Fun facts:

I dislike shopping in Europe maybe more than I dislike shopping in the US. The Greek version of Lane Bryant is pretty terrible from what I've seen.

I went salsa dancing last night and it was a lot of fun. I'm terrible at structured dancing though, because I always want to lead. I'm a terrible follower when it comes to doing repetitive steps. Greeks dancing salsa is awesome to watch. American men just don't dance like that- although it did make me miss my football playing American boys that don't make me look like a giant, because Greeks men are pretty much tall and lithe thin and well, I just feel sort of ridiculous when I'm dancing with a guy I'm pretty sure I could bench press. Also, one of the Greeks who took us out isn't actually tall so when he was dancing with us all of us girls (me, Taylor, and Katherine) all dwarfed him, especially in heels.

I'm kind of home sick. It was pretty bad yesterday for some reason, so I'm glad I did actually go out dancing with people because it took my mind off it and it was a legitimately good time.

That's all I got for you. Hope this was a non-boring break from my long blog posts. My life here isn't that much more exciting than my life at home; sorry to disappoint.

As promised, Part 2 of the weekend

Be prepared for another insanely long entry. It’s worse than the last one. Also, there will be one more shorter part about the weekend, then be prepared for sweet blogs about Rome and Amsterdam.

I had to get to Nikos' apartment to go play poker with him and Larissa and Taylor and Andrew, so after dinner I got in a cab and told the driver the address, attempting to make 111 understood by "ena ena ena" (the English spelling of the Greek 1) but I'm pretty sure that confused the driver, so Elyse told him in the Greek, and therefore I figured I wouldn't get too lost. One thing that I do notice when I'm here, around people who do not speak English is how peaceful it is to not feel obligated to make small talk. Not to sound like a huge bitch, but I'm not really a big fan of having to talk to people in customer service sorts of jobs- cashiers, taxi drivers, receptionists- about things like the weather or how their night has been. I liked being able to sit in the back of a taxi on a rainy Greek night and observe the life that was passing by at 1 o clock on a Friday. I enjoy having time to focus on those thoughts and not have to put half of my brain on the semi-auto pilot that "Oh, I'm good, how are you?" takes. We reached the place I remembered and with a quiet "edtho" (here) he stopped and I handed him a ten euro and got out back into the rain with an 'efharisto, kalinicta" (thank you, good night. Also, trying to get the Greek words into English letters is a hoot for things like kalinicta with the eta and the chi in there and edtho with the fun pronunciation of a delta) and got on the phone with Larissa. I saw her pop out to the balcony as I heard Taylor's voice answer Larissa's phone and I headed up.

Nikos' apartment is right above a bar. A karaoke bar to be more specific, so you have to go up onto the deck of the bar and walk to the entrance of the apartment building to get to the winding stairs that lead to Nikos’ place. I got up there and see Taylor and Larissa, but no Nikos or Andrew; I also see a bottle of Jameson and a couple five euro bills on the coffee table and I recognize that this poker game is going to be serious business to Larissa, if not to other people as well. They tell me that Nikos and Andrew are down at the bar for a while and as soon as Larissa rolls a cigarette, we head down there to join them. This bar isn’t a crowded place at all, but there were a few other people in there at that point in the night. Also by that point in the night, I cannot feel what time it is at all. All day I had been in a state of being so confused about what day or time it was, because I hadn’t been to class and this feeling was made worse by the fact that I was going out to do things at 1 o clock. So we get down there and Nikos sees that I have arrived, and he and I have gotten into this little habit of half shouting at each other in greeting so I hear a “JACKIE!” in an Albanian accent and respond with “NICKO!” because in the vocative (when I’m talking to him) the s drops off his name and when my answer to the question of “are you drunk?” is a definite no, a quick conversation happened with the bartender and five shot glasses were produced. Moral of that story is that I approve of cinnamon flavored liqueur, but I obviously still wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t plied with more alcohol however, and Nickos was pretty drunk already and Larissa was getting there. Nickos decided that he would try to get us to dance to the Greek music playing at the bar, or at least to get us clap and dance as much as you could while still sitting at the bar and before we left, he kicked it up a notch. He started to dance when we got up to leave, showing us traditional Greek moves which involve lots of stepping. It was very cool to see actually, these traditional Greek dance steps being done in a bar, and there was a woman in a slinky black dress and sky-high heels doing the same moves on the other side of the bar and people leaning down to clap for them (Larissa doing the clapping for Nickos).

We moved back up to Nickos apartment and moved out to the balcony to play. We were playing Texas Hold ‘Em and somehow Nickos wound up with a straight flush, almost a royal, in the first hand beating out Andrew’s straight and taking quite a bit of Andrew’s chips for the first round. Larissa was steadily getting drunker and that isn’t a big deal for her, because she’s pretty much a pro, but she lost all her chips at some point and bought back in. At some point she knocked her chips over and it was beyond obvious that she was not really okay to keep playing so we decided to take a food break, because Larissa had brought food for us. Spicy chicken burgers and some Greek style salad and both were absolutely delicious. But during our food break we started playing American music, because we had been listening to Albanian hip-hop, an artist that is according to Nickos “The Timbaland of Albania” and of course that lead to me singing. Most things lead to me singing, so this was nothing special, except for Larissa was convinced that I had to keep singing because my voice is amazing in her opinion. She sat on the couch next to me, half leaning on me on occasion, looking up at me from my shoulder as I karaoke’d “Me and Bobby McGee” into my cell phone on Nickos’ camera because of course that seemed like a good idea at 3:30 in the morning. And I was unworried about making too much noise, because Nickos made it a point to let us know how unimportant us being quiet was because no one was in his building at the time. He went so far as to make a joke about our RAs dog being in his hallway and it was truthfully very amusing. But after our sweet jam session, at one point Nickos went into the bathroom and suddenly we were hearing a beeping sound. It was the intercom and we figured that out but we still couldn’t actually answer it. When Nicko got on the intercom, the conversation was all done in Greek of course and we all sort of could tell that it wasn’t a pleasant conversation. Somehow we were in trouble.

Nikos turned and looked at us and told us we had to be more quiet. The police apparently had been called on us because we were being too loud, but Nickos’ landlord is a phenomenal human being and told them that Nickos is a good tenant and the group of us was leaving very soon. For a minute we debated just being quieter, and not playing Guns’n’Roses at top volume and staying in the apartment, but it was obvious that Nickos did not love that idea. So we brainstormed and came to the conclusion that we should try to go to a club. Larissa was not into that idea but the rest of us were and there can only be four people in a taxi so Nickos agreed that she could just stay at his apartment. The club we decided to go to was Club Vogue, which apparently is a new club and people have really liked it. We were headed over there in a taxi and we were discussing the money situation; we sort of assumed that at 4 am the club would not be trying to take 15 euro cover from us all, since they were going to close in about three hours, so it was okay that we all got in a cab with very little money. Nickos got in the cab with straight up no money because he got distracted by the whole “get out of here now” mentality that he had going on. The taxi drops us off and we make our way to the club entrance and I see a common theme emerging.

Leg. Lots of leg. Dresses. Skyscraper heels. Skintight clothing. Suits. Men are wearing suits to this dance club. And everyone exiting is beautiful. I noticed this, but thought nothing of it really, because how crowded can the club be at 4 am? Plus, these beautiful, dressed up women are leaving, so we get to the door and Nickos starts talking to the bouncers. I can feel how out of place we look. Taylor and I are both wearing jeans, and although both of us look cute, it isn’t the cute for this club. Taylor’s got a scarf on over a higher necked top and I’m wearing a three quarters sleeve hooded sweater over a top I did actually buy as a going out top, but it isn’t anything that I actually feel okay in at this place. As I’m contemplating this with Taylor, Nickos is still talking to the bouncer, and it’s looking grim, so Andrew starts acting like he’s going to look for the back door. Eventually he gets on the phone with our friend Alexandra, who was supposed to be at Vogue that night. Finally she picks up and they somehow communicate to each other that we’re outside despite the fact that she cannot hear him at all. But in a few moments, she appears, glittering short black dress and heels, and talks to the bouncer, telling him that we are with her party, with Kostjan’s party. The bouncer doesn’t really seem to be buying it, and sort of gives us the once over, and tells Alex that he’ll let us in a few and when she asks how long he replies “I decide how long. Not you.” Like, listen buddy, you’re a bouncer at a club. You do not have an important authoritative job- you just feel important because you have a suit. Just let us in, we’re giving you money, our clothes be damned. But he did let us in after a few minutes and we then got held up at the table where we had to buy tickets to get in. Our idea of no cover at 4 am was nowhere near correct. I handed over my last paper money for the 15 euro cover charge that included a free drink- so really it’s a 5 euro cover and a drink because drinks are insanely expensive here and Alex had to end up paying for Taylor and half for Andrew or so with promises of us to pay her back. But finally we got into the club.

It was pretty much exactly how I pictured a club to be: dark, with strobe lights and spot lights in green and white and blue and a fully stocked bar and techno and good looking people dancing everywhere. The dance floor level was crowded and we knew we’d have to go down there eventually. By this time I had taken my sweater off to try to look more like I belonged at the place, but as long as my jeans were on that wasn’t going to happen. Taylor and I got drinks after a quick search through the labyrinthine placement of doors and stairs and curtains and an escalator that in all reality just seems a little superfluous to the club for a bathroom. After a few minutes of just sort of taking the atmosphere in and seeing that this really was a club, almost stereotypically so, and waiting for Alexandra and losing the boys to somewhere, Taylor and I figure we might as well dance and find room on the stairs. While dancing on the stairs, the extreme awesomeness of the musical choices made by these DJs was highlighted. American hip-hop from when I was a major rap fan was spliced together. They played that terrible Khia song “My Neck, My Back” and I wondered why any 14 year old knew any of the lyrics to that song, edited or not. Terror Squad’s “Lean Back” was played after 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” and a few other songs that at this point I don’t really remember; the only thing missing was DMX’s “Party Up.” Alex returned to us and we headed down the stairs, passing a hundred beautiful people and having to snake through them and finally found a spot to claim as our own to dance. It had the added bonus of there being a table close to it that Alex could dance on. The next about 2 ½ hours seemed to pass by rather quickly, in a haze of dancing and shouting lyrics to rap songs that no one else in the building knew and wondering how in the world so many good looking people existed in one place.

We had found the boys and we were all wondering what time we were going to leave, as it was about 6:30 or so, perhaps a little later. Taylor and I were losing ground on the staying awake front, but Andrew and Nikos wanted to try to stay until the place closed and Alexandra decided to stay with them. So after bumming 5 euro off of Alex with a promise to pay her back later in the day (which I did of course) Taylor and I headed out back into the night, which was rapidly becoming day. It was still pouring rain and Taylor thought the food trailers outside smelled delicious and she wanted a gyro because of that delicious smell. We were in luck because there was an ATM right across the street from this club so we got over there and both pulled some money out. When we got back to the other side of the street, we checked these trailers for gyros; alas, neither of the places had gyros- they had pizza I think. I think that’s strange because I’m rather positive that gyros are made for drunk/hungover people because of the extreme greasy excellence that they are. I mean, they put fries on the sandwich for you! They add grease with those potatoes when they had greasy pork on a pita anyway! But since we couldn’t get our gyros, we got in a cab and decided that we’d have the driver drop us off at the Arch and hope that we could find an open place to get food. As we’re riding in the back of this cab, the sky outside is getting a little lighter and I also learned that even when it’s 7 am and I haven’t slept, I know how to say “sorry, I don’t understand Greek. Do you speak English?” We get to the Arch and I see that Everest, a fast-food restaurant of sorts, is open and I can get a crepe there so I figured I’d get a crepe and we’d find Taylor a gyro. As we’re waiting in Everest, Taylor is falling asleep. When my crepe was done I had to physically shake her to get her awake. We asked the man where there would be an open gyro place and he pointed us in the direction we would have went anyway probably. We head out and go to cross the street toward the arch. As we are discussing the bus schedule, the light changes. This time it wasn’t the sky, but the street lights. Taylor and I were standing across from the Galerian Arch on a rainy Saturday, soaking wet and tired and carrying a crepe that I really just wanted to tear into right there, and we saw the street lights turn off because it was now morning.

We walked the blocks that would lead us home and we didn’t find any open gyro places. We even walked a little further, hoping to find a place, because I figured that if we were going to do it, we might as well do it all the way and find Taylor a damn gyro. It turned out that neither one of us could take it and Taylor decided it wasn’t even worth it. She did not end the night with a gyro unfortunately. She did get something to eat though, and we sat and ate our breakfast or whatever that meal could have been considered. We somehow dragged ourselves back to our apartment and made it in there. It took me a good number of tries with the keys to get in the room because I was just so exhausted. By the time I laid down in my bed and got ready to sleep for the night, my clock read 7:54. I was so tired I barely had time to be amazed at myself, although I almost tried to stay awake to get online and see if anyone was on skype, but I couldn’t. I’m quite certain I was asleep before the clock changed to 8:00.

The weekend thanks to the most interesting woman in the world pt. 1

So my weekend somehow ended up starting Friday afternoon. A lot of students at ACT just don't have classes on Fridays, but I do, so my weekends start around 6 o clock Friday night. This week however, I was going to get up and go with two other study abroad students to the hospital to get the tests I need for this bullshit residency permit I have to apply for. I was told that I would be able to make my 1 o'clock class if we went to the hospital at 11. The two other students and I get on the bus and make it to the hospital at about 5 til 11, waiting for the girl who works for the school to get there and help us. Turns out no one at the one hospital in Thessaloniki that can do these tests speaks English, so we needed a translator. She got there half an hour late, which gave me, Larissa, and Lee half an hour to sit on the benches in front of this hospital and fret about how sketchy this hospital looks. Hospitals at home generally look clean and sort of spartan on the outside. The big white buildings that are all sort of uniformly nice and put you at ease about the sanitation standards, they don't exist here in Greece. This hospital was mustard yellow colored mansion. It looks like an old mansion that has been converted. It probably looks haunted if seen at night. The stone steps are cracked and there is a faucet outside as though at any moment a nurse will come out rushing to get water, blood stained apron and all. And I don't mean to be insulting, I'm really not. These were just some of the scenarios that we discussed while waiting.

Our translator showed up and we got to wait some more. This time we had numbers though. It could have been worse though; there are much less interesting people than Lee and Larissa to be stuck waiting around with, and it was a beautiful day. We eventually (see 1 o'clock as eventually) got to go into the hospital and it turns out they weren't able to do the tests friday anyway. So we all scheduled new appointments for Tuesday because Monday was all full. So we got out of the hospital at around 1:30, halfway through the hour my Literature class happens in. I was obviously not going to make it to Lit. So instead, we decided to walk back downtown (because taking the bus to the hospital was unnecessary, it was that close) and get some gyros. Larissa hadn't really had a gyro yet, so I figured it was necessary. So we ate and then Larissa asked me if I wanted to go to the open market at Aristotle Square with her, because Lee was going to go back to the apartments. I of course decided that tagging along was a better idea that paying for a cab to take me to school for one hour of class, when I can just get the powerpoint online anyway.

Larissa and I headed down toward Aristotle and on the way stopped in this music store, which was a-okay by me because I've realized that I do not mind staring at electric guitars. Larissa started talking to the employees about whether or not they had flutes and it turned out that they had one. A very decent one, that was made even more decent by how cheap it apparently was by instrument standards. Larissa got rather excited about this and was sort of giddy the entire rest of the way to the market, vowing to go back into the music shop and see if they could order a more specific flute with open holes and a B and some other technical stuff that I know nothing about.

Some quick information that might be helpful as to understanding why this blog entry is going to end up an incredible length. Larissa might be the most interesting woman in the world. If there were a female equivalent to those Dos Equis commercials, Larissa would be that woman selling you beer. or probably vodka. or gin. She's from New Jersey, by way of Canada, by way of Israel, by way of Ukraine. She is 23 years old and has a few tattoos, one she designed herself, another that reads Crazy Bitch in Thai. She's bathed elephants in rivers. She has been arrested for harassing police officers with friends dressed like Borat. She has a piece of glass still stuck in her eyebrow from a car accident she was in when she was 18. She has a strange propriety about her table manners, eating a gyro with a knife and fork and clearing her tray at a place where you don't have to. She loves alcohol but loves poker more. She also loves children and works as a pre-school teacher. She occasionally raps in Russian and will invite you to go watch the sunset with her on top of a mountain because it is just that beautiful and she wants to share it with you. She will befriend random people while out on the town and save the glass bottles for the shop down the street, because she is friends with the owner because she's Russian. I am never really sure what will happen whenever she's around. I wish I could follow her around with a camera and show everyone what I mean when I say she's an amazing character. I want to chronicle her life.

Larissa also happens to be a great cook. This is why she wanted to go to the open market, to pick up some stuff for dinner that night. So we of course were in the meat aisle, that's also basically a fish aisle. She got some ground up chicken and almost bought some sting ray. But instead of just calling that good enough, we continued out to more grocers that I hadn't ever seen (I've been to the open market and looked around before). She knows a good place for anything you might want- if you like trail mix and nuts and the like, she knows a place; if you like asian food, she knows a place. We stopped a few more places and I was mostly along for the ride because I can't just see foods and go "oh, I have a recipe I could use these for" because be serious, I don't have recipes for shit. I'm learning the basics of pasta at this point in my life, nevermind making anything with artichokes and chili peppers and two kilos of ground chicken. She had bags of things by the end of the day trip, and I had a small bag with a roll of scotch tape in it and a bottle of green tea.

Once we got back to the apartment, I'm pretty sure I just took a nap or watched some Castle or something, but that's unimportant. I didn't have plans for Friday night (because Thursday night had been wine and Glee night and we turned it into a reason to invent drinks- a TMI: Diet Coke, Vodka and Pineapple Juice- surprisingly delicious!) but it turned out that a few people were going out to eat around 9 and we decided we'd tag along. After a solid bout of being wicked confused and trying to find people, because Candy Dream was not having an easy time trying to explain where the group of people he was with were, we eventually got to this restaurant. We had a traditional Greek style dinner with lots of wine and lots of courses and lots of people making toasts, even though it was mostly Americans at this dinner. When I say lots of wine, I mean a few people drinking rather copious amounts of wine and the rest of us drinking a few glasses maybe. Someone, who will remain nameless, but it rhymes with Sandy Stream, may have been a bit more drunk than he expected and it was kind of hilarious. But I eventually got to talking with another ACT student, who is from Kosovo, and the other Kappa here, Elyse, about the Bissell Library, the ACT library. It is apparently the best library in the Balkans and that was an exciting statement for me to hear, until I was trying to do research the other day. If that's the best library in the Balkans, then I'm donating every academic book I ever purchase to a Balkan country when I die, because I feel terrible for these students. The Monmouth Library is nicer. Not to talk blatant shit, but I don't mean it meanly, I mean it as in, someone do something about that. I feel terrible about it. But the fact that it is electronically sound is enough to make it one of the best in the Balkans.

But anyway, after dinner was over, a few people were going out to the bars, but none of my friends really were and I had been invited to go play poker with Larissa and I figured I'd take her up on that..

And since this is freakishly long, I'm going to leave it at that for now. Expect part 2 later.

This is the same life I've had since I was born

I get done with classes at 1 on Tuesdays and Thursday and then I take the city bus back to the apartment. I got back here and decided to do a solid nothing for a while, reading and checking facebook and the like. But I finally decided I’d go out, figuring I’d go down to the record store or maybe get a crepe. It’s been a gloomy past two days here in Thessaloniki, but it hadn’t actually rained today so I didn’t worry about it at all. So I put on my headphones, turned on some Clapton, and started walking. I walked further south than I needed to in order to go to the record stores and the little square they were in and I decided I’d just walk around and explore, and find my way back. I knew where I was; I was not worried. I saw a number of clothing stores with very cute clothes in them, but much like at home, clothes that would not come in my size. I was not trying to shop anyway so I wasn’t upset by it, but still. I wasn’t seeing a lot of stores that were for me (unless you count the guitars I drooled over in one store window). I hit a crosswalk and my eyes landed on something completely different though. White and Black vertical stripes with a giant SE… the rest of that word couldn’t be PHORA could it? Yes, yes it could. I found a Sephora in Greece. So of course I pulled my headphones out and wandered in with a “Ya sas” (english spelling of the Greek “hello”) to the woman standing at the door. It was like being in a family friend’s house after they’ve remodeled- it feels familiar but there’s newness. I found some brands I like (Sephora’s actual brand and Too Faced) and missed some (Urban Decay) and wanted to check prices. Pretty similar to at home on the brand nae stuff, but the Sephora stuff is jacked way up. So I left with another “Ya sas, efkareesto” (again, English spelling “good bye, thanks”) and wandered some more. I found a Harley shop. Once again, I went inside to check prices… 46 Euro for a T-shirt?!? Even for Harley, that’s effing steep, so I left there rather quickly. I’ll have to find another Harley place or find a different shirt or something. I also saw a nike store, but passed that one. I made it to the record store after a few stops in jewelry places and ended up getting nothing (but I did find an original printing of Electric Mud… for 75 Euro. Sorry Muddy Waters, but no way.) because I can buy records at home, it’s just fun to look. I wandered into another store before going to head home, one that reminds me of a Hot Topic type of place (except not so highly commercialized) and while in there looking at jewelry, I had the thought “I want my eye brow pierced.” Then the thought “I’d like to not be killed by my mother” occurred. (Sorry, Mom)

But as I’m heading back home, it starts to sprinkle a little. And it’s that time of night where it’d be getting dark anyway, but it’s a different look because of the rain. And I’d put my iPod on shuffle by this point. A crosswalk light turns green and BB King’s “There Must Be a Better World Somewhere” starts up. It just hit me as this absolutely movie-esque moment and I was in love with it. It didn’t matter that I was wearing flats on a walk, getting rained on. It was sort of beautiful to me, that I walked by the Galerian Arch at this moment, and knowing that it doesn’t actually matter if the title of that song is right. This life is pretty awesome. It seems like it’d be a little rude to expect that much better.

I’ve just appreciated today a lot. I live a rather amazing life and that moment reminded me of that fact.