After a comfortable but too-short night of sleep, the familiar phone alarm sets off at 0730. It is the Greek custom to take as light a breakfast as possible, often limited to coffee and a pastry or slice of bread, and indeed such is our fare this morning. We have - perversely, one might think, given our general exhaustion resulting from our tendency to hard work and high-endurance exercise - volunteered to rise at this hour so that we may witness a most unusual spectacle: the school Nana works at is holding a special presentation of awards, music, and theatre in honour of the national holiday tomorrow, to which we have been graciously invited...
...and so, our metabolisms left to quickly consume the small breakfast, we join Nana on her daily commute. The main hall in the school is packed with chairs in neat rows, waiting to receive the students - but for now, we head into the languages office. There is a faculty of eight teachers for this purpose, all somehow crammed into this smallish office space around a central spiral staircase; we learn later that, under the Greek school system, classrooms are assigned to grades rather than subjects, so that teachers visit the students rather than the other way around. (Exceptions are made for subjects requiring special equipment, such as chemistry or computer science.) We spend some time in the office meeting the teachers before joining the students, who have assembled upstairs to await the morning proceedings.
There is the usual round of award distribution; these are provided for students excelling at each subject, as well as for those receiving the best grades in each class. There is then a presentation of speeches by certain members of the senior class, these dealing with the importance of October 28 in modern Greek history and related debates on nationalism or whether the military nature of the October 28 parade should be considered commendable or offensive. In his address to the school body, the principal notes that those now considered exemplars of Greek thought were persecuted in their own age. The school band performs various traditional songs, and the proceedings are concluded with a short theatrical production portraying a scene from WW2-era Greece: following the Greek refusal to open the borders and the ensuing Axis occupation of Greece, some members of the Greek resistance have organized a meeting to discuss future actions against the invading forces. They receive a tip that the meeting has come to the attention of the German authorities, who will doubtless arrive to arrest those present; however, this being in the days before mobile phones and other such expedients of communication, it is impossible to cancel the meeting. Instead, they decide to pretend as though they are having an engagement party; when the Germans arrive, they feign astonishment that these happy festivities should be mistaken for a secret meeting, and merely sing louder - at least, this is the tale as translated for us by the English faculty, who are anxious to make sure that we derive some benefit to our historical understanding from the morning.
After the conclusion of these ceremonies, we grab some food from the cafeteria and head back to the English office where we are met by several of the students; the English department has invited any students interested to interview us. Most of the questions center around superlatives. What is our best experience? The hardest/longest/highest day? The most dangerous thing that has happened? We are often at a loss to answer - how does one pick? Every part is entirely different from the last, and we feel as though the trip is not a single voyage but rather several piecemeal voyages, or perhaps a disjointed collection of daily rides. How do you compare strong headwinds to rain to language barriers or hail or navigational mishaps? What does distance mean when one kilometre here is perfectly flat and another over there is uphill? What is more dangerous: a single stretch of road without guardrails? Descending a mountain on poorly-adjusted brakes? Camping in unknown territory? Sharing the road day after day with all manner of motorized vehicles? The questions are many, and even as the students leave to catch the noon bus we sense that they have many yet to ask...
...but we have other things to attend to, such as lunch; this being a half-day for the students, we have the luxury of returning home for a spot of homemade moussaka. Yum! This far exceeds the moussaka we had in Olympia in quality, and we quickly gobble down three pieces each. The afternoon is uneventful; sadly, Nana must return to the school for parent-teacher interviews, and with our lack of sleep we have little desire to head into Kalamata proper. We retire to the bedroom for a nap, but find that we are not prepared to sleep at such an early hour; instead we pull out the laptop and amuse ourselves with our stock of adventure games, which are proving to be handy entertainments indeed. Once she returns, we head out to yet another tavern for a spread of meats and salads and cheese dishes and local ham that we somehow manage to finish, much to the astonishment of the staff. There is music and wine, and the food is again quite delicious; we have not had a scrap of food in Kalamata that was anything less than thoroughly enjoyable! This is followed by a trip to another of the local bars; we discuss the daily festivities, the upcoming holiday, various North American holidays, and anything else that comes to mind - tangential or otherwise - over a couple of glasses of wine, taking in the atmosphere of Greek nightlife. Here more than most places, and especially on this night, the locals are out in droves...
...but our lack of sleep finally catches up with us as we realize it is nearing 0200, and we head back home to compensate. One more day in Kalamata - just one more, and then we have resolved to press on over the daunting stretch to Sparti, which several people have warned us is an ascent of nearly 1400 m. Eek!