Your illiteracy has screwed us again

It is actually frustrating how stupid I can be. I just spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how to log onto this account in order to post again. I don't remember my email. I don't know how I finally got on. All I know is that my usernames are typically saved but someone here uses my laptop to do their gmail whatever and it saved their username on the homepage. I immediately became clueless and had no idea what to do. On top of all that, it's all in Greek and wasn't being translated properly. Once translated, they would send me an email to help, which was in Greek. It was a long process.

Moving on. I am now in beautiful Pylos. It is so gorgeous here. I'm just sitting in the lobby of the hotel just staring at the water right now. We left Nafplion yesterday. I walked the steps up to Palamidi. You know, that place I originally drove a bus up to because we're lazy. We were the first students to ever count all the steps. We did on the way down and only counted 909 instead of 999 like everyone says. We had a few discrepancies about what number we were on or if certain things counted as stairs. I'm pretty sure we repeated the 780s and skipped 589 but whatever, close enough. It only took 10:26 or somewhere around there. Our math was flawed while we tried to add together the number of Biggie songs played on the way up. I'm glad I did it. I would have definitely regretted not doing it because I will probably never be there again, but who knows. We went out that night for a friend's birthday and had a simply glorious time. Then here in Pylos was her actual birthday so we went out to eat and had a huge buffet style meal. We did this for lunch too. This was the first time I had a meal besides when our professor bought us dinner once. Doing it twice in one day really took a toll on me.

Before we got to Pylos, we stopped at a Venetian fortress not for educational reasons, but simply because it's cool. There was a huge lighthouse right on the water. There used to be a moat too. Amazing place. We just sat and stared out at the water for an hour or so and then continued our drive.

Today, we went to the Palace of Nestor. This is where mythology and history combine in an awkward way. It is really a great thing to have a brilliant professor walk you around a site and interact with it and then we go to museums where we still have the plans and get to determine where each piece is from down to the exact room. So much was preserved from this one. I never thought I'd enjoy the learning part so much. Matthew was shit-talking our next professor though so that's upsetting.

We finished class today and get a couple free days. We head back to Athens tomorrow and that's perfect because it's Thursday karaoke. Already preparing. We got back to the hotel after class today and a majority of the group decided they wanted to go climb a mountain to see a castle. Seems like a good idea and all but I was way too determined to figure out this username to call it quits. Plus I am more than happy with the view from my chair.

I'm lucky because I still talk to everyone from home and know what happens in their life, but what I do miss is interaction. We send messages or wall posts and it's all fine and dandy, but I thrive on responses and have no patience to ask a question and have to wait hours for a response only to have my mom not answer the question and then ask a bunch more and even worse create about 25 more. None of this thought out weighing of each word. Too much room for blame. If it's just a knee jerk reaction, it's not a big deal. I'm not even sure if that's the expression, but if this was a conversation it would be passed by. Instead, I have to sit here and decide if that's right or not, decide if I care or not, and ultimately google it to settle this problem. (I'm right. Yes!)

I make fun of my mom far too much. She prides herself on the fact that I get my legs and butt and witty personality from her so I guess I just took it and ran with it. Also, we both run like idiots because we're knocked kneed so maybe I shouldn't be running with anything.

The table I'm sitting at has a little vase with a fake flower in it. For the past day I have been annoyed by these flowers because they added some glue or something to the petals to give the false image of a dewy morning flower. I have proceeded to pick most of this glue off. What a stupid idea. I always see things so simply dumb like that and just wish I could have been part of that business meeting. There has to be meetings for stuff like this, I assume. (Shows how much I know about real life.) And some woman who has tons of cats was like, "You know what would be really great, if we made our cheap fake flowers look wet. I know I like to pick myself flowers from my overgrown garden that are fresh from a morning dew and put them as the centerpiece at my small wooden table. My cats love them. Except a drop once got on Fluffy's nose, it was the cutest thing. Here's a picture of all 17 of them."

I had to stay in a hostel owned by said crazy cat ladies. That was my form of therapy to release my anger. It's called displacement. Take your anger about something (cats meowing in my hostel) and put it on something else (fake flowers.) Another solid example of this is my mom (it's been almost a paragraph without making fun of her) because she takes her anger (Maggie lost; Dan is a moron; cell phone's "broke" again; Lady GaGa's song sounds like Madonna) and puts it on something else (me.) It works fine, just like a cycle.

I'm not entirely sure how anything gets done in this country. This is how I see the businesses or workers go about their days.
10am-stores open and people begin to work
12pm-things start to wrap up in time for their quiet hours that start at 1 so it's basically pointless to do any work at this point
1pm-stores and businesses close for quiet hours
5pm-ish/whenever they want-stores reopen and workers get going again
5:30pm-start winding down
6pm-everything shuts down or ends except some food places
So this explains why construction on this hostel my classmates stayed at was so ridiculous. They probably got one nail in a day.

This really smart kid in my class also keeps a blog. I'm assuming it's much more impressive than mine because he's very smart. I believe many people follow him to get information on the specific life-changing things we do on the trip. This makes sense. When thinking about my blog, I really offer nothing.

Our bus has to be broke. This is the most fearless busdriver ever, but we hit a pebble and the entire back of the bus gets air. Many heads have been injured. Also, the winding street while trying to cross other busses while the other busdriver is smoking and/or talking on his cell phone is a problem.

My classmates are just getting back from the castle. I finally figured out the username or else that would be embarrassing. They look exhausted and accomplished. I just look accomplished. I won this one.

I had my key privileges taken away but usually need a key. They only have one key, like real key and keyhole key, per room. No problem, the system these people have adapted is that you just hang your room key on a hook in the lobby when you leave and use it when you need to and return it to the hook. This is outrageous and so helpful. Also, this place must be a bubble. How is this not an issue? This system hasn't failed them? Insanity.

I haven't broken a chair in like a day so that's good but I probably broke out toilet first thing. Just learned that you aren't supposed to flush your toilet paper down the toilet in this country. I don't know if I understand this completely. Kristine was making fun of me because above our toilet is a little sign that says "Don't throw paper down toilet" with a drawing of what seems to be a hand tossing a ketchup bottle and a head of lettuce down the toilet. I went ahead and assumed this was another terrible translation mistake the Greeks love (lamp chops is one of my favorites) and proceeded to ignore it. The drawing is really quite ridiculous and is actually the opposite of helpful.

Time to adventure. Go, youth inspired.
Or eat some more cheese filled meatballs. It's a tossup at this point.