City Tour

Yesterday we had breakfast which consisted of some bread with varying amounts of sugar, depending on the selection, and coffee. And warm milk. All yummy, but not very fruit-,veggie-, or protein-filled. Then we trekked into town on the bus, which costs 1 euro at the moment and will be cheaper when we get our student ID cards. We got our passport photos at this really nice photography studio, and these 4 photos are much better than my midnight Walgreens ones haha.
Then we split up into a few smaller groups (smaller being a relative term; I hung out with 9 other people, and the whole group is 25). The town has lots of little shops; some areas are cute clothes/shoes, and other areas have random electronics stores and garden supplies. It was very interesting, and there are lots of pretty buildings.



There are also a bunch of little tourist shops and we stopped at every single one haha. They have lots of bracelets and beaded items. Ioannina is also known for silver items, so there are a ton of jewelery shops.





We eventually wandered down to the lake, which was very pretty, although supposidly it's also really polluted. There are a ton of cafes and little restaurants in town and on the waterfront, so if I feel like buying my own food (we have a meal plan that gives us three meals a day in the dorms), I have lots of options.



I REALLY miss Spanish, or at least the ability to understand and communicate. With a few exceptions (and English words, of course), I'm basically illiterate. There was a phrase that I saw yesterday which I wanted to translate, so I literally spent about 5 minutes with a dictionary, first changing the text from capital letters to lowercase letters, and then attempting to find those letters in that particular order in the dictionary. I felt like I was decoding something written in symbols more than reading something written with letters, but I imagine it will get easier as I practice the alphabet and memorize the order of the letters. Many people here do speak English; it's not too hard to find someone who we can talk to, but I hate to do it. I feel like such a rude American who can't even speak Greek, and I know that I certainly won't be able to by the time I leave. When we got lunch at small gyro place, the woman didn't speak English. She did know chicken and pork, and we looked up lamb in the dictionary and made the transaction work haha.

We then went to the Greek K-mart. It felt just like an American big box store in terms of being large and having a huge variety of products, but it was SO overwhelming because we had no familiarity with the foods and we couldn't read anything. I looked at the milk aisle, for example, and then decided that there were 30 different options and I had no idea what any of them were, so I just didn't by any of them. If breakfasts remain minimal once we upgrade cafeterias, I might have to figure out some brands of milk and yogurt.

We walked the kilometer and a half or so back to the dorm with our groceries. It was really sunny out, which was nice, but the walk is on the major road, with no sidewalks, just a tiny rocky/dirt shoulder. We made it fine, though, and were so exhausted from walking for 7 hours. I just relaxed until dinner. The main course was suspiciously familiar; I'm pretty sure they took the previous night's pasta and baked it in a pan with some more cheese. I haven't had crunchy pasta in quite a long time haha, but I was starving so I ate mine, most of Shailees and much of Gracies. I've already established myself as a garbage disposal haha