no, i dont speak greek

well today was full of many adventures. after lunch, and a rush through lunch duty chores i went to athens with seth, justin and richard. They were nice enough to wait for me to finish my job before we left for the big city, where greek is spoken and we are the stupid americans who come to a country without knowing how to speak their language. i dont' think i will ever do that again. languages should be learned before heading to the country. step one. hah.

so we went to the bus station right outside of the artemis and waited...and waited. and then we saw the orange bus...but it was on the other side of the road. while we were waiting, richard sat down on the bench. his hair is about as long as mine, and he went to flip it out of his face cause it was really windy today. little did he know that there was a pole right behind him. i was startled by a loud sound. seth, justin, and i could not stop laughing. man down, how? flipping his hair! tee hee... i love that kid! so thirty minutes later, it arrived. we were unsure how the bus system worked but we hopped on anyways. one person was driving while another came around after you sat down and figured out your fares. of course, this is hard, unless they speak english, (or the conversation involves one of the five greek words i know). luckily this nice gentleman knew english and told us that this bus went all the way to athens and that we didn't have to take the train. so i took a seat next to richard and we were on our way! we played on our itouchs for awhile, the penquin game is great! and then three of the four of us fell asleep. i was quickly awakened by the shrill sound of a vehicle laying down the horn. this sign, we were definately in athens. people here do not hesitate to use the horn. maybe this is because the lanes are one lane, but wide enough to make 2 and 1/2. therefore, cars make their own lanes and pass whenever and honk when you are in their way. being the fact that we were a gigantic bus, we were always in the way. and thank goodness for seth somehow finding his way around. we got off at a place called ethniki aymna. or something like that, and then headed down an elevator to the metro.

i love the metro. i wish that america had more of them, at least wherever im living. they are such a great idea, underground, out of the way, fast and easy. and cheap. we got on and made our way to downtown athens and then hit the streets. we found a strip where many shops were and wandered through. and, even though i was the only girl, i was not the only shopper. :) these boys know how to shop. or at least spend time in a store. we were at this one shirt shop forever because they were looking for shirts. i found a pretty sweet soccer ball and got it. it has the greek olympic sign on it, and some greek. its puma, and red. perfect. i also foudn a good gift for my dad... but im not gonna say what it is because it will spoil the surprise. and then i got myself a little bracelet. i tried on some shoes and they were really cute, and nothing like you could get in the states, but it kinda cut the circulation off of my big toe. therefore i did not get them. the man said the leather would stretch and im sure it will, i just have a hard time breaking shoes in.

we all got pretty hungry about this time so we went searching for the gyros shop we ate at the last time we were in athens. we kinda got lost and it was getting dark. we found some creepy allyways and turned around a few times and then found ourselves on an alley that had very nice restaurants and karaoke or bands. nto really sure. anyways we ended up making it to the lower key restaurants and found a gyros store much like the one we had previously visited so we just ate there. we ate in the middle of the alley circle way and while we were eating three people came sprinting by! followed by a cop. they knocked somethin down as they were running and dogs were barking. i think there were kids who had stolen something. still not really sure. it was quite interesting though.

after our tasty food was gone we went walking some more. we got a little further and made it to a place we recognized, but by then we were getting tired and had to leave to in order to cathc the last bus ride back to porto rafti. we had 45 minutes until that bus would leave us in an unknown city, with an unknown language, and no cell service. creeepy! but no worries, i was with people who knew what they were doing. and we had maps. :) so we got into the metro station and as we arrived at our stop, the lights of the tram went off and came to a halt for the night. we had caught the last train. how perfect. and then we had to stand outside and wait for the bus. it was beginning to sprinkle and the wind was picking up so it started to get chilly. i pulled out my soccer ball and we started playing with it while we waited but that wasn't really a great idea. so we stopped. and looked for our bus. at one point we saw one that we thought said rafiti. so we asked the lady getting on if it went ot porto rafti and we thought she said yes...but really it didn't. so we were standing on it like oh okay adn turned to get off. but the doors were shut and the bus started moving!! eek! the lady was nice though and realized what was going on and hollered up to the bus driver in greek that we needed off and they let us off right there. that was nice. so then we waited some more and caught the right bus. the ORANGE one. :) never will go wrong if you just wait for the orange bus. so we hopped on there and road back. we stopped at markopelo first and then got on another bus. this way was much shroter becasue it didn't make stops every minute or so. then seth, justin and i had second dinner cause we were hungry again. :)