This weekend I ventured to Halkidiki with a handful of other ACT students. There was 11 of us staying at Alex Dimi-Simeo's beach house. Alex is Greek and is an ACT student. He leads the volleyball team and is dating Molly, an American girl in my program. We caught the 10 am bus up to Halkidiki on Saturday morning and passed out on the bus. It's only an hour bus ride and a round trip ticket costs 15 euros. So we got a 1 hour nap on the bus and then Alex picked us up from the bus stop. There was 7 of us that took the bus and 4 people had driven up with Alex the night before, so we joined the rest of the group at Alex's place. Unfortunately, it started raining as soon as we arrived at the grocery store to pick up some snacks and drinks so we spent the entire day playing drinking games and "spinning yarns" (telling stories). We took a 3 hour community nap from 4-7 and it was the best thing ever. We all crashed all over the house, on couches, futons, beds, any where and everywhere. Usually, I'm a terrible, terrible napper, but I just felt so drained and I put my head phones in with some Florence + the Machine and I was good to go. I know I didn't get any deep sleep but it felt good to drift in and out of sleep for a few hours. I was content with my good music and my couch cushions on the ground. Once we woke up we all were hungry and we went out to dinner at the Italian restuarant. Since tourist season hasn't officially started yet, there is only 2 restaurants open in the entire town: a gyro restaurant and an Italian restaurant. Since we had gyros for lunch we opted for the Italian. It took us over 2 hours to be served because they were so short staffed but my creamy gnocchi was delicious. We were all super hungry so as soon as they brought our food we scarfed it down. We went back to Alex's and played "Dare or Dare" and "Up and Down the River" and "Cheers Governor!" It was a night filled with laughter and silliness.
The next day we woke up at 11 and headed straight to the beach. It was a beautiful 80 degree day full of sunshine and a light breeze. The water is a beautiful aquamarine and teal color that gets darker and darker as it approaches the horizon. It's the Aegean Sea and it's actually salt water. The water was still really cold but we all ventured in to it periodically throughout the day. We stayed on the beach from 11 to 5:30 only leaving it once to pick up a pork souvlaki. I was smart and lathered up on sunscreen and spent all 6.5 hours laying on a beach chair. I had my headphones plugged in and was content to just lay and bask in the Greek sunshine. I'm not usually such a vegetable at the beach. I usually get antsy after laying there and doing nothing for over half an hour, but not today. I have no idea why I was so exhausted and content to just lay there lackadaisically in the sun, but I was. And it was the perfect day for it.
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