Day 26

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Day 26 (Saturday, October 02, 2010)

I slept in this morning till about 9:30am this morning, and it was long awaited! I had the 2nd half of my yogurt with strawberry jam in it (the yogurt I buy comes plain so I flavor it myself), some cheese and crackers and an apple for breakfast. I brought out my laptop onto my patio, because the internet was acting out in my room. At around 11am I went to see what Isabelle was up to, because Lisa invited us out for coffee and breakfast at Vasilis’ daughter’s café along the docks, but I had eaten already and Isabelle had just brought down her hash she fried up in her room. So instead, the 2 of us hung out on my patio, her booking her flight to Paris for the long weekend and me replying to some emails, finishing my Greek homework for the week.

At about 12:30pm we headed out to grab some lunch. I bought a pizza filo pastry (filo flattened to look like pizza dough, the middle layered with tomato sauce, then ham, then cheese, all baked and crispy), and Isabelle got an apple pie croissant. After that I stopped off at the bakery to buy a loaf of bread for the week and then we wanted to get some chicken to make honey garlic chicken this week. But when we got the butcher, we saw 3 crates sitting at the entrance of the store filled with panicking chickens and baby chicks. We couldn’t bring ourselves to walk past them to get to the store, so we decided we’d just make a vegetarian salad; lettuce, onion, tomatoes, cucumber…and maybe a hard boiled egg if we could bring ourselves to do that for dinner.

We returned to the apartments, put our swim stuff on, grabbed Lisa and Steph, and we headed to the beach. We spent just over 2 hours there, then we paid Neil a visit at school to see if he needed help with the lamb roast preparation for tomorrow. He didn’t need any help, so instead he got us to try his homemade tzatziki sauce with an added 2 cloves of garlic, and then another with less garlic and more dill. They were both delicious and made us extra excited for tomorrow! We left, the cigarette smoke inside was bothering me (Lisa and Gioria were smoking indoors), and went for a snack at Romantza’s again. This time, since Isabelle and I wanted to go for a run soon, I just had a frappe with ice cream and she just had a lemonade Fanta. Lisa got Greek doughnuts, they were like fresh handmade versions of Tom Thumb mini doughnuts from the PNE, but super fresh!! Steph got the biggest meal; she got a gyros portion which is an open-face pita bread fried, with more sliced pork, tzatziki, red onion, tomatoes and fries than in just a gyro in pita (what we had for dinner the night before).

After that nice snack we went back to the apartments, changed and I grabbed Sara to come for a run with us. We ran a different route this time; to the Oceanis Hotel. It was nice to change the scenery, and there were a lot more hills but many less people gawking at us as we ran (apparently it’s not popular to run as a form of exercise here). The only downside was that there were a lot more dogs, one in particular loved to untie our shoe laces for some reason; but they were all harmless and took orders pretty well. We sprinted some steep hills, and unfortunately Sara felt pretty sick (it’s a bit more strenuous than she was used to, but for me I think it helped that I used to run the Royal Oak steps back at home, so I was willing to run even more than we did). By the end of if, everyone was pooped, but I felt like I could run a marathon! I’m not sure if it was just my good mood yesterday or I was just more rested that usual, but I was feeling great! I sprinted the last hill up to our apartments and Steph did it with me. Once we got back to our place, we stretched, did some wall pushups, squats and then found out that everyone was starting to help make dolmades in Ada’s room. So we quickly took showers, and I finished the pizza filo that I had for lunch. My piece was SO big, that I could only eat half of it during the day and I finished the rest before I left for Ada’s.

When I got to their room, everyone had started to help already and I grabbed a cutting board and started to roll the grape leaves around the stuffing (rice, ground beef, tomatoes, onion and spices). When all the good leaves were used up, Ada put it all in a pot, threw in water, beef stock and some spices with lemon juice, then boiled it for a good 1.5-2 hours. As we waited for them to cook, we watched the 3rd and 2nd last episodes of Glee’s 1st season, took a break and tried the freshly-made dolmades and finished watching the season of Glee. By then everyone was getting tired and my stomach was still pretty hungry, so we all went back to our rooms and I had an apple and cheese with a granola bar before I went to bed. I was a little too tired to cook for myself, since it was about 10pm and I shouldn’t be eating so late on a regular basis anyway. So I skyped my boyfriend and then went to bed.

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