Pergamon theater

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and I had a really good day. We went to an international craft fair, ate waffles and cookies and pastries, and turns out that some student group was hosting a Tim Burton movie marathon last night, so we did that too. Tonight we've got a Halloween party hosted by our friend (a Grinnell grad) who works at the Embassy. So things are going well.

As to other stuff... Well, classes vary from hard (Greek) to easy (History and Linguistics). Eastern Roman Provinces is the most interesting, and I had trouble with the first test, but I feel like I really had the second one under control. I've started having papers due, but it's no big deal so far. Turkish class is plodding along, and the core course is tedious (because of the stuff we have to read), but only once a week.

I don't have any related pictures to show, so here's my favorite spot from our week-long field trip. This is at Pergamon, on the Acropolis. This first picture is just a nice example of the view. Straight ahead, the ground just drops off, and to the right it almost does, because that's where the theater is.This is a shot of the whole theater. This is just what all the postcards look like. The theater would hold at least 20,000 people. And the view from the seats was great. Since the town center was on top of this huge hill, they didn't have the space for a normal theater, and had to build a steep, narrower theater. It's huge. And absolutely incredible.

This is what I mean by steep. In this picture, I'm standing at the top of the theater, looking down.
Being down at the bottom, looking up at the whole theater, felt really amazing. I got such a great feeling being here, and it was definitely my favorite of all the things we saw.