My parents paid 30,000 leptons to send me here, and I expect an education

Yes, kids: that subject line is a little shout out to all the Libel Show fans. Keep the dream alive.

Anyhoo, I feel that I should talk about Greece a little bit even though, as a I mentioned before, it is not technically in Chicago or the Midwest at all. Therefore, I'll try to keep it mostly to bullet points. Convenient, because basically I think in bullet points.

I loved about Greece:

+ The food: so most of what we ate and drank in Greece was local. Feta cheese, which I didn't even think I LIKED, was amazing on salads and in cheese pies. The most delicious cucumbers of all time. The green PEPPERS were good (another thing I'm not a big fan of state-side). The tomatoes looked and sounded delicious, but even in Greece I wouldn't go down that road (I do not like them in a car, I do not like them near or far, etcetera). If fish is frozen rather than fresh, the restaurants are REQUIRED to note it on the menu. The food was fresh and good with very few exceptions. The yogurt is about a million times better than anything I've had in the US. Don't even get me started on the baklava.

+The wine: Also all local. Apparently they don't put sulfites in their wine. All I know is it was inexpensive, yummy, and I could drink a shiz-ton of it without getting a headache. Yay!

+The religious parades: Extremely short and to the point. They don't prissy-fizz around with a bunch of oversized balloons
or little kids who passed their bike safety class or floats sponsored by radio stations and paid for by beer companies. They get in, their military band plays some serious music, they burn some frankincense, hoist the icon, and get out. We appreciated this at the Feast of the Assumption on Paros. Very beautiful and cool.

+The dogs: there are stray (or just extremely outdoors) dogs all over Greece. The best one is named Air Bud, which appellation was administered after some mighty wine had flowed. But the thing about Air Bud is that we made friends with him one day on Santorini, and later that night following the wine,
we ran into him and he walked us all the way home (usually leading the way, then checking to make sure we were with him). This may not sound like a big deal, but from Fira (the major city on our side of Santorini where we met A.B.) and Firostefani (the location of our hotel) is basically 150,000,072 stairs up a mountain. So he was in it for the long haul. He became best friends with one of our group (Mambles). We gave him a lot of cheese as a token of gratitude when he delivered us safely to our door. This is not a picture of Air Bud, but of another good guy we saw around. There are also donkeys on Santorini (it's great).

+The beauty: The islands really are stunningly beautiful. The sunsets, the churches, the beaches, the cobblestone streets, even the monstrous hills--amazing views. That place is lousy with views.




+The history stuff": The Acropolis is quite a sight, even though we were very disappointed that the Acropolis museum was closed. The archaeological museum was really interesting, though. My favorite part was how much the early marble Cycladic sculpture reminded me of early African sculpture.

+Energy conservation: in most hotels, you had to stick your room key in a little slot when you entered in order to turn on the electricity. Smart.

+The Ellinon Thea Hotel in Santorini was absolutely fantastic.

What I didn't love about Greece:

-the toilet paper issue: you aren't supposed to flush your toilet paper AT ALL. There are teeny tiny trash cans provided for it instead. Sometimes, the same trash can you are also supposed to open up to discard, for example, your dental floss and q-tips. The toilets are normal euro toilets, but no paper allowed, according to the signs on every loo. I am not sorry to say that I think it's grody. I don't particularly see the environmental benefit of poopy (excuse my french) paper all up in landfills, nor do I understand why a modern plumbing system would be built that can't handle paper. And no, I never saw a bidet. And no--NONE OF the guide books mentioned this!

-Money: The ATMs distribute almost exclusively 50 Euro notes, and almost no shopkeeper wanted to take anything bigger than a five. We always felt like we were extremely rude when offering to pay with anything other than coins, and it's upsetting to feel rude for a reason that seems so mystifying.

-Lines/Queues: are not part of society. It's every man, woman, child, and little old person for herself and throwing 'bows doesn't seem to be out of the question.

-it's really hot: but I knew that going in.

All in all it was a wonderful trip, SO good to see friends we had been missing and get closer to new friends. The complaints were mostly dumb American culture shock (except for the toilet paper thing, and for that I will not apologize). Back to regularly scheduled Chicago, soon...