We Made It!

Hello From Athens.....

We finally made it to Athens on Thursday morning. The flight was pretty uneventful and we even go some sleep. Our house is wonderful. We are on the top floor (5th) of our building and have the most amazing views (pictures to be posted tomorrow). Our house is brand new and we have a wonderful kitchen will brand new appliances. There is a balcony off of every bedroom and a huge one off the living room and kitchen. And the roof deck is amazing. The Embassy is very nice and actually pretty big. They have pretty much everything that you would need (gym, pool, store stocked with all your American favorites, etc).

Living in Athens is going to take some adjusting. I would describe Athens has much slower paced than the US but in absolute chaos.

For starters one knows how to drive here to save their life. Traffic signs and laws are not followed except for stop lights and no right turns on red. They drive like crazy people with seemingly no care for there own safety or the safety of others.

We went on Saturday to have them setup our Internet and were told that it will be installed in TWO MONTHS!!!! Can you believe that? Only 3% of people in Athens have high speed Internet and I am fairly certain 1.5% of that is made up by Americans and other westerners. So I am on the Embassy computer today and will be making the 3 mile trek each day to use the Internet.

Other fun adventures.....Our water heater is solar powered (can you believe how green we are?) but it only heats enough water for about 1 shower per day and you are done which means no hot water for a second shower or washing clothes, dishes, etc. And here is the kicker...if it is not sunny one day you can forget about having hot water on the following day. This maybe fine for Greek who do not shower everyday but not for us. We have been told there is an electric water heater that is supposed to supplement the solar one but we are waiting for the Embassy to get around to turning it on. Also when they built our apartment and installed these beautiful new appliances in the kitchen they forgot to add sufficient power so when you turn more than one burner on at a time the breaker switches and you lose power to the kitchen. Make for a fun cooking environment.

Our air freight is supposed to arrive sometime this week which would be amazing. Our other belonging are supposed to get to Athens the week of Thanksgiving and everyone has told us they sit at the port waiting to get out of customs for at lease a month so I am hoping we get our stuff for Christmas or New Years at this point. Same for the car. People have waited as long as 6 months so we are keeping our fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

David doesn't really have to start working until next week so we are spending this week getting to know Athens and how to get around. We have had some really good food so far too. The weather was amazing on Thursday, Friday and Saturday but has now turned pretty cold. I am hoping our airfreight gets here this week because it has all of our coats.

That's is all for now I will update this everyday once we get Internet at home and at least every other day once until then. Oh our Vonage number does not work since we don't have Internet at home. We will let you know when it is up and running.

PICTURES TO BE POSTED TOMORROW!!!!