It's an overcast day in Attica, and a cool wind is blowing through the city just gently enough to stir the smog but not strong enough to dispel it. We just got back from a morning at the school and an adventure of grocery shopping. ACS hosted a boys' volleyball and girls' soccer tournament today, and I was asked to take some photos by one of the assistant athletic directors. Watching young girls play soccer is only slightly funnier than watching gangly teenage boys run around a volleyball court chasing a ball. It's easy to find the ball in the girls' soccer game because they ALL run after it in a group; passing doesn't enter into the strategy.

Last night was a birthday celebration for one of the ladies in our Yank group of teachers. We went to a local restaurant that specializes in Greek food. Now, this may come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, but Greek cuisine isn't nearly as grand as people imagine. In fact, it's rather limited and fairly boring. I believe that you could walk into any restaurant on mainland Greece and be able to order without looking at a menu; the only difference would be how much you pay, and that wouldn't have any actual effect on the quality of the food or its presentation. For a Greek salad, it's hard to mess up cutting tomatoes, cucumbers, and green peppers. Last night we had rabbit stew (delicious broth; the rabbit was bland), brined sardines, hamburger patty with tomatoes on top, fried zucchini, and sausages. Give me a gyro any day!

After dinner, I went with four other people to the center of Chalandri to a bar called Blue. I was the 5th wheel, something I hadnt' been for a long time, but the awkwardness was salved by Stella Artois. They played neo-jazz and various other musical subgenres with incredibly specific criterion which are virtually indistinguishable to the hoi polloi, and the walls were lined with photos of blues and jazz musicians whose claims to legendary status went from great to wishful thinking. I stuck around for an hour or so and caught a taxi home at 2. The taxis here are a very cheap method of transportation; it's the relaying of directions that's taxing.

Each 'suburb' of Athens has a center, usually clustered around the church, with tavernas, restaurants, and stores. The Chalandri center is the '2nd best in Athens' for shopping. It has music stores, high-end fashion, and numerous clubs and pubs. I've only spent 2 evenings down there, both short, but I'm excited to live as near it as we do.

Athenians do their grocery shopping on Saturdays, and half of Chalandri and Agias Paraskevi were shopping at the same time as us this afternoon. It was a slalom of grocery carts and young women handing out samples while employees stocked shelves that would have been stocked the night before in the States, and it was amidst this chaos that we embarked on our greatest shopping expedition yet. Miah headed to the vegetables and stocked up while I was in charge of the seafood and the cheese. I ended up buying a whole rainbow trout and 2 whole squid. I know how to say 'one (ena)' 'half (miso),' 'fourth (tetarto),' 'kilo (guess),' 'please (parakalo),' and 'thank you (efcharisto),' the phrases that got me the above and a chunk of homemade feta fresh out of the barrel. You have to bag your own groceries here, so I load the belt while Miah loads the bags. It's a pain. We're very excited about cooking up our delicous meals, and I've found a delicious sounding recipe for 'spicy calimari with bacon and scallions.' Trust a Kentucky-dweller to cook his kalamari in bacon grease! The Greeks just fry theirs. I wasn't able to save the ink that filled the plastic bag, but I think there will be many more. I just have to figure out how to remove the quill, and trust me, there will be photo evidence.

Last night, one of our fellow Yanks was mocking the accent that a couple of other newbies have when they speak Greek. We had all noticed their difficulties, but he was ruthlessly honest, a role usually filled by myself but thankfully not this time. If you need help remembering how to say 'thank you,' just use the little trick--completely accidental--these two women use to say it: 'a fairy's toe.' And sadly, that's EXACTLY how it sounds when they say it!