Day 37

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Day 37

This morning I woke up at 6:30am to talk to my boyfriend, who was studying for an important midterm for the next day, and I talked to my sister on msn back in Vancouver. We talked for about half an hour then I let him go to study, wished my sister a good night and I went back to sleep. I got up again, but this time from knocking at my door, because I slept through my alarm and didn’t realize it was already 8:30am! Sara, Isabelle and I had planned to go for a run, if it wasn’t raining, and so since it hadn’t rained all night and the roads were still dry, I quickly changed, took a swig of water and headed out the door with my caked-on-with-mud shoes, from the dig, and we went for a good 30 minute run (since it was still early in the morning and we were tired, and Sara isn’t the fittest). I sprinted up the hill to our apartments while they walked up, we stretched, did some squats and headed back to our rooms for showers. It was about 9am when we got back. I took a luke-warm shower, most of the water here doesn’t get too hot, but it’s better than getting a freezing cold shower with low water pressure, which happens when too many people are using the water at once (like after our dig days, Isabelle and I always get water pressure because we’re usually at the beach when the majority are showering).

I made myself a grilled cheese, green pepper, red onion and ham sandwich to bring to class, ate a banana with 2 crackers with peanut butter on top, and packed a granola bar with me. At 9:50am I headed up to Isabelle’s and we left for the Hercules building. Class started with our prof letting us know that we’ll be changing rooms at the end of this week (so Lisa and I will be roomies sharing a 2 room place that Jenn and Liana are currently living in), and the guys will all be switching places too. He’s agreed that we should change next Monday, when the cleaning lady comes, so I’ll have to start packing up my stuff at the end of this week! It’ll be a nice change though; I’ll get a roommate and it means it’s already been 1.5 months! For the rest of class we took some pottery cataloguing notes and then did some cataloguing practice on our own bags of pottery. Of course the snooty girl in my group thinks she knows everything, but the other 2 in my group I hope will keep me grounded and sane.

We ended class just after 12noon, and Isabelle and I headed back to our apartments for lunch. At the foot of our stairs we saw Penny’s new male friend, Oddy (we named them after Penelope and Odysseus from Homer’s ‘Odyssey’), chewing at one of the girls’ feminine hygiene pads that was in the trash bags. The cleaning lady doesn’t tie up the trash bags, and Oddy must have been hungry! It was pretty disgusting but he must have been starving! So one of the girls fed him her leftover sandwich meats, but we all agreed after that that we should help to feed him otherwise he’ll get dependant of us and not be able to survive without us at the end of November. A girl in our program wants to take Penny home, but no one else can afford to take Oddy back with us.

After that, Isabelle came over and she made a grilled sandwich while I ate some yogurt with cereal, crackers with spreadable cheese, and some water. Since we went for a run this morning, I haven’t been as hungry as usual for some reason. Once we were fed and had talked a little, we decided to finish our Greek homework for the week and make some congee for dinner. It takes time to prep and boil down the rice to the right consistency so we started at about 4:30pm. While we prepared dinner, Isabelle also brought down some avocado, and we went to buy some Doritos nacho chips and meat to add to the congee.

As we walked down to the butcher, the 1st one was closed and we bumped into Lisa and Gioria at the café where we write our exams. They invited us over to Neil and Gioria’s that night to have drinks, huka and cake, that Jerry had specially ordered from a fancy bakery. Of course we agreed and then went to go find an open butcher, green onion for our congee and chips. Unfortunately all the butchers and the produce stores were closed, so we settled for no green onions, packaged sausages, a small pack of Doritos, and a nice bag of chocolates for Neil’s that night, all from Lyonitus’. We headed back, continued to make some congee and watch the rest of ‘Ratatouille’ with our guacamole dip and chips. Once it was done, Isabelle went upstairs to grab a jacket and Sara invited us up to try some of her macaroni and cheese. I grabbed Isabelle and we brought up some congee for her to try. She claims to like our concoction, and I absolutely fell in love with her mac and cheese! So she said she’d give me the recipe. Yay!

After that it was about 7pm and Isabelle and I decided to go back downstairs, eat our congee dinner, and fry up the sausages we bought. We ate 1 sausage each, and left the other 3 for the next few days. At 8:30pm Lisa came knocking, as we were finishing to watch ‘500 Days of Summer’, and all 3 of us headed down to Neil’s. Isabelle brought some nice apple cinnamon tea (decaffeinated) and we brought the chocolates. We sat outside with our prof, Neil, Gioria and Jerry showed up about half an hour after us with delicious cake! It was a giant filo pastry crust, on the top and bottom, filled with an inch of light custard cream, that reminded me of an egg tart consistency, all covered in the thick honey sauce that normally goes with baklava. We had giant pieces, ate chocolates (the bag we brought had an assortment of chocolate, strawberry and mille-feuille flavored chocolate), tea, ouzo (for some, not for me), Neil stuffed us his homemade tzatziki and some pita bread, and everyone else besides me, Jerry and the other Steph had huka. When Steph and Ryan got there, we were outside but it started to rain so we moved into the office den of their place. We kept the windows open and had a fan blowing, so I barely smelt the smoke from the huka and Lisa, our prof and Gioria’s cigarette smoke. We left at about 12:30am or 1am, and Jerry drove us all back to our apartment before he drove himself and our prof home. I was pretty exhausted and went straight to bed.

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