were shoving me and each other to get at their luggage. Achhh, Hellada! :-)

I have a two-night layover in a hotel in New York in the hopes of sleeping off some of the jet lag before heading the rest of the way home to Oregon. I'm not going to try to put into words my terrible grief at leaving Athens, the program staff, and the students. The sadness is equal only to my joy at going back home. Sing the truth, Iris...

And you know the sun's setting fast

And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.

Go on now and kiss it goodbye

But hold onto your lover 'cause your heart's bound to die.

Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.

I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,

Goodnight.