Eretria Village Resort

Over the last few weeks, we have had the blessing of reconnecting—in person, even!—with friends whom we have not seen in over 5 years. These friends were traveling for business, and they had arranged their flights so they could stop in Athens to visit us. Even better, their overnight layover in Athens was only on their way out; on their way back to their home, they needed to stop for a week of work right here in Greece. Afterward, they intended to spend a couple of days relaxing at a resort just 90 minutes away from Athens, where they invited us to join them.

Accordingly, one Saturday morning, we made the trip from Athens to Eretria Village Resort, on Evia Island. The room was basic but comfortable. There was a queen (or maybe king) size bed, as well as a twin size daybed/sofa. There weren’t a whole lot of drawers in the vanity area, but there was a typical-for-Europe built-in closet that had more than enough storage space. The bathroom was clean, and although there were no drawers, there was plenty of counter space. All the floors were tile, and there was a patio on our ground-level unit; the ones upstairs had balconies.

After we unpacked, it was time to head to lunch, a buffet that included soup, salads, various meats, and vegetables. The whole time, Alexa begged to go back to the room, put on her swimsuit, and get in the pool. We told her she could do that later, but first we wanted to walk around the resort and see what was there.

Just outside the main building, which housed the dining room, a bar, several conference rooms, and a few guest rooms, the main pool sprawled. It definitely was the centerpiece of the resort. The pool was a rough rectangle, with a large island in the middle. There were two bridges to the island, as well as two “feet wet” wading walls, for lack of a better term. These short walls allowed maybe two inches of water to pass over them, and they separated a full-sized deep swimming pool from the much more shallow “playing” pool, which made up the other three sides of the rectangle. We loved the design, which was beautiful and practical. Alexa could stand and play in most of the pool without worry about accidentally stepping over into water that was too deep for her.

We had been told that there were two additional pools at the resort, so we decided to find them. One was beside the beach, so we headed that way first.

We walked down beautiful paths to a tunnel that took us under the highway and to the beach.

 

We walked out on a short pier, from which we could see a longer pier that we just as easily could have walked out on. We saw the mainland across the narrow channel ahead of us.

We turned around and saw the resort’s beach area behind us.

Then we walked back to shore for a closer look at the beach.

There was another beach area that was just as lovely.

Then we found the beach side pool

and a cool wall beside it.

Seriously, I don't know why I was so fascinated with this wall and its windows and door, but I was utterly enthralled.

We passed by the playground but didn’t stop—Alexa was begging to go back to “the first pool” to swim.

We walked back along the picturesque path,

found a sweet little chapel,

and caught a glimpse of the third pool (but didn't take a picture of it).

Then we gave in to Alexa’s oft-repeated desire to change into swimsuits. I couldn't resist taking a picture of the pretty little scene that greeted me every time I opened our door, though:

After changing, we (well, Jeff and Alexa) braved the cold waters of the huge, lovely pool outside the main building.

After some time in the pool, when we grownups couldn't stand the chill any longer, we went back to the room for hot showers and dry clothes. Then our friend invited us on a drive up the mountain to see the view. We happily accepted.

We stopped at a beautiful little church nestled near the top of the mountain.

The exterior door was secured against the wind, but unlocked. We took that as an invitation to go in and light a candle. Apparently casual visitors were not so welcome in the sanctuary, which was locked up tight.

We marveled at the cool patterns of the branches growing at the cliff's edge. These branches grew up for a little way, then quickly curved back down and extended below their roots.

After we left the church, we drove up a partially-paved road to an electrical tower at the mountain's peak. From there, we had a clear view of the resort-strewn waterfront area.

On our way down, we had a clear view of the less populated, uncommercialized, beautiful interior of the island.

We also found some goats that utterly enthralled Alexa.

Finally, we drove through the small town of Evia on our way back to the resort, which is located between the villages of Evia and Eretria. I loved the picturesque little dock area.

After our drive, we relaxed at the resort for a little while longer before dinner with our friends. We found a cute little sitting area,

and Alexa made friends with one of the resort's permanent residents.

 

Dinner was served on Greek time (in other words, late), so we went back to our room pretty much right after dinner. The next day was a full day of breakfast, swimming, lunch, and the drive back to Athens. We were joined for one last evening with our friends before they headed home Monday. 

Our time at the resort was a wonderful way to relax after a few weeks of settling in to Athens and before a hectic time of accepting delivery of and unpacking our shipment from Kosovo. Eretria Village Resort is classified as a 4-star resort (with one 3-star hotel on the premises as well). I think it falls a little short of the 4-star mark, but it's still a beautiful and relaxing weekend getaway. I expect that we'll visit again.

Our First Week in Athens

I have learned a few things about myself over the years. One of those things is that I do NOT do well on little sleep or with any type of illness, not even something as simple as the common cold. When I’m tired, I tend to be a little down in the dumps. When I’m exhausted, everything is bad; there is nothing good about anything, anywhere in the world. When I have a cold, I am both exhausted and dealing with the added indignity of not being able to breathe easily or quietly. It is not pretty.

I was unable to sleep on the flight to Athens, and I developed a cold on the plane.

I arrived in Athens primed to hate everything about it. And I did: my house was too dark, the rooms were too small, the split pack air conditioner units were placed inefficiently, the stairs were too steep and too circular, the handrail on said stairs was too high, and don’t even get me started on the ridiculously ineffective European washer and dryer in the basement (okay, fine, the dryer; the washer is actually fine). Luckily, there was no need for me to leave my house for a full day after I arrived, so my hatred was confined to the house while I slept off most of the jet lag. Jeff brought home medicine from the exchange at the embassy, so the cold began to resolve fairly quickly as well.

By the time we’d been in country 48 hours, I was feeling a bit better. That was a mighty good thing, because by then, I’d had to leave my house. We were at the embassy on Wednesday morning, getting photos made for our diplomatic ID cards and going through the in-briefing for newcomers (in which we heard from Human Resources, GSO, and the health unit). I was still a little ambivalent about everything, though I tried to think and act more positively than I was feeling at the time. After a morning at the embassy, I was more than ready to come home and take a nap.

On Thursday, I woke up feeling almost normal. Alexa and I puttered around the house all day, and amazingly, it seemed brighter than the previous days. The rooms were indeed smaller than what we’ve had in the past, but I recognized that they are a workable size. The air conditioners still weren’t placed efficiently (they really aren’t; we may invest in a fan or two next summer), but the stairs felt more manageable (if still steep, circular, and with a shoulder-high handrail). I managed to do two or three loads of laundry, without getting annoyed that the clothes came out "cupboard dry" rather than "ready to be worn dry"; I even recognized that hanging them for the last little bit of drying is going to result in much less ironing for me, and that's never a bad thing.

Thursday evening, Alexa and I headed out to meet Jeff and some of his coworkers. There were TDYers in town (Temporary Duty-ers, here on a short work trip), and they were being taken up to the Acropolis to see the sunset. It was an opportunity too good to miss.

We took the metro to the stop just behind the Acropolis, then walked up and up and up some more to the top of the mountain. When we first came out of the metro, we walked through a shopping area that reminded me of a cleaner, more high-end version of the Khan el Khalili in Cairo, and I made a mental note to check that out when I have a little more time. There continued to be random stalls here and there almost all the way up, though most were clustered at the bottom of the mountain.

After the long walk up, we climbed some stairs and found ourselves on a rocky outcropping. The Acropolis was just one outcropping over. There were amazing views down into Athens. I had not brought my camera, so I had to settle for a few pictures on my phone. I’ll definitely be making the trip again—probably several more times—with a real camera ... and possibly a taxi.

Once the sun had set, we continued walking around and back down the mountain. We stopped for drinks at a wine bar, then went to a local restaurant for a very late dinner. We talked and laughed and all around enjoyed ourselves and the food: Greek salad, fried sardines, roasted pork (or was it lamb?), and some kind of greens. It was very late when we returned home, close to midnight, I think.

The next day, while Jeff got up and went to work, Alexa and I slept until 11am. Just a few hours after we got up, we met up with Jeff and some others at an apartment downtown for a happy hour. It also was a nice time—a great opportunity to get to know some of the other people from Jeff’s office and from around the embassy. We didn’t stay too late, though, as we thought it better to get Alexa back on something resembling a normal sleep-wake pattern.

Yesterday, Saturday, one of the people in Jeff’s office took us to Ikea. It is so incredibly nice to have a resource like Ikea here! We bought several odds and ends that we needed—lidded trash cans for the bathrooms, a soft topper for Lexa’s hard mattress, a new drying rack to pair with that European dryer downstairs. The availability of familiar stores where we can get lots of different needed items from one place (rather than going to several smaller stores) is a definite plus to being in a more developed country.

Today we had intended to go to church, but Jeff woke up with a scratchy throat. He made the executive decision to turn the alarm clock off and go back to sleep to try to get over this quickly. He has all day today to rest, and he can rest tomorrow too, if needed, since it’s Labor Day. We’re hoping to spend at least part of tomorrow walking around with our neighborhood sponsors, though, getting familiar with what’s near our house.

I did have a rocky first couple of days in Greece, thanks to jet lag and illness. I’m thankful that I know myself well enough that even then, in the midst of the “I hate everything” attitude, I recognized it for what it was and knew not to take it too seriously. The last few days have been much better.

I’m pretty confident that we’re going to love living in Greece.

Catching Up

We are almost 5 months into 2015 now … and I haven’t written a single blog post this year. Pathetic, I know. Rather than explaining and justifying and apologizing, let’s just catch up, shall we?

January started off with a bang—we’re in Kosovo: the New Year is celebrated with countless not-so-mini family fireworks displays. I continued enjoying our last true winter for the next few years, while Jeff continued looking forward to its end. (I can’t blame him; he has to drive in the snow and ice, whereas I stay home and enjoy the winter wonderland.)

Toward the end of January, we finally made it out to Gadime Cave, not too far from Prishtina. The Community Liaison Office organized a trip. We decided not to go with the large group—caves plus large groups equals lots of echoing noise, which would not be a great introduction to caves for our sensitive girl—but we did take advantage of the reservation to go a little early with a smaller group. It can be difficult at times to know when the cave will be open, so this opportunity was not to be missed. It was a great morning! The caves were much larger than we anticipated, and Alexa loved exploring them. She didn’t even notice that she also was learning, as she asked question after question about the cave, its features, and the life it contains. I found myself wishing I had an age-appropriate book about caves that we could have read before or after the trip. I’m hoping to correct that oversight and then find another fun cave to explore with her within the next few months.

We spent most of February in the United States. We traveled to Washington, DC, for some appointments and to see some friends. Unfortunately, we only saw about half of the friends we wanted to see—as we landed, my ears grew pillows where my ear drums should be; the next morning, my ears were better but my sinuses were awful, and it only got worse from there. I became so congested that my entire face hurt, even my teeth! After a week, I gave in and went to an urgent care doctor, because I was afraid of what would happen if I flew again 10 days later without treatment. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and a double ear infection. The antibiotics started helping immediately, so I felt much better for the rest of the trip, but we’d already missed out on visits with a few friends. We hope to see those friends this summer instead.

We arrived back in Kosovo on schedule in late February, but a week later, Alexa and I were back on a plane. There was a medical situation back home with a close family member, and my help was needed. Jeff was needed at work, especially since he’d just returned, so he remained in Kosovo. I am thankful that the medical situation was not as bad as it easily could have been, and my family member seems to have made almost a full recovery. Alexa and I spent our time in the United States helping with everyday tasks and transportation, but we also were able to do fun “America” things like celebrate my sister-in-law’s RN pinning, go to my niece’s football soccer games, and entertain random passersby with Alexa’s TCK questions and comments (for example, “Does everybody in America know the name of that store is Wal-Mart?” and “Why is there more than one McDonald’s?”). We returned to Kosovo just after Jeff’s birthday, at the end of March.

After our second return to Kosovo this year, I realized just how close we are to the end of our time here. I spent a few days getting over jet lag, then dove in and finally started preparing for packout. So far, we’ve rid ourselves of almost all of Alexa’s baby clothes, most of our “we severely overestimated how much Kleenex we’d use” consumables, and several bags of my ill-fitting or unflattering clothes. We’ve sold the elliptical machine for which we expect to have no room in Greece, and we’ve made arrangements to sell our second vehicle once we can get the paperwork in order. I’ve organized several full drawers of small items into labelled gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Now I need to start focusing heavily on my list-making, which has been sadly neglected due to all the travel earlier this year. We’re leaving in less than a month, and I’ve never been so far behind on my preparations.

At some point during and between all these other activities, we completed the Sonlight P4/5 preK curriculum. We ended up dropping a couple of workbooks that were too advanced for Alexa at the time, and there’s still one book in which she has shown no interest whatsoever. I left that book in South Carolina back in March, assuming we could try it again this summer and see if she’s interested then. She’s still working through her Mathematical Reasoning workbook, which she does not do every day—but when she does do it, she wants to keep going and often does 10 or more pages! That is quite the change from when I required her to do it daily, when she resisted and often did no more than 2 pages. We intend to continue working through this book over the summer until it’s done, as well as continuing to “play” Reading Eggs and Math Seeds. I’ll have to do another post about our plans for homeschool next year, as I never finished that series, and we’ve changed our plans for language arts. 

That’s for another time, though.

Right now I have some lists to make.

Albania: We Did It!

When I was a background investigator, my main job requirement was to gather information. Subject and source interviews, of course, were key components of my investigations. Unlike records checks, however, the people whom I interviewed did not have a standard, unchanging presentation of information—the information that they provided would vary with a multitude of factors: their mood that day, their goals for the interview, their sense of comfort and rapport with the investigator. I quickly learned to evaluate my source and change my self-presentation in order to increase the likelihood of the source feeling comfortable and unguarded with me. For example, when I interviewed a formerly successful businessman about his financial difficulties or a proud man about his moral failures, my best option was to be professional and detached, so there was no hint of judgment or pity; these men were not speaking with a woman, only with an unfeeling government drone little different from a computer or the forms on which they originally had disclosed their problems. Others in similar situations telegraphed that they felt more comfortable opening up to a sympathetic witness, so that is exactly what they got from me. When I interviewed a young soldier about his record of misbehavior while under the influence of alcohol, I smiled and laughed at his antics along with him, all the while discreetly taking copious notes and encouraging him to tell me more. When I left these interviews, I reverted to neutral—to myself, unchanged from my brief metamorphosis into whomever I needed to be for that interview.

One of my investigations involved a young man, a first generation American; his parents had immigrated to the United States from Albania. He was highly involved in an Albanian cultural center, and many of my source interviews were of others who were passionate about Albania, Albanian culture, and the welfare of the Albanian people. The day I interviewed the leader of the cultural center, I came into the room cautiously, ready to figure out whom I needed to be for this interview, but expecting that I would need to show some interest in Albania in order to help this man feel comfortable with me. I had extra time in my schedule that day, so I assumed that my best course of action would be to allow him to extol the virtues of Albania for several minutes before guiding the conversation to the subject of the interview. I was right in that assumption, but I was wrong in my assumption that I would be able to speak with this man about Albania and leave the room caring as little about it as I had when I walked in. He was so eloquent and descriptive in his praise of his beloved homeland—he made it sound like a fairytale land full of friendly people, stunning natural beauty, and rich historical sites that simply begged to be explored. I did eventually work the conversation around to my subject and got the information I needed, but I left that room with more than just information about my subject: I left it with a burning desire to visit Albania.

That night, I asked Jeff what the possibility was of us being able to travel to Albania one day. “Slim to none.” I sighed and set about my business of doing interviews, putting Albania out of my mind.

Yesterday, we visited Albania.

Part of the castle from which Skanderbeg defended Albania from the Ottomans

  

It was a simple day trip. A 3-hour drive from Prishtina to Kruje. A drive on a good highway through the stunning beauty of the mountains separating Kosovo and Albania. A short drive on a well-maintained highway through the plains, skirting the mountain range that rose majestically just a few miles away. A steep and winding drive on a narrow road from the plains high into the mountains. A walk along a rough cobblestone street lined with souvenir shops and continuing up a steep, slippery path to an ancient fortress. Lunch in the most picturesque of locations—under a canopy, with a view of the mountainside dropping away into plains, and the sweetest outdoor playground I’ve ever seen nestled safely in the courtyard of an ancient stone building that has been converted into a restaurant. Then a walk around a surprisingly small ancient fortress situated atop the hill, with stunning views in every direction. A short tour of a beautiful museum featuring a gorgeous terrace. A slow walk back down to the car, stopping in multiple shops and picking up some new treasures … and some ice cream. A drive back down the mountain—with some exploration of a few narrow, steep, dirt “roads” before we decided to ignore the GPS until we made our own way back to the main road down. Then a three hour drive back to Prishtina, where we capped off the day with an indulgent meal at the best Albanian restaurant we’ve ever visited: Tiffany’s, in case you’re ever in the area and want to taste Albanian food at its finest.

A depiction of Skanderbeg and his army

And the refrain running through my mind now, as I reflect on a day that seemed so unlikely all those years ago when I first asked Jeff if we could visit Albania one day? Well, my daughter is watching Dora the Explorer right now, and her song seems to fit the situation: “We did it!”

Our new treasures: a Kosovar woman and an Illyrian soldier