Saturday, 7.17: Now this is just absurd

The day begins. I wake up still grimy from the last night of theater, still fairly tired, but extremely hungry. So I make myself a cereal breakfast, watch some Criminal Minds clips to wake me up, shower, and decide, what a great day to re-try #14! So I get all set, and, remembering my blunder from last time, I make myself a map of Athens University Campus (not to be confused with Panepistimio Metro Station), look up the bus schedules, and set out. I make it to Evangelismos and sit there waiting for this bus that's supposed to take me to the university. Apparently, there are no buses to the university. Not on a Saturday. Maybe it's the weekend. Maybe it's summer. Whatever the case, there are no buses. So, after waiting a while [read: 30 min] I decide to just walk it. It's not that far away. So, I do. And I walk, and walk, and walk. And the "campus" is completely empty. There are no people, whatsoever. There aren't even really many buildings. In fact, most of my walk looks like this:

No cars, no people, nothing. After a twenty minute walk inside campus, I see...buildings! And on one of the buildings, a map! The problem with my crudely drawn map was that it had no scale and once I found the real map [which also had no scale], I quickly saw the problem.

But...I decided to keep going because I had already gone so far, right? Eventually, I reached the little circle thing on the map and I was like...I can either keep going on the same road and go up this ginormous hill, or I can go take a look at the theology department, the arts and literature departments, etc. before reaching science. So I go through this totally sketch tunnel...

Walk along the road where there are no people and no cars, and reach this building of sketchness.

See if you can find it on the map above. As far as I could tell, this was the theology school. UM. WHAT? There isn't even a door! There is a HOLE in the middle of the building! There are stairs that don't lead anywhere!

And then, as I had thought I went the wrong way, I turned, slipped on a rock and twisted my shoe. And bam! No more flip flop.

To be honest, I shouldn't have been wearing flip flops to go walking, but I figured I wasn't going to be doing that much walking so I did. Also, it wasn't really that surprising that they were going to wear down soon, because they were the first pair of flip flops I ever got, way back in sophomore year of high school or something, but it was still super bad that they broke because the ground was rocky and hard and there was a dead rat lying a couple meters away from me and the first thing I thought of was, "Really? Is this really happening??" And proceeded to crack up.

Because if you think about it, how absurd is this, that my shoe would break in the sketchest building with not a soul around, not even the soul of the dead rat currently being eaten by small insects? So, at a loss, I called my mother. I'm pretty sure I was laughing so much that it sounded like I was hysterical, but it was just a total surreal situation. After talking to her, I rummaged about and found this hair tie in my bag:

And...why not?

There was no way I was going to keep going to the chemistry building at this point because I had no idea how long the hair tie would hold up, and though it held my shoe on my foot pretty well, it wasn't good enough to randomly wander around an empty campus. So, dejected, I headed back. I treated myself to an ice cream to help compensate for my complete and utter failure.

As I trekked home, I thought about how far I had come as a person. Only a few years ago, I would have been hysterical in the opposite direction, probably burst into tears, would not have known what to do with myself, and gotten a stern talking-to from my mother who, if halfway across the world, would tell me that there's nothing she could do and I should just rough it barefoot across the disease-ridden ground. I definitely would not have started cackling at myself in the middle of the empty road, and would definitely not have had the sense of mind to take pictures of my broken shoe but in fact would probably have sat on a rock next to the dead rat and lamented about my life and how unfair everything was. But if I've learned anything about life being here on my own, it's that you have to make the best of everything. Wash your clothes by hand when you haven't got a washing machine. Walk when the Metro goes on strike. Tie your shoe to your foot with a hair tie when your strap breaks. Complain if you want, but do what you have to do to fix your problem.

So slowly, I walked back to the apartment, munching on my ice cream cone and breaking out into peals of laughter at myself and my situation every once in a while. Luckily, there was no one around me to hear this insanity, although the few people that I passed looked at me funny, possibly because I was limping a little due to the extra thing on my left shoe. But finally, I got back to my apartment, collapsed, sweaty and dusty, onto my bed and fell asleep for a good while. When I awoke, the absurdities continued.

First, Marj, Shivani, and I made these absurdly delicious stuffed peppers. They came out 10x better than the ones we made the first time and the surprising awesomeness of the cheesy top made the day all better.

Then, as I was browsing the internet, I came across this absurdity. And let me just say: MWARHHAH



With that, I'll leave you. #14 failed yet again. Debates on whether to try it one last time.