We're Still Here!

The other night the wind was so strong I thought the whole town would blow away and be relocated to another island in

the vicinity. But, once the wind died down, there was no sign of damage save a bit of land debris in the sea. We are so at home here now, into a quiet, peaceful life, that it is hard to think of anything to report.

We continue to do the morning shift at the beach with the old men when the sun is behind us and retire to our little house for the afternoon. We are on our third beach umbrella, somewhere on the island must be the graveyard of beach umbrellas since if the wind doesn't destroy them the rocky beach surely will. Yet the stores continue to stock mountains of them and sell them to the unsuspecting tourists like us. We have noticed more seasoned travellers, (they have been here before) carry an industrial umbrella, of German design, I believe, you might find at Mountain Equipment Co-op rather than K-mart, it has rebar and a pounding tool built in. I destroyed our first umbrella by trying to pound it far enough into the rocky ground so it had some stability thereby rendering the base unable to hold the top. I then discovered the use of tools and now employ a very long, pointy rock as an auger and a nice flat palm size thick rock as a hammer and wet sand as concrete. In any case on those windy days we just forfeit the umbrella.

We swim every day, and we have taken to swimming farther and farther if the sea isn't too wavy. Levrossos beach (or naked beach as we like to call it) is our favorite destination. (Also the best place to find well processed beach glass). The beaches farther along the coast are very rocky and not so fun to arrive at after a long swim.

A few weeks ago we attended the celebration at Kolofana's church Ayia Paraskevi. The celebration, July 26th, honours the virgin who protects the community from evil (historically the ever rampaging pirates). There was one bus scheduled at 4PM from Aigiali to take the pilgrims, the bus ride was kinda fun since Yvonne noticed that true believers make the sign of the cross when passing by any church and that can keep you pretty busy here in on Amorgos.

We arrived way too early. The church was a gorgeous tiny little place every inch covered with icons and lit by candles. The service started around 7 with tons of chanting. We milled around outside taking pictures of the Herculean food prep, which goes on for days, beginning with the milling of grain and the baking of tons of loaves of bread! By 9:30 PM we were seated for the first course: beautiful bread and patatato (goat and vegetable stew) and look at the fabulous dish, absolutely delicious and so amazingly well spiced considering it was being prepared for about 5000. The not so faithful, but in the know, people began arriving in hordes for the next 3 courses and the festivities which apparently go on all night BUT we noticed our bus arriving and filling up and so we just ate that first course and left effectively missing the music and dancing that was promised.

We have attended a couple of musical events in Aigiali now. They start late and continue till dawn and are often accompanied by fireworks. We found a spot down on the beach to watch a Cretan fiddler and his band. We were pretty surprised when right next to us the pyrotechnic exploded his charges when the music was reaching a crescendo! Do bands travel with pyrotechnics? Two other concerts in town were accompanied by fireworks, which enhanced our enjoyment listening from our upper deck.

Another exciting happening of late was getting a haircut and dye job from Tomi, who has been described as the best thing about the 5 star hotel up the hill from us. His salon has a spectacular view of all of Aigiali bay. I love my haircut, soon yvonne will be enjoying a haircut by Tomi too! (YES same barber).

So the locals are dreaming of September when things will slow down. We keep running into the same people when we go to Chora or Katapola or just shopping in Aigiali and invariably they say: "You"re still here!" my favorite was the tattooed guy from Thessaloniki who works at the car rental place who exclaimed "You still have not finished your vacation!" How slow are we!

There are some people we see everyday, like "our man from Athens" and his wife. They spend six months of the year at their house in Langada. He grew up here and each morning they come down to take a swim and he does beach rounds which now include collecting beach glass for me and providing us with some fresh produce treat from the garden in front of our house.

Of late we are spending afternoons planning for the rest of our journey while we have the internet connection. I was freaking out the other day that our time here was almost over when Yvonne reminded me that we still had over two weeks , which is longer than most Americans' annual vacation. That put things in perspective for me....

So we have of course been doing tons of reading:

"Dear Shameless Death" Latife Tekin amazing Turkish writer but brutal subjects

"Dancing In the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" Barbara Ehrenreich SUPER INTERESTING especially given we are in Greece which figures largely in the story.

"Cast in Doubt" Lynne Tillman makes you not want to be an expat anywhere even on Crete like the character in this book

"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" David Wroblewski: Fantastic! especially if you like dogs.

"The Tailor of Panama" John LeCarre- YP- this was a pleasant surprise for me, I had always lumped him into the category of writers I wouldn't bother reading, entertaining story and I thought reasonably well-written.

"Darkmans" Nicola Baker- YP- this book kept me entertained for a good long time, the kind of book one gets lost in; an alternative reality...somewhat confusing ending??

"Wonderful World" Javier Calvo-YP- again an entertaining story set in Barcelona, good characters, unfortunately bit of a week ending.

Watching:

Since we have been banned from downloading, we have been resorting to watching tv online, streaming they used to call it- works not so good, lots of start and stop but oh well

Hope Springs

Saving Grace

Weeds

Talked to Szu and Alexis last night via Skype and they suggested:

Nurse Jackie

Royal Pains

Headcase

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