Countdown of 7 Weeks

With about 7 weeks left of 2010, I believe it's time to review my 2010 Goals.

1. Go to Greece in the summer to celebrate my friend's and my 28th birthdays!

Santorini Sunset

2. Adopt 2 kitties with my boyfriend.

Yoni (a.k.a Yoners, Choners, Chonies, Chones)
+
Mencken (a.k.a Mencky, Mencky-poo, Poodles)
=
The boyfriend's and my boodle babies

3. Focus more on being healthy and eating smaller portions rather than the number on the scale.
     I really wish I was doing better on this one.  I do feel like I'm paying a lot more attention to what I'm eating.  However, I recently bought a brand new scale to replace my busted one (it was fluctuating 10+ and 10- lbs!).  It's all high tech and telling me the correct weight as well as my BMI.  I know that I'm building lean muscle, and that is probably affecting the number on the scale.  So, I'm not giving up.  But this goal will probably be continued into 2011.

4. Do some serious purging so that our apartment isn't so cluttered.

This is 2 bags out of now 4 bags!
I got those skinny hangers, and replaced a lot of my old busted hangers
as well as giving away my awesome wooden ones.  Those wooden ones made me
feel like I was finally an adult with an adult closet.
But it also gave me the opportunity to really go through my clothes, try stuff on,
and put aside clothes to bring to a clothing swap this weekend.

5. Learn to let go and move away from things that might be holding me back.
     Still learning this one.  At this point, what with still waiting to hear back about a job I really want, I feel like I can't do too much moving forward.  Everything still feels a bit stagnant.  I do have to say that cleaning out my closet and other sections of our apartment has helped to create some movement.  But I feel like being jobless is actually holding me back.

Alright, then.  I've got 3 out of 5 down.  For the final 7 weeks, I will work harder on my portion sizes, stick to the "1-In 1-Out" Rule, try to sell some things on eBay, and start implementing ideas from my business plan.

7 weeks left.
Ready, set, go!

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Back to Athens and Back to Reality

July 14th was the day we left Santorini.  It was actually really quite a sad day for us, as we had both fallen in love with the island.

At some point in our stay, Jenny clued me in to the fact that we had been staying up pretty late, and usually end up back at the hostel at around 3am.  I cannot even begin to tell you how surprised I was! Well, suffice it to say, we had been getting up later than usual.  So, on our last day, we wanted to make sure we were in the ocean for one last time.

Last time in the Santorini ocean

But we only really got to spend about 20 minutes in the water due to us having had another late night that last night with the Albanians from Fusion Bar.  We had to pack, and be really creative about it since we managed to buy a couple of souvenirs for folks back home.

At around 10am, Tony brought these 2 German dudes, Jenny, and I back to the Athinios Port.  And in true Greek fashion, he stopped at a waiting area and said, "Okay! Thank you for staying with us! Goodbye!"

We hopped out of the car, not having a single clue where our ferry was going to be and what to look for.  "Okay. Now you jump."

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Kalineektha, Santorini

Yay!  We have television and internet again!  And just in time for me to leave for a weekend camping trip!
Alright...so, where was I?  Oh, ya!  Our night times in Santorini.

Traditional and Musical Evenings
The night we were heading back to Perissa from Red Beach, we learned how difficult it is to get back to different parts of the island by bus at night time.  Though we were pretty beat, we were also pretty hungry.

We had decided to check out Porto Castello Restaurant, which had advertised traditional Greek Dancing on Saturday nights.  Luckily, we made it in time for the live music (i.e. one guy on a keyboard and bouzouki) and dancing.

As we walked in, one of the hosts greeted us saying that we just had to go up to the roof deck for the entertainment.  We told him that we were really hungry, and he proceeded to say, "I'm on the menu."  I realized that I managed to walk right into that one.  But we found out that he was actually telling the truth, as he proceeded to sing "Sagapo," a great song I'm familiar with through belly dance.

At some point, the plates came out and the men danced.  That was really fun to watch, and it was neat to see the servers and other patrons participate, though I'm pretty sure the patrons were there mainly to try to call the female tourists up to dance.  At one point, there was a bit of Greek belly dancing music that started playing.  As I watched one of the guys doing some familiar moves, I decided to show that I could do a bit of that as well.  It was a fun evening.

Opa!

If you wanted to break your very own plate to break,
you buy them for 2 Euros each.

We actually were treated to live music quite often during our nights in Santorini.  Most of the music was very chill and relaxing, and very beach appropriate.  I must say, there's nothing else like being by the beach and listening to live music.

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Kalispehra, Santorini (Part 2)

My posts are getting waaay long!  But there's so much to share!  I decided that I needed to dedicate one post to the beaches.  So this post will be dedicated to the other day adventures we had on this beautiful island.  Once again, here is the map of Santorini.

Santorini is named from Santa Irini.
But it is also known as Thira, which is also the name of the main town and port.

Thira/Fira
Truth be told, I don't really know which name is used by whom.  I'm assuming that Thira is used by the locals, and Fira is somehow easier for the tourists to understand.  But I could be completely wrong.  The th and the f sounds are really similar.  But to keep it simple, I'll just use Thira.

The white on the cliff is Thira.

We traveled to Thira on July 11th, the same day we went to White Beach and had our Fiat Panda.  This larger town is another major location for hotels and hostels, and there is a lot more shopping and museums to visit.

You want to be careful about where you park, as they will tow you away without hesitation.  But there are large lots of free parking around the main area of the town.  From the lot we parked in, we could see the other side of the island.

Santorini is actually quite small.  But there's so much to do!

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Kalispehra, Santorini (Part 1)

Santorini

The other major towns, Oia and Fira, are up high on a cliff, and thus without beaches.  The northern part of the island does have some beaches, but we weren't able to visit them this trip.  One of the first things we discovered about the beaches of Greece (and really, perhaps most of Europe) was that we were definitely not in the conservative United States.  So:

The girls were tanning as well.

My Big Fat Greek Adventure - Kalimera, Santorini

On July 8th, at 7:30am, Jenny and I boarded a tiny aircraft headed to Santorini, one of the most gorgeous islands in Greece.

Santorini from Olympic Air's window

Our plane tickets told us that the flight would take approximately 50 minutes, which was about 10 minutes more than the flight from Boston to Montreal.  But we learned that that 50 minutes must have included boarding the bus that would take us to the tiny plane from the airport gate.

You know how when a plane gets to the right altitude, the flight attendants proceed to distribute snacks and drinks?  Then maybe 15-30 minutes later they start collecting your trash?  Well, this flight was so short that everything was super rushed!

*Plane reaches perfect altitude, seat belt signal turns off*
*Flight attendants start handing out drinks and snacks, which were cute little cookies that looked huge on the box, but were actually tiny!  It's like they multiplied as I opened the box.*
Flight attendant:  Here's your snack.
Me:  Thank you. *I start opening the box and were surprised by the tinyness of the cookies*
*Seat belt signal turns on*
Flight attendant:  Okay, give us your trash! We're landing!
Me:  But..wait..I just got my snack!  Aaahhhh!!

Seriously, as fast as you can read that scenario, that's how fast it happened!