ALSO BURCU CALL AGAIN PLEAAAAAASE I DON'T HAVE TIME TO E-MAIL YOU BUT DIAL 10-10-987-011-30 THEN THE PHONE NUMBER TIME'S RUNNING OUT BYE

"The Keraimikos Cemetary was in the red-light district of ancient Athens. So if you wanted to pick up some ho's, this is where you would go."
-My staid, British, Oxford- and Cambridge-educated professor.

It's always funnier when they're British.

I don't really know what to write. I'm just sitting here with my knees up and resting against the desk, in the Easy Everything Internet Cafe, on the second floor of everest, fast food Greek-style. I'm absentmindedly eating odd-tasting almonds that I bought from a kiosk while walking here. I'm looking out the window onto Syntagma Square. The street is checkered with yellow taxis. I can hear people laughing in Greek downstairs. I had tuned out the radio, the people, the cars, the pigeons, but now I'm thinking about how loud everything is and can't ignore it anymore.

Have you ever seen pigeons try to eat something enormous? I threw half a pita from my gyro to an expectant crowd of them yesterday, and watched the fun begin. One grabs it in its beak, tears off a piece by violently thrashing its head around, and the pita goes flying. Then a sparrow swoops down, opens wide, and valiently tries to drag the whole thing into the sky. Poor sparrow. Pigeons have scary eyes, but not as scary as goats. Have you ever really looked at goat eyes? They have RECTANGULAR PUPILS. Loreal and I noticed that while visiting the Ventura County Fair in the summer of '02. I miss Loreal.

I visited Meteora last weekend, which is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I didn't get to visit most of the monasteries, so I'll probably return before June...

Next week, we're visiting Osios Loukas, Delphi, Olympia, Sparta, Mycenae, Nafplion, Tiryns, Argos, and Epidaurus. Yeah, you heard me. Internet access will obviously be unreliable, so I may vanish for awhile. Just think, I'll be on a whirlwind tour of the Peloponnese, and I fucking hate the word "whirlwind" but never has it been so apt. I'm pretty tired, and if I don't cut my friend Kerri's hair tonight I promised I'd get a tattoo on my arm that says I HAVE THIS TATTOO BECAUSE I WAS SUPPOSED TO CUT KERRI'S HAIR AND FLAKED, so I'd better get on that....

Gotta go. I wish you were here.

Yesterday I was walking home from class with a couple of other people, and passed a goateed man busily defacing a wall with a can of spray paint, in broad daylight, facing a crowded street. Man! In California, I would have gotten $1,000 for reporting that. More later.

Not Funny: The Definition

Bush Pokes Fun at Himself at Dinner

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.

Yes, I'm sure the thousands of people who've died as a result of his wild-goose chase find him just hilarious. I hate you, George W. Bush.

Feeling Better

As I was walking to the internet cafe with Ariel and Carolyn, we passed a guy filming two heavily made-up women with a clunky video camera. The girls appeared to be saying goodbye to each other. A scripted sort of goodbye. A soap opera sort of goodbye.

Right as we were walking in front of the camera, the sweater that was tied around my waist fell around my knees and got caught in my backpack and I almost fell on my face.

So if I'm lucky, my big break may come from doing the klutz dance in the background of a Greek television show.

Hydra

I was so immersed in melodrama yesterday that I didn't give a complete account of my trip to Hydra. No motorized vehicles allowed on Hydra, so the only form of transportation is by donkey. There are hills everywhere, and old Greek men riding sidesaddle and carrying huge bags of groceries. We passed an middle-aged bleached-blonde woman wearing a pink sweatsuit, and she started talking to us, telling us no tourists ever went by her house, and then insisted we take cokes. I declined but she persuaded Ariel and Flannery "Red or light?" she asked, then bounded up to the third floor of her house, leaned out the window, and began tossing the cans down to us, one of which promptly split in half and exploded all over her garden. As we were leaving, we saw a hen waddling up the hill, followed by a line of a dozen chicks.

Supposedly, there are enough churches on Hydra that you can attend a different one every day. There are tiny markets that seem to be in people's garages, huge black bees, wildflowers, cobblestone sidewalks, gutted houses that have never been torn down, stone walls and barbed-wire fences guarding green-grass fields that lead nowhere. I have a fantasy that someday I'll live in Hydra, alone or with someone else maybe, have my own donkey, my own dog, and my own Apollo. I'll have my own boat too so I can go sailing on the blue blue Mediterranean whenever I want. I'll have lots of land with benches so I can take long walks and never encounter anybody, but I guess it would also be nice if I ran across a few people every now and then, and I wouldn't want to keep all my land to myself anyway when there are so many friendly people on the island who would like a place to sit. And I'll take care of everything I own, and my friends and family could come visit me, and I'd take them around the island because I'd have memorized it and I'd speak Greek fluently so they'd be all impressed when I communicated with my neighbors and the shopkeepers and so forth. Maybe I'll have two donkeys so we can both ride them around. In the summer, tourist season, I'd disappear, maybe go to Athens and the summer festivals, or travel around the islands, or go to Italy--something. The only annoying thing is that you can't ride bikes on Hydra, but hey, since this is a fantasy, all the big men on the island will just grow so enamoured with me that I'll suggest in passing that maybe they might want to alter the law just a little bit, since bikes never hurt anybody, and they'd be all, "Yes, Danielle! You are absolutely right, bikes never DID hurt anybody!" and then life would be perfect.

Immature

An old high school pal friendstered me, and wrote me a really nice testimonial, even though we haven't spoken in nearly three years. She also keeps posting on the bulletin board begging for people to write testimonials for her. But she doesn't call them testimonials, she calls them "testis." So, she keeps asking why she has no "testis" yet, why why no one has given her any "testis." As soon as I stop giggling uncontrollably I plan to write her a big mushy testi, maybe a couple of testis. I'm generous.

The emotional high has officially worn off, and all I want to do is be alone for awhile. I've been having very vivid, very sad dreams. I want to write something but I feel blocked, like my mind and throat and heart are all constricted. Well, that's enough of that. I went to Hydra this weekend and walked around the island with my roommate Ariel, who's the greatest girl ever, and her sister. I almost adopted a kitten but then it sneezed all over itself and I just couldn't bring myself to carry around a snot-covered animal. I didn't get to ride a donkey this time, but I'll have a grand plan to buy a sleeping bag and camp out under the stars (don't worry mom, it's safe.). Maybe with other people if they want to come, but it would be nice to be alone. Everyone here is really friendly, and I get along with almost everyone, but sometimes it feels like an introvert's hell.

Ugh, I hate to clutter up this blog with my own personal, often imaginary, melodrama, but sometimes I feel like I've had so much interpersonal heartache it's amazing that I bother to interact with other people at all--I guess most of the time I don't. But I think of those who have stuck around and who love me and I am overwhelmed with gratitude. On Easter, I went to a Greek Orthodox mass and lit two candles, one for my family and one for my friends. I love love love love you guys. LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! WHY CAN'T WE GIVE OURSELVES ONE MORE CHANCE? WHY CAN'T WE GIVE LOVE THAT ONE MORE CHANCE? WHY CAN'T WE GIVE LOVE GIVE LOVE GIVE LOVE GIVE LOVE

and that is what they call a "Full House Moment." I'm going to go cry now.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting peacefully on my balcony, canopied with sunshine, writing in my journal with my purple gel pen and listening to Britney Spears, when I glanced to the sidewalk four stories below and noticed a man sitting on a motorcycle, staring at me. Staring and staring and staring at me. I tried to ignore him, but when someone is staring at you, it's impossible to keep from peeking every few moments to check if he's still there. About fifteen minutes passed, and then I heard him say, "Psss, psss, psss!!"

So I looked down and saw that HE HAD PULLED OUT HIS PENIS AND WAS STARING AT ME AND MASTURBATING, SITTING ON HIS MOTORCYCLE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CROWDED SIDEWALK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed, running inside to grab my roommate Sita and pull her onto the balcony. We were followed by our neighbors, Lia and Teddy, who had heard the commotion. Of course, having a gaggle of college girls now staring at his little bobbly white thing probably excited him more, although we were all cracking up, which may have injured his pride. I'm traumatized, taking very small comfort in the knowledge we got to provide a lonely Greek biker with a moment of forbidden pleasure. Then the story got around, and at class our professor gave us a "very serious" talk about notifying the police if this sort of thing keeps happening, even though the police can't really do anything.

In other news, Greece is still great, but I'm grumpy and hungry. Luckily, this weekend we get to go to Hydra and ride bikes and donkeys.

Question: Who is harder on girl's bodies, girls themselves or guys? I can't imagine anyone being meaner about physical appearance than girls (to themselves and others), but girls also always say that guys are even pickier and bitchier, and my sister has told me stuff that her guy friends say that really worries me. Is there any hope?

I'm trying to restrain myself from writing another gushy schoolgirl post. My cranky inner social critic is still around, but wisely keeping silent for the time being to avoid being beaten to death by ferocious sweetness and light.

So, here's a disturbing confession for you. I had a kidnapping fetish from age four until about age eight. I no longer have anything remotely resembling a kidnapping fetish--the idea kinda freaks me out. But back then, I'd fantasize about getting kidnapped by my crushes, read kidnapping stories (Kidnapped!, Sweet Valley High #13, was a favorite), write kidnapping stories, and so on. When I was seven or so, I read half of a fiction story that was printed in my mom's Woman's Day about a woman who got kidnapped at her high school reunion, and finally found the audio tape of the second half at the library. I went to the front to check it out and the librarian asked me, "Does your mom know you're checking this out?" I was sooooo embarrassed, but said yes, of course. No librarian bitch was gonna keep me away from my kidnapping story!

On a semi-related note, some girl faked her own kidnapping.

How totally dorky is it that I have an unsuppressable craving to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding right now? I want to see how the Hollywood portrayal of American Greeks compares to the people I see here. The wonderful, crazy, noisy, hilarious people here, saturated with personality, whose language I am DYING to learn just so I can understand the random things the merchants at the open-air market yell out at each other. My friend Kerri, who's taken a couple of quarters of Greek, said she heard one strawberry-seller say, "HEY! MINE ARE BETTER THAN HIS!!!"

I spent about five dollars at the market and got the freshest, brightest vegetables I've ever seen. Then I went home and cooked and hamburger and ate some brown rice and carrot sticks and talked for about an hour with four other people from the program. Last night, my roommates Ariel and Sita and I talked for five hours straight. I can't believe how well I'm getting along with everyone. Sure, there's a subgroup of people who are all excited about getting drunk on seventy-five cent bottles of wine, but there's also an even bigger subgroup of people who got all excited when I suggested staying in tonight, giving ourselves pedicures, and watching back-to-back romantic comedies. My kind of Friday.

I'll write more about the rest of my adventures later. It's only been a week, but I can imagine living here forever.