Her First Day in Greece

The one where Kayla uses salad dressing as cracker spread, experiences jet lag for the first time and finally gets to call Thessaloniki home for the next 6 weeks.

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My first flight from Chicago to Munich, Germany

This story begins in the Chicago airport with an eight hour flight. This was one of the longest flights I have been on, but it also felt like one of the fastest. During this flight, I got a lot accomplished:

• Watched three movies: Aquaman, The Upside, and Smallfoot (one of them had to be a kid's movie because that's just how I roll)

• Read articles for my research internship regarding antimicrobial and/or edible coatings that can be applied to fruits, vegetables, and meat products in means of extending the shelf life

• Started studying for the GRE (It's actually not as much fun as it sounds)

• Experience sketchy plane food (three meals all together, one meal being extremely "sketchier" than the others :)

"The Sketchy Meal" It was the bottom dish which threw me off. I tried to be a trooper for the experience, but when it came to the "mashed potatoes" I had to pull the plug lol. Atleast, I hope they were suppose to be mashed potatoes. I also tried the crackers with each of the spreads and then finally realized that I was dipping them in salad dressing. So far its Europe: 1 Kayla: 0.

However, my favorite part of this plane ride was being able to see the sun set and rise during the time I was on board.

Window of the German Airport and my second plane

After arriving in Germany, I went through passport security and explored the shops within the airport for two hours before boarding my last plane. This ride was about three hours long and I was asleep before take off and woke up just in time for breakfast. Then, we landed shortly after and were then shuttled to baggage claim where we met one of our Perrotis college reps, Helen, as well as other students who were also going to be in the program. Helen then took us back to the college where we got our room assignments, unpacked, and had the chance to explore campus.

Shortly after, we were off to our first Greek culture class. Each week we will learn something new from culture to cuisine to history. Today, we learned about fun facts about Greece, like there are more than 4,000 islands in Greece, and that Greeks are superstitious. Many believe in the evil eye. It's a negative energy that can be transferred to you by other people whether they mean to or not through compliments or jealousy. They protect themselves by wearing a blue eye on jewelry, artwork on streets, decorations by their front door and spitting. I was extremely grossed out at first until they explained that they don't actually spit. They just say "ftou ftou" after they give someone a compliment to protect the person from the curse. We also learned Greek superstitions and common phrases:

kalimera- good morning

kalispera- good evening

kalinichta- good night

efharisto- thank you

parakalo- please

The struggle is real when we try to use these phrases with the locals, but it usually gives them a good laugh so they don't seem to mind when we absolutely butcher the words.

Greek Pizza!!! Unfortunately, the nutella pizza didn't last long enough for the picture :)

Lastly, we finished off the day with a group meeting with delicious Greek pizza and dessert pizza which was basically just a pizza crust covered in Nutella and I thought dessert pizza at Happy Joe's and Pizza Ranch was dangerous...

I hope you enjoyed the first update! I will try my best to create posts as often as I can :) Also, there is a gallery below with more pictures taken throughout my trip as well as descriptions once you click on them.