The apartment bed is not very comfortable! It looks like a queen so I might try and find a pad for it later. Anyway, my apple pie was a nice breakfast, and Spyros drove me to the university. They are having a student protest at the moment (of course), but Spyros’ group is in a new building that the undergrads presume is empty, so they are not affected. Spyros’ office, on the other hand, is on lockdown, so he cannot access it. Kind of hilarious. This time, he says, the government passed a bill that cuts down the maximum time to graduation to 10 years (instead of infinity), puts a maximum on the percentage of votes from students go towards a new dean, and other things that are considered commonplace in the US and much of Europe. This is the same theme as last time, more or less, except this time all three political parties agreed on it so it’s unlikely that it will be repealed. Spyros is worried this will mean a more serious protest – it’s the end of their exam period at the moment, and if they’re still protesting in two weeks there’s danger that the next semester will be cut altogether. I can’t really understand why you’d want to delay finishing your degree so long for what appears to be very little back on your protest. 10 years seems more than generous, as it’s double the time a normal undergraduate program needs here! Must be a very different mindset.
Anyway. The office is in the “blue building” and has a great view, and you can even see the bridge from there. I spent the day making a poster for the upcoming conference and meeting people in a kind of oblique “we’ll say hi but not much more” way, possibly because they were busy or maybe because their English isn’t so great. Very hard to make small talk when you don’t speak the language. One of the girls did give me a pastry and her guest lunch pass, which was nice. I thought I would finally walk back to the apartment at the end of the day (I missed the footpaths this morning) but it turned into a surprise oh-we’re-taking-the-motorbike last minute kind of conversation. So much for that. So much, also, for cooking myself dinner; the supermarket offered very little English labeling and so I was afraid to buy much, and also discovered a woefully understocked kitchen on my return (the suspicion of which had also put me off large purchases). There’s a Panini press but no cutting board or sharp knife (or any durable cookwear, really) so I gave up and just made a damn sandwich. I had also inadvertently let in a gecko, which is annoying since they’re so fast and creepy. Hopefully he will let himself out (ha).
But at least I had some fresh limes. And when life gives you a lime tree and a fridge stocked with some leftover vodka, make… lime simple syrup and vodka drinks? The proportions are probably terrible but it gets the job done. Plus Alice in Wonderland was preloaded on my phone, so I read that as well. This may be yet another night I don’t make it to the internet café out of laziness. Oh well.
9/20/11
This morning was successful for a few reasons. #1 – I remembered to turn on the water heater before I took a shower (can’t leave it on due to “danger of explosion”…!). #2 – I had a more-or-less-proper breakfast of yogurt, cereal, and honey from a pouch. #3 – I only experienced one shower. To explain that last one - up to now it’s been the dry season, says Spyros, but yesterday before he left he mentioned I’d want an umbrella today because they were expecting “the first rain.” Luckily it didn’t rain at all on my (slightly confusing) walk to school, but I was in the office not twenty minutes (most of which were spent looking at the crazy clouds) before the sky let rip. Good thing I packed my lunch. This does hamper my plans to do laundry, as there’s a washer but no dryer in the apartment, but maybe I’ll just do a few things tonight before the Crete trip and hang them in the bedroom with fingers crossed.
I did some work and then decided I couldn’t wait to watch the Castle premiere any longer. Problem is, hulu and their ilk restricts media access based on the location of your IP address, which is annoying and doesn’t appear to do much good for anyone. After fiddling around with my work VPN, which was glacially slow, I found a program called TunnelBear that is not only cute and well designed, but gives me a US IP for a certain number of MB downloaded. Woo! TV: check!
After watching the clouds with some consternation I decided I better head out to the Makro, which I had hoped would be a larger supermarket where I could buy a few things for myself and Andrea. It was a little out of the way but not much, and it was fairly hilarious once I was there. I suppose you could say it was basically a small greek costco, complete with 10 kg tubs of greek nutella (that’s 22 lb! a small child of hazelnut paste!), cooking equipment, two aisles of wine, and some other assorted things. Very little of it was in English, of course, and I spent enough time confused about why this country does not seem to stock tissues or Ziploc bags to escape another downpour. Terribly convenient! I also found a bottled mixed gin drink which I didn’t know existed, so we will try those out later.
Since my shopping trip was more or less successful I talked myself into eating dinner out again (it's a bit perilous to walk where everything is at night, since there are no sidewalks), and went to a place Spyros had mentioned he liked. I probably ordered the wrong thing, because it was not my favorite at all – I thought I was getting chicken souvlaki with bacon (awesome, right?) but it was actually a slab of fried chicken with canadian bacon and cheese all over it. It was the greasiest non-Greek thing on the menu, probably. Sadfaceeee. I did get a free dessert somehow, but I don’t really know what it was - something like a flan covered in some kind of bitter-ish honey? Oh well. Next time I’ll remember that bacon means different things in Europe and to choose something more traditional.
Since it was too early to turn in (really, too early for real Greeks to have finished eating, oops) I finally headed to the internet café, which is only around the corner from the apartment. And here I was lucky with rain for the third time – which, by the rule of threes, means I should get dumped on at some point soon, but I’ll take it for now. I also got a free drink (which, in turn, meant I paid nothing for my internet since there was no hourly charge) because I mentioned I was a friend of Erica’s, a previous coworker who had spent a lot of time there. I also found out I can get seven more classic books for free on my phone (had already finished Alice in wonderland) so I have downloaded them just in case. Wee. Pretty successful all in all! Even if the washer didn’t work when I got home…ah well, just will have to get creative with what I brought.
No comments:
Post a Comment