Last week was mostly spent doing classes & routine things. Our one day off, Thursday, it rained, so we went to check out an outlet mall for a couple of hours, but it was pretty boring. On Sunday, we went into Athens early to meet for worship with the Bulgarian church group as part of our group was going to a Greek football (soccer) game that evening. We shopped in Athens for a while that afternoon & bought a few things at a jewelry store owned by friends of the Myhans. That evening Vann & the girls & most of the students went to a soccer game. It was a game between 2 inner city rivals & cost 30 Euro for the tickets ($45) so I elected not to go as it wasn't that important to me. I went with Jerry & 4 other girls back to the Artemis. We rode the metro part way back & then got off to drive the rest of the way in the van. When we tried to start the van, the battery was dead & wouldn't start!! We decided to try to push it to see if we could get it to start. Myself & 4 other girls pushed the van (ok, Jerry steered & pushed too) up a little hill. When we were almost to the top, a car with a Greek man & woman (angels??) came along & asked if they could help. They had jumper cables & very helpfully, jumped the van!! Yeah.
The other students & Vann & the girls arrived home from the soccer game around 9:30 that night with exciting stories!! Apparently, it had been a fairly boring night as one of the teams had scored 2 goals in the first 10 minutes. I need to tell you that since there has been a lot of violence at these type games, they have started limiting admission to fans of only 1 team at each game. Tonight was the AEK team fans turn. There was fairly tight security at the gates with any loose change & the tops of water bottles being confiscated as they often throw those things during the games.
Toward the end of the game, the score was 4-0 with the AEK team losing. There were apparently 6 or 8 fans of the other team that had managed to get through the gates & were cheering for their (winning) team. About 30 AEK team fans were being poor loosers & decided to come down & taunt the fans of the other team. It just happened that they moved into the section where our group was sitting!! They were setting off flares, yelling, & throwing things at those fans & their team, the riot police moved in & they started throwing things at them too!! As the police & more angry fans were moving in, our group decided it was time to move out. Fans climbed over the barriers & there was smoke all over the place. There was a man (Greek angel??) sitting a couple of rows behind them who offered to show them a way out around the building as things were pretty chaotic. He lead them around close to the entrance, but as they were walking, they went through tear gas that had drifted into that area from the stadium. It burned their eyes, noses, & throats like crazy & they were just exposed to the remnants of it!!! They soon realized one girl had left her purse in all the chaos & Vann & the man tried to go back in to retreive it, but the tear gas was just too bad. (She did actually get her purse back a couple of days later). Anyway, they were led to safety by their fearless faculty & lived to tell some pretty exciting stories!!!! Almost Every one of them said it would have been a boring game if not for the "riot". We even saw clips of it on the news the next night!! Pretty exciting!!
It was a great opportunity for us to see God's hand protecting us as he sent us two "Greek Angels" to help us when we needed it!!
The other students & Vann & the girls arrived home from the soccer game around 9:30 that night with exciting stories!! Apparently, it had been a fairly boring night as one of the teams had scored 2 goals in the first 10 minutes. I need to tell you that since there has been a lot of violence at these type games, they have started limiting admission to fans of only 1 team at each game. Tonight was the AEK team fans turn. There was fairly tight security at the gates with any loose change & the tops of water bottles being confiscated as they often throw those things during the games.
Toward the end of the game, the score was 4-0 with the AEK team losing. There were apparently 6 or 8 fans of the other team that had managed to get through the gates & were cheering for their (winning) team. About 30 AEK team fans were being poor loosers & decided to come down & taunt the fans of the other team. It just happened that they moved into the section where our group was sitting!! They were setting off flares, yelling, & throwing things at those fans & their team, the riot police moved in & they started throwing things at them too!! As the police & more angry fans were moving in, our group decided it was time to move out. Fans climbed over the barriers & there was smoke all over the place. There was a man (Greek angel??) sitting a couple of rows behind them who offered to show them a way out around the building as things were pretty chaotic. He lead them around close to the entrance, but as they were walking, they went through tear gas that had drifted into that area from the stadium. It burned their eyes, noses, & throats like crazy & they were just exposed to the remnants of it!!! They soon realized one girl had left her purse in all the chaos & Vann & the man tried to go back in to retreive it, but the tear gas was just too bad. (She did actually get her purse back a couple of days later). Anyway, they were led to safety by their fearless faculty & lived to tell some pretty exciting stories!!!! Almost Every one of them said it would have been a boring game if not for the "riot". We even saw clips of it on the news the next night!! Pretty exciting!!
It was a great opportunity for us to see God's hand protecting us as he sent us two "Greek Angels" to help us when we needed it!!
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