Eight ball on Friday was amazing! I think I had the most fun out since coming to Thessaloniki. When we first got there, we were pretty concerned. They had middle-aged, white Greek rappers on the stage, and while the crowd (composed of freaks as promised) seemed to like it, it was pretty terrible, and we wondered what Tanya had gotten us into. Luckily, the rapping ended pretty soon and it got amazing. First off, the Americans weren’t the only ones dancing. Usually the Greeks just stand there sipping their 8 euro drinks, but everyone was dancing. And we were dancing to Michael Jackson, the Village People. We Are Family. And singing, and jumping, and motioning the Y.M.C.A. It was so much fun! I literally couldn’t speak all day Saturday, my voice was so shot from singing and screaming the words to It’s Raining Men et al, all night. And the Greeks joined us! It was so funny to see all these Greek guys in their leather jackets jumping up and down singing truly terrible songs from the 70s. It was so much fun.
Saturday I got up pretty early and spent the morning/afternoon walking around downtown. When I got back with my take-home gyro around 1 everyone else was just waking up. They started making fun of me for having a gyro for breakfast, and I made fun of them for sleeping so late—I’d had breakfast five hours before!
Last night I went with a bunch of people from my building to see another Documentary, Cannibal Island. It was about a specific, tragic event that happened in 1933 as part of Stalin’s regime. I think everyone decided to go see it because of the title, to be honest, and didn’t really look at what it was about. It wasn’t that great; the material was interesting but the director did a bad job, I thought. It was very stylized and actually took you out of the horror of the situation, and I felt he emphasized all the wrong aspects of the story. Afterwards we grabbed a coffee and did it Greek style, so we got back around one in the morning.
I tried to go to church this morning, but it was a complete fail. I want to go to a Greek service, but I figure the first time I should go with someone who knows what they’re doing. My friend Boosa found out about a late service around 11 he wanted to go to, so I was going to meet him at 1045 downstairs. I ring the doorbell, and he comes to the door having obviously just gotten up. So we were running late, and then the bus was late, and there was some kind of commotion on the road so the bus had to let us off a 15 minute walk from where we needed to be. And even then, the bus stop was in the general area of the church, but when we asked it was much farther than we initially thought, and by the time we found it there was only 20 minutes of service left. Needless to say, we didn’t go in. Hopefully next week will turn out better; I really want to experience a Greek Orthodox service!
I walked to the White Tower with some of my friends who had never been there before, and we got coffee after going to the top. It was kind of rainy and cloudy, so the view wasn’t great. I spent the rest of the day cleaning my room, doing laundry. I made roasted eggplant and tomatoes for dinner, and I’ve been blasting ABBA the whole time. Friday, March 25, is Independence Day here in Greece, so we have school off. I’m going with three friends to an island in the Sporades, which is in the Northern Aegean not far from Thessaloniki. We discovered, after we decided to go to the island of Skopelos, that the majority of Mamma Mia was filmed there. Now I’m even more excited, not because the movie was filmed there, but because the scenery in the movie was absolutely gorgeous. And because it’s the off-season, we got ridiculously cheap hotel accommodations. It will be dead on the island, but that’s actually what we want; we’re just going to rent scooters, hike, check out the beaches and Skopelos Town—relax. I’m very excited!
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