OK, I'm going to try and get through this since I'm caught up on homework. Well friends, we last left off with us arriving in Piraeus port in Athens late at night. Our ride into town to the hotel was informative. From far off we could see the lit-up Acropolis high on the hill. The streets were mostly empty and we could see that nearly every free surface was covered with graffiti. And that's as far as I got during my first week of class. It's now been almost three months since we disembarked in Athens so my memory is fading on some of the details of these pictures. I'll be doing more digging this time around. On a positive note, I scored a 94% in my Theory of International Relations course. OK, here we go. Rick Steves opens up the pocket Athens guide with this passage: "Most of Athens is a noisy, polluted modern sprawl: characterless, poorly planned, and hastily erected concrete suburbs that house the area's rapidly expanding population.