back to athens

Blog blog blog blog… howdy friends.

Sunday, we went to the highest point in Athens, called “lykabettus hill” it looks like a huge perky boob sticking out from the middle of the city, and up there on a clear day, you can see everything. It was only moderately hazy, so we saw philippe’s mountain with the observatory on it, the acropolis, and all the other ancient stuff near it, the Mediterranean, the peloponnese, huge ships in the water & all of Athens.

After that, we walked through kolonaki (high fashion shopping district) SO – as an aside: It may seem like a small thing, but when I am walking on an otherwise empty sidewalk in an exclusive shopping district where the sidewalks are large, can i reasonably expect that some schmoe won’t plow into my shoulder while passing by? apparently NOT!! I was really peeved for a few seconds, and decided it was too nice a day to get all upset about it.

So, onward to syntagma where we watched the changing of the guards.. again. (Ph is perfecting his penguin imitation now) and saw a juggling act in the big square. The juggler was good and you could tell he’d had real training. The fire juggling on top of his 10-ft unicycle was the grand finale, but the really compelling part was that he was English-speaking and only had a greek vocabulary of about 10 words, and was trying to get the audience to participate. Hilarious stuff, although ph & I were practically the only ones really chuckling, probably because we understood all too well. After the show, we pushed in to give him a couple of euros in his hat, I told him he gave a good show - and we headed off into the... subway.

When I went for a test at the hospital (regular pg stuff, no alarm bells), they gave me a telephone # to call after this certain date for the results, and a code # identifying me & my test. Do they speak English? Good. So I wait for the date, and call at 3pm. No, the line is only available from noon to one on weekdays. After I missed several days in a row, because of the stupid limited time frame, I finally set my phone to ring at 12:15 on a Monday to remember to call. I called, and pencil in hand, I was ready for some information, she said “Okay, you’re test results are in” . That’s was it. They’re IN. so I can come by to pick them up anytime now. Haha.. it takes a little getting used to the way things are done here. At least now, I know to go get the results the next time I go up there, instead of thinking their test-results hotline will give it to me.

Incidentally.. This month we are going to find out (hopefully) if it’s a boy or a girl. Anyone care to put their wagers in? I had a random guy in a coffee shop tell me it is definitely a girl. All I know for sure is I am carrying “low”. now I want someone to swing a spoon over my belly and tell me what it’s going to be! But I guess they don’t do that at the hospital, so ultrasound it is.

in other news, We are supposed to be getting our household items from houston soon, maybe mid-february. Our neighbor-lady loaned us her little TV too, so we can watch movies by the fireplace. They show american films very often with subtitles in greek. It may start to feel like a home here before long!