A Beautiful Saturday Afternoon

marianna was in town from cambridge for a wedding this week.  She stopped in as eleftheria and i woke up and stayed for a morning coffee.

humans have a very strange relationship with pigeons.  we mock them and curse them, yet we set up houses for them, raise and train them, and in china some are worth 100's of 1000's of dollars.  i never knew it was a thing in greece until earlier this year when i saw them being flown in our neighbourhood.  we saw them yesterday too.  really all i can think about is Ghost Dog.

up in ano poli, where we enjoy walking, the old city wall has been morphed into housing.  some of the houses are very old, some are newer, some are little more than corrugated iron shacks and others are well established.

 this is a beautiful church that we found on our walk.  the church of agias (saint) aikaterini is a unesco world heritage site from the 13th century, not too bad.

 the afternoon was absolutely wonderful

ano poli is one of our favorite places, the old is mixed with the new, the poor is mixed with the wealthy and the fashion is mixed with the function.

 this is a section of the wall much like the 3rd picture.  the mayor of this district is working hard to clear away the old housing and to make the wall into a historic site.  you can see one of the remaining houses in this section towards the upper right end of the wall.

 the evening was beautiful also

 the wall has become a very organic (i know that it is all man made) part of the city.

this is a door in the wall to a house on the other side.  on the door is a "beware of dog" sticker.  can you spot the beast at the top of the wall?

what a wonderful afternoon and evening.  we were out for about 3 hours walking.  fall is the best time of year no matter where you are.  

After The Weekend!

i walked into my classroom today, and behold, a mounted projector with iTV.  let the fun commence.  

so, we had another vaftisi this weekend; however, this time we were involved, super involved.  eleftheria and georgia served as co-godmothers.

 so, eleftheria got to work quickly

this is the bottle that she made to hold the oil.  the theme of the vaftisi was boats; thus, this is the light house for said boats.

here you can see the candle that she put together.  the candle is traditional, and eleftheria bought a plane white one.  she then when super awesome on it and created everything else you see here (she bought the wood boat that she attached to the candle).  she stitched the bow together out of the blue fish net stuff and some of the burlap from our wedding, then tide and pinned the blue twine and attached to boat securely.  a-m-a-z-i-n-g .  i told eleftheria she should get into the business, the candle alone, if we found one decorated like this, would cost around 90 euros.  

 beautiful day for some devil killing.

 all hands on deck. mom god-mothers and priest.

normally this is a rather traumatic experience where the baby cries the whole time, and i just repeat in my head that i will never do this; however, this time around it was casual, if not enjoyable.  the newly named evangelos treated it like bath-time.  he giggled and splashed the whole way through.

 the girls were gorgeous as always.

xristos and i capped of the day skating down the sidewalk out in the village.

it was another quick weekend.  my master's has started, i have 25 students signed up for forensics and 30 for mun which both start this week as well. parents' night on wednesday and a load of essays to grade round out my week.  woohoo!

Giving Names and Boxing Out The Devil

so, eleftheria and i spent a good bit of our weekend in and around churches and monasteries as we attended vaftisis (orthodox christening) on both saturday and sunday.

yianni was the god father (nono) for dimitri's baby, angelos. since yianni moved to germany about 3 years ago and i have had very little contact with him over the years so it was really great to see him, he was a good friend when he lived here.

angelos cried for the majority of the ceremony, but a brief flight settled him down after his christening.

the ceremony was very nice.  there was a bunch of support from school which was really cool.

the second vaftisi, on sunday, was a bit further away, near lake kilkis in northern greece.  i would like to go back because of the wildlife, the first i have really seen in greece other than in the sea.  there were birds everywhere, and while this is not a wild animal, i was about 5 seconds from scooping her up and stealing her from the monestery.

this one was for a set of twins (one of which is pictured here with her father), despoina and dimitra.  Their parents worked with eleftheria in the office where she had been employed most recently

the monestery was super old and really fun to see; however, with all the people it was hard to get clean shots, so i took these picks of the cross beams in the ceiling, and a plaque that was laid into the structure next to the enterance.

after dinner niko, dora, eleftheria and i all when up on the hillside for a coffee. it was a wonderful spot.  we sat under a huge oak and talked about things in the past, present and future.  niko and i have a lot in common; both similar life goals and outlooks, it was fun to see him (he works in london), and to put some things in perspective.    

Happy B-Day Dad!!!

Here's hoping that your love of life, fun and family continue for years to come.  Thank you for all of your love and support.  

We miss you, love you and can't wait to see you,

Ian, Eleftheria and Artemis  

Back To Work and The Economic Crisis

welp, the school year got off to a rip roarin' start on wednesday.  as usual i have kept up the family tradition of the first day shoot.  as mom is not working and keith is not teaching, i have to hold up the flame all by myself for a while.  no worries, i look good enough for everyone.  

as you know we are in the middle of a crisis over here. while ya'll are whippin' up another war, we didn't have a scale to measure out our mint for the homemade pesto that eleftheria wanted to make.  so, mr. inginuity to the rescue.  through my mastery of both simple machines and gravity, i cooked up a makeshift balance and got to work.  

a bit more than half a chocolate bar . . .

uh oh!  a lot less than a can of tuna . . .

ahhh, Okay.  just about perfect.  roughly equal to 100g of a 74% cacao chocolate bar (yeah, we have a lot of chocolate).

the pine-nuts you ask?  a bit over the 71g garlic powder shaker.

my measurements must have been spot on as we ended up with two beautiful vases of dark rich green pesto.  can't wait for pesto chicken pasta.

hope that you are all doing well and having fun.  the new blog is linked to the right and going strong if you are interested.  

love luck and lollipops

A Little Side Project

in my never ending quest to be a bit more organized, i have decided to start yet another blog.  i find that the format and ease of use makes them (blogs) perfect for consolidating information.  so, if you are interested check it out.

http://anotherblogforkillingandcreating.blogspot.gr/

Gogol Bordello YES!!!!

mainly this is for keith, but i believe that all can appreciate its beauty.

The End Of Summer And A New Day Begins

we spent some time out in silata after we returned to greece.  it was great to see everyone, and relax a bit more before the school year started.  

this is the best picture of the girls that i have, eleftheria has been struggling to keep her eyes open for pictures lately, but that's alright, they all look cute with their flowers.

the girls went to town on eleftheria's mane with the flowers that they picked from mom's garden.

no one gave me any flowers.

just yesterday it was eleftheria's b-day.  so, we decided to not be home all day.  we left the house and never looked back. basically we walked the length of the city, as the weather was beautiful and neither of us had been around much since our return.  if you haven't visited yet, the paralia is a walkway that runs next to the sea with a number of gardens running along it.  this is my favorite, with lily pads, frogs, coy and dragonflies like the red one below.

it was just a wonderful day, absolutely.

we ended up sitting for dinner at one of our favorite place.  a great salad and some risotto made for a wonderful meal.

perhaps the best new bars in town, it lies in the middle of one of the main city park, open air with good music. dora came down to meet us for a drink.

I am pretty psyched about how these two pictures turned out,  11 o'clock at night, completely open shutter and no tripod.

our night ended perfectly.  the old dock has been turned into a pretty hip place to hang out, and it was absolutely packed, but eleftheria and i found the very corner of the pier to sit on, busted out our picnic blanket, profiterol (the chocolate dessert) and candle lighting supplies.  it was such a wonderful day, absolutely one of the best.  we are hoping that as the years change, that we continue to find ourselves together and happy.

on a side note, these two seem to have taken up housing outside the main door of our apartment building. pretty fun to have some urban geckos.  these two belong to the species known as  mediterranean house geckos (hemidactylus turcicus)