A Day in my World

These are just my thoughts for the day as I have a nice glass of red wine. This morning I am awoken at 5:30am to this siren sound that happens about once a minute. When I finally got up at 6:45 I walked out to my patio in the front and the siren sound was fainter so I went to the back patio and there it was loud and clear coming from the mountain on my left. I didn’t see anyone panicking so went back inside. At 7, my fuse box does its major click – like a fuse pops. This is when the light in the fuse box goes off and doesn’t go back on until 11pm. When the light is on it is a cheaper time to use electricity! I walk into the kitchen and turn on the coffee maker then go back to the fuse box and open the glass door and switch on the fuse for the microwave/oven, the bathroom water and the kitchen water. This I do daily and turn the fuses off before I go to work or to bed. The weather was looking quite wet (not raining but wet) and therefore my laundry which has been hanging on the line since Tuesday was damp again.
As I walk down the hill towards the plateia (a big square where the church is, a playground, taverna seating and other brick areas where kids skateboard all the time and decorate with graffiti!) I notice everything is really wet so I just thought it rained last night. I treated myself to another coffee – Starbucks! And walk on to school, however, when I got to school the ground is completely dry, so I asked the guard if it rained here last night because Agia Paraskevi (where I live) was soaking wet. He said it was dew!
The day was as exhausting and disorganized as ever. Our human resource person sent us an email that it will still be a long wait until we receive our tax ID# and that we need to come to her office at 4pm today. So we all went over there to find out she had done some research about internet and phone and low and behold WE can get internet and phone without the ID#. So we are all signing up for it tomorrow, however, it will take one month to get installed, of course! But she asked us to get a phone number of someone in our building. I told her that no one in my building speaks English – plus there are really hardly anyone in my building, so I had her write out what I wanted in Greek.
On my way home, I stopped by Jumbo the kids store – one floor is like Toys ‘R Us and the other floor is like a school supply store. As I carry too many things up to the plateia, I decide to break the law a tad. I get on the bus which goes up the hill I live on – two stops- without paying! It’s only two stops but it is up a big hill! I think I need to buy one of those granny carts on wheels!
So I ring the bell of the woman who I pay the condo rent to – she speaks limited English, so I hand her the note! She continues to tell me her father has died and she brings me chocolates and then tells me to come around 6pm tomorrow. I am so confused. So on my way to the gourmet coffee bean store, I pop my head into the Benetton store that sells lingerie and chats to my new friend Julie who speaks English – she just laughed at me and said she has no idea why the woman gave me chocolates!
And that’s my life!