Theres a clown outside my office….

Ah, the joys of being in Greece. Like for example: waking up to find that your Sunday morning is over-run by millions of little 5 year olds excited about Christmas! This weekend Calvin and I on duty, and our director has a habit of not telling us when there are huge parties in the multi-purpose room in the dorm. Anyways as I gaze out of my office, I see two clowns (one with a polka-dotted hat), at least 30 small Christmas trees, and hear a dj blasting Christmas music.

Speaking of Christmas, I have never seen a town put up SO many Christmas decorations. Its like someone threw-up Christmas all over Thessaloniki. Practically EVERY store has Christmas decorations…to retaliate, I finally went to Kaballah Shabbat at temple (I’d been trying to go back since the first time but kept finding excuses not to go…). It was very lively, there were 50 American kids doing a “gap year” in between high school and college…they lived in Jerusalem, studying Torah and then visiting Jewish communities around the area. I thought that sounded pretty cool. I can’t imagine being 18 and living abroad for a year… I also talked with some members of the congregation, who are very nice, but I still feel a little…nervous around them. They keep asking me if I will be staying in Greece longer than a year…Im pretty sure they want to me stay here so I can have babies and make the Jewish community bigger (its shrinking). Its very interesting to think about a community surviving…I’ve never felt like part of my culture was going to die off…

And speaking of holidays, Thanksgiving here went well. I thought I might be homesick, but actually our Thanksgiving dinner was really fancy. Every year lots of faculty, alums and students come and we have a party. There was an art show and liquors and small truffles before dinner. It was a really fancy affair too…everyone had suits and ties and dressed on! Just think Turkey twice in one week (well one the country and one the food…)

So work this weekend has gone pretty well. I feel like I’ve finally relaxed into hanging out with the kids (I definitely felt timid at first). Last night we tried to play hide and go seek…it was me and two seventh graders. I kinda made two high schools play, and to retaliate they hid in a really good spot for an hour and I couldn’t find them…we had to stop playing because I couldn’t find them! I still have no idea where they were…

Well, back to working on my med school application in all this craziness….
~allie