Climbing and climbing and climbing

I've been terrible about posting the last couple of days, but it's because I've been so busy and tons has happened. Two days ago we conquered Mt. Olympus, well at least as much as we could conquer. It takes so long to climb that we were only planning on going to a certain point where it becomes treacherous for anyone who isn't an expert to climb. My group actually didn't even make it to that point though. We were on our way up and it was about lunchtime when it started pouring. Dr. Tom told us to just go back and find shelter, because there was none at all where we were. So we climbed farther back down and got a little bit of shelter from the pouring rain. The thing was, we were high enough for there to be snow so the rain was freezing. Our shelter was a few tall pine trees but they were really sparse so we were still getting pretty wet. We ate what we wanted of our lunches then began our hike down in our wet wet clothes when the rain stopped. Once we got down we realized that we were really only about fifteen minutes from our stopping point. Lame. Oh well, I'm proud of climbing four hours up a mountain. It was another three hours going down. By the end we were still wet and very tired. 

Yesterday our itinerary led us Meteora. It was truly magnificent and led to more climbing. We went to one of the monasteries there, which was literally on the top of a cliff, in the misdle of more cliffs. My explanation cannot do it justice, so honestly, just google Meteora monasteries. Look for a building on cliffs. Stare. Be amazed at how anyone could build that. Be jealous, I went there. We also went to a workshop where icons are made for the churches and just for people in general to have. Icons for the Greek orthodox are basically just symbolic paintings of Jesus, the saints, and stories from the Bible. It was pretty cool. Everywhere they used hold it was actually legit sheets of 24 carat gold that they glue on. I thought about getting a painting because I had just seen how they were made an painted and I thought it was pretty amazing, but I didn't for two reasons. First, a small one (about 2x3 in) was about 15€, which is about $25, and i thought that was a little out of my price range. Its probably because of the gold. Second, I vowed never to have a creepy picture of Jesus in my house. Not that I think Jesus is creepy, but some of these pictures are just creepy in my mind. I mean baby Jesus always has a man face. That's just unusual. So I did not buy one. And that was my day :)

Today we went to Phillipi, where Phillipians was written. It was pretty cool, more ruins. Got to see where Paul and Silas went before the magistrates in acts 16 and where Paul baptized Lydia. That's all for today!