"Let's go get another drink," one of our new friends suggested as we were being kicked out of a bar at 4 a.m. by the weary manager.

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to Ariana and I at the time, especially since we were having so much fun and were already a bit lubricated from four hours of drinking.

"We have beer back at our place," they continued.

"Okay, goo-," I stopped, confused. "But your 'place' is in the Olympic Village!"

Look ma, three eligible Greek men! Ariana and members of the greek baseball team

We had been out drinking this evening with the Greek Olympic Baseball team and now the suggestion to continue our fun didn't seem like such a good idea after all. We were sure there was no way, given all the security measures we'd seen so far, that we were going to get in there.

But alcohol has a way of making you think anything is possible, so we piled into two taxis and made our way back to Athens; Ariana with two pitchers and a second baseman in her cab, me with a centerfielder, a third baseman and one whose position I think was catcher.

We had met the team out for drinks in a seaside tavern in Glyfada courtesy of an invitation from one of the players to Ariana, a bright, bubbly, Greek Canadian and fellow volunteer. I'd met her on my third day when we were assigned to "marshal" at Baseball 2, the second smaller field. As the game was not nearly sold out we had plenty of time to get acquainted, and she mentioned to me and Christina, another volunteer, that she had an invitation to drinks but didn't want to go alone. I readily signed up to come - after all, I had been hoping to make some friends while volunteering and now I had the chance to establish bragging rights for meeting one of the Olympic teams.

I wasn't worried about a language barrier because just about everyone I had met had already told me the Greek baseball team was comprised mostly of Americans of Greek descent. They even had a Cubs player on their team!

So here we were at 4 am speeding back to the Olympic village with a bewildered taxi driver who just couldn't believe that these non-Greek-speaking guys sleeping in his taxi were the baseball team that was going to play for Greece later that evening. But then again, they don't have baseball in Greece, so probably don't know that many baseball players live hard to play hard.

Our taxi arrived first and I was certain I would be stopped at the first checkpoint. To enter the village you need to pass through a security check identical to an airport's with a walk through a metal detector while your items pass through x-ray. But at the Olympics you also needed proof of the appropriate credentials a complicated system of symbols and colors that showed you were allowed access to certain areas. I did not have the OLV designation on my card and figured this is where my adventure would end.

I tried nonchalantly to take off my credentials badge and lay it upside down on the x-ray conveyor. It had to go through x-ray because it was laden with pins and would set off the machine. After it emerged I casually put it around my neck and was amazed that none of the three guards inspected it for the proper ID!

I immediately called Ariana and told her to do the same. Once her group arrived we proceeded to the food hall. There another inspector barred our way and again I was certain we would be found out. But he only looked at one of the guy's badges, noted the proper designation and waved us in as we waggled our ID's toward him at a distance. I couldn't believe it! Past two security checks and into the largest dining hall I've ever seen!

I guess when you need to feed X thousand athletes several times a day for 13 days you'd need a lot of space, but this facility was the size of an airplane hanger, lined on all sides by cafeteria style food stations offering fare from just about every country in the world. The guys just walked up to a massive commercial fridge and helped themselves to whatever they wanted and sat at one of the hundreds of tables that filled the center of the hall. Over to my left was the towering mound of honeydew melons. They must have used a ladder to pile them 8 feet off the ground. I would have loved to explore the entire room, but ever nervous of being found out, I left quickly with Ariana and two of the players and we made our way back to their apartment. It was very still and quiet at 4:30 am and quiet is not something I was used to in noisy Athens, so it seemed a little dead and spooky to me.

The village itself was nothing remarkable. The buildings are intended to be used for low income housing in the long run and frankly they looked it. It seemed the landscaping had not had time to fill in and the buildings ranged from two-story flats to mid rises and had all the plain, institutional look of government housing. Their apartment had two bedrooms with two twin beds each, two bathrooms, a living area and a fairly nice patio. It was sparsely furnished with the living area serving as storage for their baseballs and uniforms and various other sports related things.

After we explored their digs it quickly became apparent that beer drinking was not what our guys had on their minds. I honestly don't know how I made such an amateur mistake - perhaps I was so excited about the idea of seeing if I could sneak into the Olympic village that I didn't think about the implications of telling a guy I would come home with him...and I think since "home" was the Olympic village it all just seemed like summer camp to me…

In any case, I had to explain to one of the players that I had made a mistake and was sorry for leading him on but while my mouth said one thing, my head was going, "oh, go on, why not, he's a nice guy, he's cute and you'll have more bragging rights!" In the end my good sense won out over my ego and I pretty much pissed off this drunken and, now confused, player.

But he told me before he went to bed that Ariana and I had no where to go and that in essence we were trapped there until at least 8 am. Oh god!!! It had never occurred to me that I couldn't just walk out and hail a taxi!

So I spent the next three hours shivering in the early morning cold, alternately dozing, cursing myself for my stupidity and wondering if I should just go snuggle up to this handsome player who I was sure would make some room for me. But again, this nagging sense of "do what's right, not what's convenient" won out again...for the most part. I finally couldn't take the cold any longer (who knew Athens could be so cold on a summer morning) and put on one of the baseball uniform shirts I saw in the living room.

Would you trust this girl in your Olympic Village?

At dawn's first light Ariana and I took off looking for our escape. As we wandered the campus, half dazed from lack of sleep and, at least on my part, a little too much drink, we could not believe we didn't get stopped by the police car that cruised past us. I mean how many Olympians are wandering the Village at 7:30 am dressed up for a night out wearing Greek baseball team shirts?!

Finally we noticed a staging area for buses and after asking about a dozen people found out about a bus that would take us to the metro. Yes! Now we just had to act like we belonged on the bus and hope there wasn't a security check on the way out.

We hunkered down in our seats, our purloined baseball shirts inside out and wrapped tightly around us, and waited impatiently while the bus pulled up to the gate. Moments later we were on the open highway and breathing a big sigh of relief.

Giggling, partially from exhaustion, partially from finally realizing what a great adventure we had been on, we parted ways at the metro stop with a promise not to tell anyone we had snuck into the Olympic Village and the knowledge that this new friendship promised more adventures to come.

Credentials and security:

Looking back we think that perhaps the guards "looked the other way" when they saw athletes bringing back a couple a girls in the early morning hours. Maybe a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' kind of thing. Of course, such a breach of security should really not have happened but since we had nothing on us but our clothes and a small purse we're assuming the guards used personal judgment and figured we didn't pose much of an international threat.

The rite of passage

But overall security at the Olympics seemed very tight. Part of our job as volunteers was to bar people from restricted areas unless they showed proper ID. This consisted in most cases of an accreditation badge that had the proper insignias and colors on it. For instance, my badge allowed me only access to BAS or baseball areas. The red stripe signified my lowly status, pretty much keeping from any but the most mildly restricted areas. The accreditation symbols ranged from the infinity symbol, meaning all access, to numbers, used mostly for press ratings, to letter codes showing who had access to which venues. Some people, like our friend Kostas who was an interpreter, had access codes to about five different venues on his badge.

Every time we entered an area we had to show our badge by holding it out for inspection. In addition, if we or any spectators were passing into a main area of a venue we had to walk through a metal detector and put our items through an x-ray machine or have them hand searched. Policeman, soldiers and Special Forces were everywhere.

We were not allowed to touch other people's badges. Most people understood and respected the rules and dutifully held out their badges for inspection. But oh, not the police. I and other volunteers must have argued with them every day. They would either not wear their credentials or tuck them away somewhere you couldn't read it. Being unable to touch them, it required asking them to show it and this invariably led to sour looks and refusals. They seemed to think that wearing a police uniform was all that we needed to see. Each time, we barred their access by standing between them and wherever they were headed. Since my Greek is limited it didn't faze me when they started yelling since I didn't understand them. I think sheer exasperation with me got the badge eventually pulled out each time.

But I wish I had spoken enough Greek to say that any fool could put on a uniform and pretend to be an officer and I would think they would appreciate our efforts to help them make the Olympics as safe as possible. But instead, I smiled and apologized and kept insisting to see their credentials.

What makes a Greek baseball team?

I found out that what makes a Greek a Greek seems to vary with how important you are to the country. Each member of the baseball team had to hold Greek citizenship to play. A good number of them were Greek Americans, some of whom had not ever been to Greece and didn't speak Greek. At least one player was only one eighth Greek - his great grandfather being from Greece. Apparently this was enough Greekness to warrant him receiving a Greek passport. Great for him, but infuriating for me because when I approached the embassy in London about getting a Greek passport I was haughtily informed that my father had to be of Greek citizenship for me to qualify for a passport. Since my dad was born in the US but raised in Greece and we didn't have the appropriate papers to show that he was indeed a Greek citizen in addition to a US citizen I was basically shit out of luck.

HA! Now armed with this knowledge of this 1/8 Greek being granted a passport, the Los Angeles Greek Embassy better watch out because I'm gonna be camping on their doorstep when I come home. I may not play baseball, but I deserve the chance to be able to come here and work if I want and get to know my family here better!