The Greek Way

World languages are really fascinating. Adrienne had a party at their house the other night and the mixture of people was neat. All of them have some connection to the Greek culture, whether it be a spouse, parent, or they themselves live in Greece part or all of the year. Most of them speak Greek and English, but a couple speak only Greek. To listen to the way that all of our diverse backgrounds and languages mixed and communicated was so interesting. Some speak, some translate...and overall we all get the same enjoyment you feel at any dinner party of friends. It was great to listen to.

We walked around the village with Adrienne and looked at the stone houses and restaurants and tried to imagine what it must have been like here during the Turkish occupation. Adrienne walked us up to the mountain where the village water comes from. It comes straight from inside the mountain and diverts into all sorts of little canals that run throughout town next to the buildings. They're really cute. Adrienne challenged us to see who could keep their feet in the water the longest because it's so painfully cold. Phill won! Mark says they used to take a watermelon (kar-poo-zee in Greek) up there and put it in the water until it would eventually burst open.

Afterwards, she took us to this little cafe for a soda. We met a guy in there named Nikos. He gave Phill a sip of whatever he was drinking which we think must have been the equivalent of Greek Moonshine. Grinning, Nikos called it "medicine."

We've been eating so much great Greek food. Greek salad, souvlaki, mousakkah, dolmades, etc. Yesterday we had red mullet fish (bar-boon-yahs in Greek) that are fried whole, heads and all. I think the Greeks might eat it that way too. I cut the head off, opened the fish up, pulled out the spine and ate the meat. It's kind of a lot of work for a little bit of meat, but delicious!

We spent the day at Monemvasia yesterday which is an old city on a rock on the southern coast of Greece. It was the cutest little place with some tourists shops and old ruins of churches. Some people still live there, but houses are around 2 million euros if you can imagine - and they're tiny. We spent the afternoon swimming in the Mediterranean. As Uncle Louie put it yesterday - "It's another damn beautiful day in Greece."