Happy Monday!

Hey everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Friday night David and I went out to IKEA to return a VAT form. I am not sure if I have explained this process to you yet. Since Greece is a Socialist country they pay extremely high taxes in return they receive medical care and an education. Many people may think that these services are "free" but the Greeks pay around +25% of their income in taxes and have a 19% sales tax. To me this seems far from free. (On a side note we have been told my the Embassy that the public hospitals in Athens are not up to our standards and that we should use private hospitals. They have told us that we should not call the Greek equivalent of 991 unless we are near death because the ambulance that shows up will most likely not to stocked well enough and would certainly take us to a public hospital so we are better off driving ourselves to the Emergency Room This is what socialized medicine is like.)

Being a diplomat we are not supposed to have to pay the sales tax and we obviously are paid in dollars by the US Treasury so we pay US income tax and not Greek income tax. In the US diplomats show there Diplomatic ID and the tax is not charged on any of their purchases. Unfortunately in Greece that is not the case. We have to make our purchase and then fill out a form and provide a receipt to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who returns the form with a stamp of approval. We then have to take the form back to the merchant and get our money back. The Greeks only allow us to do this on purchases of 75 euro or more. So Lauren and David have the pleasure of funding the Greek people on a regular basis whenever we make less than a 75 euro purchase.

Saturday David and I finally got a Christmas tree. We ended up getting a small about 5.5 foot tall fake tree. I was afraid that it was going to be too small for the space but it turned out great! I am in love with it! David and I hung the lights and ornaments on it and it looks wonderful. Saturday night we had some people over that David has met through work for dinner. Sunday we laid around the house and watched a few movies and read. We went to Church and then had dinner at home.

This week I am going to start baking Christmas Cookies. Thanks to everyone who sent recipes. I am going to get David to take me to the store tonight to pick up everything I will need. I am planning to make 1-2 different cookies each day starting tomorrow. I am also getting ready for our Christmas party which is on Saturday. David is inviting 15-20 people from work to come over so I am trying to make up a list of appetizers and drinks to serve. Luckily the house looks great so it should be a great party.

Went for a run today and felt like crap! I took the weekend off and I am hurting because of it today. I hope to have a better run tomorrow. It is warm today in the high 60s and sunny. Can't beat that in December!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Love from Athens.....

PS I have posted some pictures of our very cute little tree and the fireplace. I am working on learning how to upload video today and I hopefully I will have a video posted tomorrow.