Mount Ida and Arkadi

Here are some photo updates from the past two weeks. 

This is one of our three teachers Yannis, or in accusative form ton Yanni, as with all Greek names. He is friendlier than what this image conveys but also depicts the intermittent ruthlessness in the classroom.

One fun-fact from studying in Crete is all the partying together with teachers. We've all shared several shots and beers with our teachers and to some extent they're more hardcore than us students.

This is a stone igloo from the hills of Crete. I forget its name but when shepherds and the likes have to spend all day on the slopes they can retreat to these stone igloos for shelter and to cool off. Even under the Cretan sun the interior was surprisingly cool. 

This is just one of the many tavernas that frequent the local villages of the mountains. They serve awesome local cheese and today I realized that it becomes even better when they're dipped in locally produced honey. Whooptie-doo.

This is Norwegian Daniel (see earlier posts). Behind him you see an artificial water reservoir from the slopes of Mount Ida, the highest mountain in Crete and also home to Zeus' birthplace. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries when entering the cave of his "birth". Actually he wasn't really born in cave, as you may recall from Greek mythology classes, he was brought here after his birth to hide him from his father, Chronos, who used to engulf all his successors.

Less known are the surrounding mountain peaks whose names I forget but basically mean "The Drummer" and "The Nourisher" representing the mountain that drums loudly while Zeus, as a baby, cries so to drown out his cries so Chronos doesn't hear him. And The Nourisher naturally takes care of him during his upbringing.

 A strong majority, if not all, EILC participants. A related topic is that holding up your thumb is basically equivalent to giving somebody the finger here... hitch-hiking isn't the easiest.

Benjamin and Eszter repeatedly hog my iPad having succumbed the addictions of Angry Birds. It has come to give their lives meaning.

This is the Arkadi monastery in the Arkadi region of Rethymno in Crete. It is an Eastern Orthodox monastery and gave thus a whole new insight into Christianity than before known. You can read more about the Arkadi monastery on Wikipedia.

What you see is parts of the archeological site of Eleutherna - rated as one of the world's 10 most important archeological sites. It flourished during the Greek Dark Ages and thus basically having roots all the way back to the Minoan times. The excavations is not today open to the public but our guide knew an archeologist who opened it up for us and gave us a tour.

Allegedly Bejamin had said that the tour would have taken half the time if I didn't ask so many questions... but the area was fascinating and the archeologist explained how some discoveries were explained by the use of Homer's texts. Just to put it out there - anything that requires you to use Homer's texts in order to find an answer has got to be pretty awesome.

This is the EILC gang again (take away me) and the Eleuthernian necropolis to the left that we weren't actually allowed to photograph since much of the excavations is still under research and hasn't been published yet.

One happy news for all Swedes is that you can take the European Highway 4 (E4:an) all the way from Mid-Sweden to mountains of Rethymno.

The dimensions of this photo seems to be a bit strange - but that's probably because Polish Arkadiusz (compare with the region's name: Arkadi) is on it. Jokes aside, the village of Margarites is renowned for this pottery and inside this shop I found some of the most amazing engineering skills applied to simple pots.

I bought two Cups of Justice - and will be sending them home to Sweden to my parents. The challenge to my parents is three-fold and you'll have to post your findings/answers as a comment to this post below:

1) What does the Cup of Justice do?

2) Why is it called the Cup of Justice?

3) How does the Cup of Justice work?