September 24th-30th Peloponese Trip!

Wow! I have not blogged in a while. This has been for a variety of reasons. First of all, there hasn't been much to say that I haven't already said already yet. Ashlee and I started a dance/workout time every night and that has been really fun and good! However! We just got back from our Peloponnese Trip! We went to Corinth, Cenchreae, Isthmia, AcroCorinth, Epidauros, Mycenae and much more! So basically in case you didn't realize, we are definitely walking in the same places that Paul walked on his missionary journey. We have stood in the exact places he stood, and we've sang and prayed and read our bibles. It's definitely been a goosebumps&chills down your spine experience. I am super excited cause I got a new bag/purse(: It's super super cute and I am so excited about it! I started getting some of my friends/family souvenirs! Which I am even MORE excited about that!

The tour guide for this trip was not my favorite out of our tour guides so far. We call her Katerina the second, because she was our second guide that was named Katerina, and also in comparison, she comes in second compared to the other one. Haha. We made our first stop at the canal where people went bungee jumping a few days before the trip. It was such a beautiful view and very historical. I've also decided that I am buying postcards everywhere I go. So I'll have a lot when I get home :) On this trip, Isthmia was probably my favorite historical place that we visited. This is because of all the ruins that were there. My favorite part was when we were learning about the Ancient Olympics and how they started their races. The way that the starting line was set up was really neat! Basically, they had a post that was in front of each racer, and it would be let down by strings when the race was about to start. I will post a picture so that you might be able to understand better. Also, at Isthmia, I really liked the mosaic floors that were there in the main part of the town. They were really pretty. I also found it so interesting that they all bathed in the same place!

My other favorite place on this trip was the AcroCorinth. The AcroCorinth is the acropolis of Corinth from the 7th century B.C. It was really interesting to learn about the city of Corinth. It was a Greek city state and Julius Caesar rebuilt it because Rome was overpopulating. It became a city of 80,000 people. The church was made mostly up of lower class people.This kind of surprised me at first! It was so fun just to walk up and look at the view it was beautiful! It was also a really long walk, and I wasn't feeling that great that day so therefore I didn't walk up the whole thing with the group. Then after that, we went to the Palemedi fortress from the 18th century. It was the first capital of modern Greece.  We took some really pretty pictures of the view. It's so awesome to just walk through the ancient cities. (....trying to think of the name) was one of the places that we ate lunch at and it was really fun! Skylar, Ashlee and I went to a cute little restaurant and we got club sandwiches (not very greekish i know).  This was also the place where I got my purse/bag. Also, at this place we had an interesting experience with a truck. We were touring with our tour guide, and standing in the middle very little road (width wide). Then this truck comes and we had to literally lean against the wall so that we would not get hit! But he made it...it was awful close though.

We also went to Mycenae, which was excavated by Henry Schliemann. One of the coolest parts of this was the Lions gate. It is the oldest monumental structure in Europe from 1250 B.C. It is post and lintel designed and the lintel weighs 18 tons! The common people lived around the area and could come inside the acropolis if there was danger. My favorite part of being here was definitely going inside the tunnel that led to a well type thing. It was fun and felt really good cause it was so hot that day, and the cave was cold :) 

Lastly, we went to the ruins of a very old church. It was so crazy! The temple was so so very long! We sang some songs there and it felt so amazing to be singing where people used to sing and praise God too. We saw the places where they were baptized too. All in all, it was a good trip :)

This is the posts where they started the races. The one in front of them would drop when the ropes were pulled.

This is some of the mosaic floors that I was talking about!

Me in the fortress :)

Here is the pretty place where we ate lunch at one day. This is so that you can see some of the building structures in Greece.