August 10 - Friday

We have been in Rafina since last Tuesday. Here the routine is a cycle that goes swim, eat, rest/sleep/read, swim and repeat it all again. Some of our party go swimming at least twice a day. Rough life.

Yesterday when Theodosia went to Athens to take her mother to a church conference where Violetta will stay for a week, she dropped Kathy and I off in Rafina village (about 2 miles) and we checked our email at the internet cafe. Then we wandered around looking for electronic shops where we might buy a cable for Kathy's MP3 player to hook into a stereo so she could share some of her songs with the family. We found three shops but no cable. When we tried to call Christos to come and get us, my phone would not ring his number, just gave us a recording that he had his phone turned off which we did not believe. No way could we walk back in the heat. And we were not sure we could direct a taxi to the place we were staying as it is only a summer home and we did not have the address. Finally we called Theodosia on her cell phone and she called Christos to come get us.

Now that Christos is on vacation and there are two of us to try and catch what he is saying, we are learning more Greek. Today he had Kathy and I help him make hemas which is similar to our spaghetti except that they do not use a tomato sauce. He grated one tomato, carrot, onion, and added these along with fresh herbs and powdered garlic, to a mix of ground veal and pork, so it was well seasoned but essentially a meat sauce. When we told him that we cook our tomatoes down for a thick tomato sauce, he said that many tomatoes were too heavy for the stomach. Later in the evening, he took us into the village of Rafina to walk along the waterfront and bought us roasted corn from a street vendor - and pagoto, of course.

Theodosia called from Athens to report that two of the kittens have died in spite of the fact she had tried to supplement their feedings with milk from an eye dropper.