Καλημέρα!

While most of my friends are saying good morning, I am saying goodnight, here in Athens. Although the day itself consisted of pretty mundane things, nothing is mundane when you're thrust into a country with a crazy cab driver and 100+ lbs of luggage, knowing neither the spoken language nor the written language (btw, when they say signs are normally in Greek and English, totally untrue. OMG). Today's entry will be narrative-heavy, but that's only because everything happened so fast that I didn't have much time to document it in picture form. And suddenly, I'm blogging from Greece. It's so surreal that I can't really believe I'm here.

May 28, 2010; 3:00 AM:

Day begins in Los Angeles, with some last minute stuffing of things in suitcases. Toothbrush, check. Hats, check. Passport, check. I say goodbye to my grandparents who have gotten up to see me off. Bye bye, Gong. Bye bye, Po. 

You may notice that I'm wearing more clothes than I should be wearing in Los Angeles in the summer. That's because it's freaking cold this morning. 3 AM is not a time to be dabbling about in the wilds of LA. Brrr. That's why I have my panda socks on.

Mommy and I head off to LAX and I stay awake the whole time. My genius plan is that I'll sleep a little on my first flight to Newark and sleep the whole nine hours from Newark to Athens, arriving at 10:20 AM, so that I'll be nice and rested and be able to be awake the whole day and go to sleep at night, avoiding jet lag. Brilliant plan, huh?

We get to LAX and I say goodbye to Mommy. Bye bye, Mommy!! Super duper hugs!!!! *Waves* And then, I get on the plane.





7:00 AM

The flight to Newark commences and it's not too interesting, except that apparently, on this flight, you had to pay for all of your entertainment. Say wahhhht? Luckily, I had my own entertainment. It's been a good long while since I've flown in the daytime, so as we were flying over the Rocky Mountains and the flatness of Middle America, I snapped some photos.

   

5:40 PM

So we begin the flight to Athens and it's time to go to sleep. Except not, because I'm in this horrific pain and can't find my little bottle of emergency Tylenol. Just as I am mentioning this to my mom, the captain begins rolling the plane to the runway and the guy next to me offers a little bottle of Advil. Yayyyyy mystery person. Angela sleeps to the tune of When in Rome (EXCEPT NOT AT THE PART WITH LEE PACE!! omg. meep.), eats penne and meatballs, sleeps to CSI: NY, eats a croissant and some fruit, listens to a baby waaaail (and not a cute one either), sleeps to House, and finally, finally, finally after 9 hours and 10 minutes, lands in Athens, Greece.

May 29, 2010; 11:00 AM

Marj and I get off the plane and get our luggage and go find a Germanos store that sells cell phones. After meeting a nice man who pointed us to the way, we discovered that they were sold out of the Cosmote phones that have this terrific plan throughout Greece. So, we decide to wait until we get into Athens, which turns out to be important later in the day. We find a cab. The cab driver is quite young, but also quite greasy, and for some reason, did not like to drive with his hands. As in, he didn't drive with his hands for the first couple minutes on the highway. We would drift into the left lane as he was looking at his map and he would realize, and pull us back. He then used both hands to adjust his headrest, then decided he liked them there and again, we would drift. So exciting, it had us holding on to our seats for dear life.


12:00 PM: Arrive at Arrianou 17. Where is Dionysis?

It's actually a beautiful neighborhood, but we were too focused on finding our contact, Dionysis, who had our keys. Because we didn't have phones due to the Germanos situation, we couldn't call him and we didn't exactly expect him to magically appear, but kinda hoped that he would. We tried to go find the four boys who were living next door, but none of them seemed to be in, so we waited, waited. Marj tried calling via Blackberry, no go. Texting?

Dionysis: I AM COMING THERE NOW!!

Yay!! We get our keys, which are actually quite awesome looking. And immediately after we lug our stuff up, we go shopping for foodstuffs. 8 boxes of pasta, a carton of orange juice, some cornflakes and some intense sauce later, we decide to take a trek up to the Germanos store in Athens central. Luckily the nice ladies at the store let us store our food there, behind the counter. Unfortunately, neither of us had brought the unlocked phone to get the SIM card for the plan, so we walked back, got our food, put on some sunscreen and some hats, and some better footwear, because it felt like 90° and humid, and walked all the way back to Germanos to get our SIM cards. 2 hours later, I discover that my phone is not unlocked and Marj finds out hers has no signal, anywhere. Task on Monday because the stores of Greece are closed on Sundays: get a phone.

3:00 PM: Grandma Nona

On the way back, we find that trying to get it is impossible to get into our apartments with our fancy keys. We twist and turn and twist and turn and lock and unlock it about a billion times. The thing to realize, is that our door has no handle on the outside and two locks, so you have to use the long fancy key as leverage to push the door open. But for some reason, we couldn't. About 20 minutes later, an old granny hears our wailing and pokes her head out to see what's going on. She doesn't speak English and we don't speak Greek so we mime to her that we can't open our freaking door. She yells at us some more and I imagine it going something like this:

Grandma: You stupid girls! How can you not open a door? You just take it and turn it. Stupid stupid stupid.

Us: We can't open the door. See? Door? Open? No?

Grandma: Y'all are so stupid. You just take the door and turn. GAH. Let me see!

And Grandma saves the day. And I give her a BIG hug. And then she gets all smiley and tell us to call her grandma. Go Grandma!


5:40 PM: Shivani arrives and the internet crisis gets resolved.

As Shivani, Marj's and my other flatmate, lets call her, arrives, I am frantically trying to get the wireless to work, but no dice. We have a router with an ethernet cable and so far, all we can do is get internet off the ethernet and neither of us has a phone to call tech support. Luckily, Shivani does and we call tech support who happens to be this middle aged Greek guy who keeps telling me to do the same thing and won't listen when I tell him it doesn't work. He eventually tells me to reset the router and then tells me my internet is on. I know my internet is on, but I can't use the WEP Encryption Key to get to the network I want to get to. But your internet is already on. It says right here. Go to your router's page. It won't let me log in with the information you gave me. But go to the page. I can't go to the page!

This goes on for awhile, and eventually, I decide just to cut him off and reset it again, making everything anew. And after some fiddling, Angela did techy things and got the internet working, so we have internet in our apartment!!

11:27 PM

I have stayed up a whole day in Athens, dealt with people who couldn't speak English, dealt with people who speak limited English, baked in the sun, and took a shower in the smallest shower ever. And washed my clothes in the sink, which are currently hanging to dry on my doorhandles. And ate Cheetos for dinner. It's been pretty much the most excited first day in a foreign country ever and I am ready go to sleep. Look at my bed. Doesn't it seem inviting? Of course, the people outside talking and yelling at each other might put a damper on that...





Peace from Greece,
Angela

Goodnight, Los Angeles

Tonight, I am super tired. SUPER TIRED, so this entry will be full of short and sweet updates.

First, it's my last night in LA for two months! I'm going to miss everyone here and everyone at Yale and my mommy. :( But adventuredometime!!

A number of exciting things have happened in the past couple of days, including the arrival of my new computer battery (w0000000t), the arrival of my internationally not-a-lot-of-fees credit card (you can tell how coherent I am after being so tired the whole day), and the arrival of my new phone. It was a long and harrowing ordeal in which my old phone broke after a short two weeks of using it, and Apple gave a me a new one for frees. Props for quick service. Booooo for my phone breaking the day before I leave for Greece. Boo, Apple, boo.

Also, my computer is becoming slightly cyborgish since I have switched out both the charger and the battery for stuff not made by Mac. But it's still pretty and I still love it and all it's processing glory. <3, darling.

Another exciting development is this haircut thing that happened, which needed to happen since my head was kinda sweating all over the place. Notice the difference?

Excuse the tiredness/awkward hand motion thing in the after picture. Also, despair not. My hair will go back to being poofy/wavy/straight once I wash it. right now, I'm just going to enjoy its sleekness.

So, fellow Americans, I will bid you adieu for a while as I travel the exotic West? East? I'm going east but I'm going to be in the West. In three hours, I will be up and awake again. In the meanwhile, Greeny and I say goodnight and happy travels to all that will be journeying this summer, and for those who are not, <3 for staying home and reading my blog.

"You now have really expensive feet. We should get them insured."

The first time my mother left China, she went to France so my dad could get his doctorate. She likens this shopping experience to her first out of country experience where she had to thoroughly prepare for whatever was to happen. So I got some shoes (OMG SHOES). And some bathing suits. And some shorts. And some sunglasses. But the most important thing was that I got to spend time with my mommy, which I haven't been able to do in a long while. It is just hitting me that I'm not going to be able to spend this summer at home, and that I am leaving in five short days for two whole months. These past couple of days have gone by way too quickly and although I have had a lot of fun, I had a fleeting feeling of cold feet this afternoon as I realized that I was going away yet again, starting my life, making new memories in a place I might not return to my entire life. It's a little bit of a sobering thought...

All right so enough of being serious, because today was an awesome day.

A short story about sandals and Angela, in two parts:

Part I:
For the longest time, I couldn't bear to have anything stuck between my toes. I think I had a weird experience as a baby with bits of sock fuzz being stuck between my toes and not being able to reach it because I didn't really know what feet were. Therefore, I refused to wear flip flops or sandals with flip flop like tendencies. In fact, I couldn't wear shoes where I was forced to go without socks. And I wore socks EVERYWHERE (except to bed).

---SHORT AWESOME SOCK MONTAGE.---*

  Punky pink and black socks

      

Star-in-your-eyes socks

 

PANDA SOCKS!!!!

 ---

I was also one of those kids who couldn't bear their feet being different colors (yay tan lines?) and so wore socks whenever I had to wear sandals (how uncool. >.<) But...I wore shorts. The result was a super terrible sock tan, kinda like this girl's.**

Fortunately, I got over both the must-wear-socks thing and the can't-have-things-between-my-toes thing and, due to trusty New England coldness, have worn pants for enough of the year so that my feet tanning and leg-whitening have evened out the sock tan. Happy ending, part I.


Part II:
I have many dude friends. Bros, if you will. Next to their feet, my feet look very small. And indeed, I wear a size 6, which is not the easiest size to find shoes in (ladies size 8 is the best, in case you were wondering). But what no one realizes, because I still wear boots and sneakers a lot, is that my feet are very wide, thanks to my dad's side of the family, so it's extra hard to break in shoes and to avoid toe cleavage. Therefore, I have a pair of flip flops...and no other sandals. Now, considering that I'll probably be doing a lot of walking in a very hot region of the globe in approx. 5 days, my mom considered that I should probably have a pair of lightweight sandals. Enter, sandals of awesome:

Comfortable and wide enough for my gigantorwide feets. :) Happy ending, part deux.
 

All in all, it's been a fruitful day, full of revelations and footwear. To all those who are troubled in the search of the truth in things, remember this proverb: If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes.




*Sock credit: Kelsey Sakimoto, who doesn't like to wear socks.
** Link to sock tan

Gidgets and Gadgets

All hail new technology!! It has brought us great things, like vaccines, automobiles, and the Large Hadron Collider. It has allowed us to surf the web at breakneck speeds so that all the information not blocked by the governments of your choice is available to you at the touch of a button, instantly, on a screen bigger than your head. It has allowed us to connect with people we have yet to meet and reconnect with old friends with whom we have lost touch. We can record things with devices the size of our palms and take pictures of things millions of miles away. But with all this newfangled newness comes the danger of too much enticement. We get caught up in all the new things we can do and forget the way things used to work. What happened to letters? To postcards? To...Facebook?


The reason I bring this up is because, apart from my internet being really slow at home, I have been neglecting my FB and this blog, despite doing Greece prep things like buying swimwear and getting a checking account. Because...my neighbors decided that since I was turning the big 2-0 and going to a place with lots of beaches, that I might as well take pictures of all the beachiness with my new...

Yeah, that's right. If I wasn't an Apple girl before, I am definitely so now. And I've been addicted to playing this one game called Sprin, where it's basically a bouncy spring toy bounding up these platforms and collecting apples. Nom. Why deal with the slowwwww internet connection I have at home when I can just connect to the 3G network AT&T has so graciously offered me for a price I decline to mention? That being said, I worry that I will simultaneously get too caught up and get used to this piece of awesome technology I have in my hands. That I will neglect social conversation in favor of rocking out to Tap Tap or honing my wastebasket paper throwing skills. And that I will start taking it for granted and eventually start to drop it all over the place and break it, as I have done with many other techy items in the past (harken back to my old phone...whew). That being said, I am very grateful to have so many opportunities to get cool stuff like this and have personalized with what I like to call...failcow. :)

My iPhone officially looks like this:

Happy Wednesday,

Angela

This is SO going in my blog!!

After watching a season and a half of How I Met Your Mother today, I was inspired to leap into the legen-waitforit-dary-ness of the summer.

Of course, things like forgetting to bring my ID to a bank when trying to open a bank account that will only charge me 1% when making international purchases can put quite a damper on the kick-off-the-summer-of-awesome party going on in my head. But, as Barney so eloquently puts it: "Whenever I get sad, I just stop being sad, and be awesome instead. True story."

So I stopped being sad and have decided that I will make a trip to West LA to open a bank account tomorrow morning. At 9:00 AM. And hope my debit card gets to me in less than 10 business days. Also, I <3 NPH. He's pretty darn awesome.

The Summer of 20

Heyo!

As many of you know, and some of you do not, I am turning 20 this summer, leaving behind my last year of teenagehood and the stupid mistakes that can only be blamed on being a dumb teenager and emerging from my cocoon as a "Young Adult."*

First of all....say whaaat? I've been reading those "young adult" coming of age novels since I was in middle school and none of them featured anyone above the age of 16. And if the last two years at college have taught me anything, it's that we're all still growing, all the time. You can be 18 or 27 or 60 years old with the heart of a child, and still make the most reckless, most stupid mistakes, and have the most beautiful adventures.

I won't say I haven't had my share of adventures in the past, but, after all, I am leaving, nay, building upon a whole two decades of my life lived! And why not celebrate with a bang?

As some of you know, I will be traveling to Greece this summer to intern with MEDASSET, the Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles, an opportunity afforded to me by the Undergraduate Career Services at Yale and funded by the International Study Abroad...fund. Greece, you say? The same Greece that is currently in economic ruin? The same Greece with daily political riots? The same Greece that you might be flying over a VOLCANO to get to? Indeed. And I am flippin' excited. :D :D

I'm leaving on May 28th, which brings me to the project of the summer: The Summer of 20. I've never been to Greece before and pretty much have no idea what to expect when I get there. Of course, I will be working during the week, but I've got 8 weekends to kill. So, I am looking for a list of 20 things to do in Greece. Not 20 purely tourist things (yes, I plan on going to Delphi and Santorini) but things that I wouldn't think of doing. My goal over the summer is to finish the list and have some awesome stories to tell on the way (and get me a blog bear, but more on that later). I am open to any and all suggestions, so, my friends, please make them.

That's all for now. First day back in LA and I am going to have a serious food fest. NOM.

Cheers,
Angela

* image from http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1411