Whew.

Finally, I can sit down and write something long. I am back in Athens now. I forget where I left off last time, but here is an update.

Ios was awesome. We stayed for five nights. Our schedule went like this:

Drag ourselves out of bed around noon, sit on the balcony because we are too lazy to leave because it was 110 degrees every day. Go to town, sit and eat and stare at people and make fun of them for two hours, because that is what Greek people do. Finally get on the bus to the beach. Lay on the beach all day. Go to the restaurant on the beach and, of course, eat and stare at people for two hours. Leave the beach at 8pm, go back to our room and sleep or lay on the beach at the hotel until midnight. Go eat dinner and...surprise... stare at people and make fun of them for two hours. Go to the shops in the town, visit the bartenders we made friends with, walk down the mountain two miles in the wee hours of the morning.

That was what we did every SINGLE day. Except one day we rented kayaks on the beach, but after an hour, we got too lazy and went back to lay on the beach again. You know how it goes.

I didn't want to leave Ios. The first part of the trip was awesome but we were all sort of dealing with our own stress things...Vicky had to deal with going home after a month of just eating and staring at people and laying on the beach, Troy had to think about how he was about to go to Paris and not come back until January, I had to think about how I'll be in Italy til Christmas. We're really lucky, but especially at the beginning of your trip, those things weigh heavy on your mind. But luckily, the three of us traveled together really well and had a ridiculously funny time, and we really got to relax in Greece. When we are together, we are always completely entertained and laughing our heads off, which is good in a place like Greece, where having awkward dinner companions would probably be the worst thing ever. I wanted to like, cry when they left today. It's really hard to part ways with people you've been seeing constantly for a while.

But anyway, I didn't want to leave Ios. There is something about it there; it's quiet. Everything is blue and white and baking; the sun is stronger. It turns your hair blonde and your skin tan (yes, even me) within a few minutes. When you are on the beach and the sun is beating on you and the water is as clear as a pool, when you are in the sea kayak and the water is 100 feet deep but you can still see every rock and fish on the bottom, when you are watching the goats jump from cliff to cliff and your feet are in the sand and the wind is playing with your hair, you can see why the Greeks thought there was a wind god, a sea god, a sun god. You can't imagine how there couldn't be, actually. You can see how far away the stars are there, can really see the distance, somehow. Everything looks alive.

But anyway, we had to leave, so we did. And our last day was a doozy. We decided to go up to the town and really go out all night; so we did, which was fun. Unfortunately, on the way home, Vicky sort of fell. And when I say sort of, I mean got completely owned by a ditch, rolled underneath a fence, and destroyed her entire leg. She had to get stitches, but since this is Greece, the doctor said it would "probably be okay with a bandaid" and we were sent on our way. Of course, it was still bleeding two days later when she went back to America, but what are you gonna do. When we went to the beach, we got stuck in a sandstorm, we almost threw up on the ferry ride back, and I got nailed in the head with a beach chair blowing in the wind. The ferry was hilarious though - ten foot waves crashing over people's heads, everyone screaming in their native languages, the boat rising and crashing down, people trying to flee the deck and falling into puddles, etc. Afterwards, we just got on the ferry back to Athens, which luckily did not involve any further injuries.

This morning, Vicky and Troy left Athens. Since I'm a genius, I booked my flight at 6am, before the metro starts. Instead of booking a hotel and taking a cab, like a normal person would do, I am now hanging around Athens until 11pm, dragging my one remaining suitcase around, taking the metro to the airport tonight, and sleeping on a bench inside it until 4am, when I will check in for my flight.

Poor planning.

But it WILL save me a little bit of money (I won't have to pay for the hostel OR the cab, which would, sad to say, probably rip me off since I don't speak the language) which is crucial because I need to buy a lot of clothes. Haha I am actually sort of enjoying having a lighter wardrobe. Plus, hopefully some bum or some gypsy family is wearing all the clothes I threw out now, which makes me happy. Mere, sorry you spent all that time helping me fit them all in the suitcases hahaha.

So now, I just have eight more hours to kill here. It's sort of a weird feeling to be the only one speaking English halfway across the world from where you live. But when you're in a hot, dusty city with gypsies and people yelling and everyone making fun of you and each other and wild dogs and priests and two-thousand-year-old structures decaying and men with fanny packs and mullets everywhere, you find ways to entertain yourself.

Sorry this was so long. I was really psyched to have the internet. Assuming that my flights aren't delayed (ha...that's a good one), I will be in my new apartment tomorrow around this time, meeting up with my new roommates, who look really cool. Everyone leave me messages and tell me what you are doing.

Oh and... we are okay in the fires, thank you all for asking. We were in the middle of nowhere on Ios, so we actually aren't even really sure what happened, other than the fact that Vicky drove through one of the fires on her way down and we walked through some sort of communist protest about them yesterday in Athens. Anway, thanks for the messages everyone!! Keep it up.