Another Sunny Day in Athens..

Sunny and in the 80s today.

Today was a pretty uneventful day but since this is sort of a digital diary I selfishly am going to detail everything. Since we are still having hot water problems and our stove loses power when more than one burner is on the maintenance people came out today from the Embassy. They could not figure out how to fix either problem so now our Greek landlord has to get involved and everyone has told us this is not a good sign. As I have said before the Greeks move at a slower pace so I know that this may take some time to fix.

Today I had my first good workout since we have been here. There is a very nice park about 3 blocks from our house that is actually well maintained for Greek standards and it has a nice path that goes along the perimeter so I made about 5 laps today and since I am incredibly out of shape I am exhausted now. The Greeks are not big on exercise (even though this is the birthplace of the Olympics) they kind of just stared at me as I ran by each time. When my sponsor was running in a park one day these old men started cheering her on though which I thought was cute. This is the nicest park I have found yet. Most of the parks in Athens are overrun by stray dogs and covered in dog poop and graffiti. I don't think I have told you about the stay animals. It is actually very sad. Greeks do not believe in fixing their pets so there is a large population of stray dogs and cats running the streets. It is actually very sad. The Greeks don't want to fix them but they have no problem with them running around starving and hurt. It is very strange. They also do not pick up after their own dogs so there tends to be lots of dog poop. And then there is the graffiti. It is on everything hotels, peoples homes, every street sign, even churches. It is awful it is really the worse part about Athens. And they right the most bizarre things for instance the English word "since" is painted on a wall of a school by our house.

This weekend will be filled with more exploring. There is a beach about an hour outside of Athens that everyone says has the most amazing sunsets so we are going to try to do that tomorrow. We also have a big all Embassy Halloween party next weekend so David and I need to hunt down some costumes. Even though I really do not like Halloween it should be fun and will give us a chance to meet lots of new people.

Oh David was told today that our air freight is in country but the Greeks will not release it to us for a couple weeks. Why you ask....that is just the Greek way. So it is sitting at the airport right now just waiting.

Well after one full week of living in Athens I would have to say we are starting to get the hang of everything. We are starting to learn our way around and we are getting lost less often so that is a plus.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Love from Athens.....