Midterms and Mormons

I had my Greek midterm today. I don’t think I did very well—there were sections that were fine but others that were pretty difficult. There was one part where she gave us words to put into a sentence, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the meaning of this one word. But, just so that I had something written, I pretended it was a descriptive food word and wrote, “Waiter, I would like _____ chicken, please”. Right before I was going to hand it in, I remembered in a sudden flash that the word was “sandals”, and changed my sentence accordingly.

Yesterday was also a historic day in that I finally was given something free from the bakery lady. There’s a bakery down the street where everyone in my building always goes to get bread, coffee, desserts, and “the bakery lady” will always throw in something free—a couple cookies, a frappe, something they have a lot of and aren’t going to sell in time. I have been cursed, and have never gotten anything free in all my time living in Papa K, though I go in there quite often. I never understood why the bakery lady would never give me a nice little treat, not even some koulouri  they couldn’t sell. I finally went in with one of my friends and a really nice lady I’d never seen before gave me free food with my bread! It was very exciting—apparently I was just never in there at the right time, and the long-haired lady I thought was the bakery lady actually is not. The real bakery lady has short hair and speaks worse English but is ten times sweeter. I got some weird round bread with pumpkin seeds and a cream cheese-like filling, but it was delicious. I’ve finally been baptized into the bakery!

Today, while walking down the Paralia, I was stopped by two Mormon boys in suits .They tried to talk to me in Greek and then switched to English. Usually I just blow off people like that but for some reason today I had time to kill and listened attentively to them. It was actually interesting; one was from Spain and the other France, and they are traveling around Greece for two years trying to inform people about their religion. It was funny to hear them talk about the States, especially with the high reverence they gave to Utah, as if it were the Promised Land. I spent a good ten minutes in my sweats talking to these boys and probably made their day; I got their card with a number to call and website and everything. They were very enthusiastic, and I just thought it was funny to see Mormons from Europe in Greece, considering it’s a religion founded in the US in the 1800s.