Persephone's Pomegranate
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
146
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Friday, December 5, 2008
It was great to talk with them, but they were clearly exhausted from a long night of working on their take-home final exam in Indy's Monuments class. The other students were exhausted from a long night of dancing and drinking in celebration of their final days in Athens.
I joined a crowd of students who gathered at lunchtime at the Red Door for a gyro eating contest. The contest didn't actually materialize -- the most anybody ate was two gyros. But for dessert, Papia ran up the road to the farmer's market and bought some pomegranates for all of us to share
Editing the final exam after breakfast
.As you'll remember from Greek mythology, the goddess Persephone was abducted by Hades into the underworld. Her mother Demeter rescued her, but was horrified to discover that Persephone had eaten six of the pomegranate seeds Hades had craftily offered her. Consequently, Persephone was permitted to stay half the year above ground, but then she had to go back to the underworld for six months out of the year.
The modern legend is that if you eat the seeds of the pomegranate while you are in Greece, like Persephone you will have to come back. So we each ate our pomegranate seeds and talked about when we would be able to see each other again.
Somehow Kyria also found us there at the gyro shop, and she brought me a Christmas present and a card. I was surprised and touched. I'm so proud to have a Greek friend.
If we all ate pomegranate seeds at the same time, does that mean the gods will arrange it so we can all come back to Greece together?
Comments
Your Trip
WOW...this looks like a great trip! Thanks for sharing your experience with the rest of the world!
Ken Chan
www.kenthetravelman.com