Thursday, August 16, 2007

Athens - Day 1 (Update)


Aside from the burning mountain, all is well at the end of Day 1 in Athens. As you can see from the picture above, I was able to visit the Acropolis before dinner. I think the site seeing helped to lift my colleague's spirits as well. It was very, very hot walking amongst the ruins, but it was worth the effort.

On a more serious note, at dinner we learned that our Greek host actually lives on the burning mountain. She had to evacuate her family this afternoon, but she still found the time to meet with us. We are very grateful for her generosity as I think it would be difficult for anyone to entertain guests when their home may be at risk for a disaster. We also learned from our hosts that there was another large fire a few weeks ago on a different mountain. These fires have been consuming large portions of the forest land remaining in Greece. Let's all try to pitch in a few prayers (or thoughts, if prayers aren't your thing) that the fire is contained soon.

2 comments:

grantbob said...

See any squirrels at The Acropolis? Sorry to hear about the fires. Guess they have the same basic problems there that we have here.

SqueakyClef said...

Good to see that you guys are working hard. :-)