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.