Hello Hello?

I bought a vivodi card to call home and went to my yiayia's house to use her landline. *blink* oh my word she still has an old rotary dialler phone (bet you didnt know what it was called... yes I'm a legend). So I assumed it must just be for show, I picked up the receiver and there was a dial tone *shock horror* how am I supposed to use the vivodi card if it can only work with tone dialling?!? I felt like I had been sucked into a time warp and transported back to 1983! After a brief panic I found another 'normal' phone, turns out the funky old one is linked to an extension.

*pring pring*
*connecting xorio to JHB*
"Hello?"
"Hello! Do you know yiayia has one of those really old phones were you stick your finger in the hole and turn it to dial a number? And it actually works!"

My name has gone down in the history books

On a family trip to Greece in 1988 my sisters and I painted my yiayia's balcony, not with Plascon Wall & All but with cheapo kids paint. We covered the entire balcony with pictures of flowers and trees and other garden stuff, we must have decided that living on a mountain an hour away from civilisation was grounds for a play-play garden. 21 years later all that is left of our painted garden is my name in one of the corners, what can I say..... I'm a legend

You can take them out of the bush....

I joined the geriatrics of the xorio for a day trip to Kastoria. Along the way there is a little church on an island; there is a 1km (rough estimate) bridge that joins the island to the mainland, the island is uninhabited and has some interesting ruins on it. While walking to one of the ruins someone spotted a tree with bright berries, to my shock and horror they all flocked to the tree and started eating the berries! We were on an uninhabited island, they could have been poisonous! I flapped my arms about and squealed we taught in school that the more pretty/ bright anything is in nature the more poisonous it is! They ignored me and tried to find out what the berries were, how you ask? By asking the next person who came along if they knew, and without fail each next person who came along popped a berry in their mouths to investigate!! I can only flap so much so I told them they were all going to die and walked off without looking back... god helps those who help themselves!

Stamati & Grigori

Back in the day when my parents generation left the village to find work in Athens and beyond they werent given much but they were given some good advice. Bear in mind that most villages in those days didnt have luxuries such as electricity and running water. So to avoid a whole lot of village kids being squashed by cars they explained the phenomenon of traffic lights in a very simple way: the red man is called Stamati (stamata in greek means stop), and the green man is called Grigori (grigora in greek means quickly)

Hanging with the Brady Brunch

Every afternoon at the xorio all the old people (read parents) have a nap and the kids hang around. One day the xorio kids asked me if I wanted to go for a walk with them. A "walk", ooh count me in! So I skipped along the road sure we were gonna get up to no good, no parental supervision and a 5km walk into the mountain, not a soul nearby to see what we were up to, I was about to have the most fun I'd had in ages! We walked 5km off the road, into the forest, and finally stopped at a hole full of water (dont know what its actually called, I'm not much of an outdoorsy person). I eagerly awaited the alcohol and weed to be pulled out of a secret hiding place and for underage snogging to begin..any minute now...we stood around the hole, staring at it, some boys threw stones in it, then we left. We walked all this way and no one is getting drunk or stoned???? Bring a couple of South African teenagers here and they will turn the mountain upside down! Seriously felt like I was in the twilight zone

Cheerio!...... Manoli

At the xorio there is nothing to do but drink....when in Rome! Uncle Vangeli (my dad's sister's husband) and Uncle George (my mom's brother)are the best drinking partners. They refuse to let you pay for drinks and keep refilling your glass before you manage to finish it! Every single night I spent at the xorio was accompanied by at least 5 bottles of wine between the 3 of us. Good times

Where in the world have i been?

So I have neglected my blog for a little while, mainly due to ultra slow connections speeds in the village. I make notes on my cellphone of anything blogworthy, and alas my cellphone died in Hydra (thats the second cellphone of mine to die there is less than a month!!!), all my notes are gone gone gone... the next few posts wont be in date order but I need to get you all up to date with where I've been and what I've done

Enviromentally not-so-friendly

Theoyefiro is a natural phenomenon found close to the xorio, translated as God's bridge or Bridge made by God. On a bench at Theoyefiro I found 3 messages; the bottom two politely asking us to hug trees and what not, the message at the top says "stick your cigarette butts in your butt!"

A sign of Civilisation!

I've been staying at the xorio (my parents village). It's the land of all things creepy - spiders, scorpions, parktown prawn looking grasshoppers, big black bugs with fangs *shudders*. The xorio is tucked away on a mountain (its a 1.4km walk to the main road), 45 mins drive either way to a big town. Its in the middle of nowhere. The internet connection here is slooooooooooow. Everyone has their own vegetable garden. The 'restaurant' serves chickens from the priests garden. The doctor only visits once a week. The man who delivers bread only visits once a week.
Anyhoo, I decided to be homely this morning and fry some eggs (okay fine my mom left and I was starving). I tried not to think about the fact that tonight I may very well be eating the chickens bum that laid the eggs. I opened the fridge, what's that?! Stamped eggs?? Stamped eggs!! There is a God and he knows where our xorio is! Stamped eggs = fat chickens I wont be eating + washed eggs + expiry date + no trace of villageness