Sotiritsa, Greece

There is an internet cafe in my village! And what a wretched place it is. There are only ten terminals here, two don't function, and the other eight are usually taken by kids playing Counter Strike or sullen middle ages dudes hemorrhaging money on Party Poker. Everyone else is sitting around, smoking cigarettes.

Life has been rather idyllic here, at least since my sister got out of the hospital. She picked up something approximating traveler's diarrhea, but much worse. We thought that maybe it was amoebic dysentery, but I'm assuming they tested for that, and it came back negative. She was in the hospital in Larisa, about 40 km away from the Estate. It was an unfortunate experience, but it was interesting to see how Greek hospitals work. The verdict: not very well; it was inefficient, there was an appalling shortage of nurses, and nobody cares about you unless you know somebody. Luckily for my sister, my family has connections at that hospital: three of my cousins are doctors there, and pretty high ranking doctors too. At first, the junior doctors and the nurses were rude to my sister because she is obviously a foreigner, and they were set to shove her into a room with like 10 other patients. But then my cousin Costas, one of the doctors, came to visit with my parents and let's just say that there was a marked change in how my sister was treated after that. She was moved into the smallest room in the hospital, and once it was determined that her roommate (a decrepit 80 year old woman from some village in Epiros) was insane they were all set to move her into a room all by herself. Getting good service in Greece is definitely still about who you know.

After Helen was released, the usual Estate activities of swimming, watermelon-eating and general laziness began. They haven't stopped yet. Yesterday was the first day Greeks had to go back to work following their two-week summer vacation, so now the beach in front of the Estate is empty. Good. The less people the better. We now have an uncle of ours from Toronto staying with us for an undetermined period of time. Other various family members have passed through as well. One night there were about 15 people visiting, which was insane. It was my family (4 people), close family friends and their four kids, my sister's godfather and godmother and three members of the godmother's extended family, plus my cousin and his girlfriend. But usually it's a steady trickle, with just a few people visiting every night.

I have vague plans to hike up Mount Olympus. Vague, because once I get to the Estate it's very difficult to get me to go elsewhere.

Life is good.

I don't want to go back to school.