......day......one......

I don't even know where today starts and ends. I guess it started when my parents dropped me off at the airport at Boston time 3:30 yesterday, and I went through security, cried a little tear, then began what has proven to be the most torturous experience I've had since, well...a good long time ago. Being so nervous about flying by myself, I couldn't sleep on my first flight, and stayed awake during my layover with these kids from Ghettysburg that were going to my program but had spent most of the previous flight gettin crunk. After being violently ill after eating my overnight flight dinner, I decided to eat at the airport before boarding my 3 1/2 hour flight from London to Greece, on which one of the kids from Ghettysburg fainted, hit his head, and had to be taken to the airport hospital upon our touchdown in Athens. Needless to say, I could not, again, sleep on the plane. I think I got half an hour of sleep in on accident somewhere, because when I woke up my first thought was, "This feeling is why they have barf bags." I steadied myself, and breathed in though my nose until I knew I could keep whatever threatened to come up down until we reached the ground. Once I FINALLY got off all those gad dang flying contraptions, I felt much better though I was (and still am) hungry.

THEN we had to go meet the cab man, who called cabs for us in Greek. Guess what I learned today? If you are not forceful about your need for a cab, you will not get a cab until after all the other cabs have gone into Athens, and then come back out to the airport. Which is A LONG TIME LATER. Then, if you have a debit card, and you don't tell your bank you're going away, they, naturally, assume your card has been stolen and taken on vacation to the Mediterranean, and they don't let you withdraw money, which means you have no money to pay your refundable deposit on your keys, apartment, ect.

BUT I WASN'T STRESSED OR ANYTHING.

NOPE.

But then we came back to the apartment and I figured out my phone thing and I'm moving in now and my roommates are nice. We're going to the "endless wine" taverna tonight for dinner, because there is nothing I need more tonight than a stiff drink, and seeing how well I do trying to find my apartment while inebriated.

It kind of just feels like being back at school when I'm just hanging in my bedroom/living room with Liz and unpacking. This Liz is even klutzy like the other Liz - she has a huge bruise on her leg from when she ran into her bed unpacking. She also heard that Greeks wear their engagement rings on their right ring finger instead of their left, so she wears a ring on each of her ring fingers for "extra deterrence". I think I adore her.

First impressions of Greece: It's a real city. It's not hyper-efficient. The roads are crowded, sometime there's litter. Stray cats and dogs, lots of stores and signs. We have a balcony and I love it. The landscape is so unusual, with trees I've never seen before. The people talk forcefully, but never angrily. They argue good-naturedly, like me and my roommates back home.

I think that's it for now.