Conference and Candids

Since Rusty was out of town over the weekend, we watched general conference a little late. For those of you who don't know, during general conference weekend, members of the church gather throughout the world to watch and listen to church leaders who have prepared talks of inspiration and instruction. I was so excited for conference. The closest LDS church we have is in Athens, which is two hours away from us. Watching conference made me feel at home, while at the same time, reminded me how lucky we are that conference is so accessible in places all over the world. 

Rusty and I decided we needed to continue our tradition (and most all Mormons' tradition) of making breakfast before watching conference. They don't really have breakfast food here in Greece, not even in restaurants, which is killing us! Greek people don't eat breakfast because they only drink coffee in the mornings, and then continue drinking it the entire day, but that's beside the point. Rusty and I are both breakfast lovers. Just writing this right now is making me wish I had a big plate of pancakes with thick maple syrup! So we set out looking for breakfast food. The first grocery store that we went to was pretty small. We looked around for the baking isle, in hopes of finding stuff to make pancakes, but no luck! 

We moved on to a bigger grocery store. We realized we could make french toast because all we needed was bread, eggs, cinnamon, and syrup. We found the bread, eggs, and cinnamon and hoped we could find syrup. We had never seen syrup here, but sure enough, we found some! It was a small glass bottle, about a quarter of the size of the syrup bottle I usually buy and it cost 7 euros. It was expensive, but we knew it would be worth it. We got home, made our french toast, and watched conference! The syrup was really thin, and not as sweet as I would like it, but I wasn't complaining because I was just happy to have syrup! 

The next day we went up to the center to meet Mike, the back-up setter from Greece for lunch. We stopped for a few photo ops on the way. I learned that Rusty enjoys being the "man behind the cam". He told me when he was little he and his friends would make James Bond movies and he was always the one filming. This cracked me up because I could just picture it! After all of our candid aka posed pictures/cheesy model shots we met up with Mike and went to a gyro place. After, we went to a coffee shop in the middle of the center. It was about 2pm and the place was packed. The coffee shops here are packed during pretty much all hours of the day. A spot out on the patio opened up, so we squeezed in. We chatted for a while then headed home.

Lots of cats and dogs roam the streets here. I have noticed that dogs make certain areas their home. There is a big black dog who is always in the center and a white and brown dog who is always near one of the places we eat. We have a neighborhood dog named Boobays, funny name I know, but everyone around here knows him because he stays in our neighborhood. One rainy night, I watched as the owner of a teeny store (actually more like a shack with cheap drinks and snacks), which is right across the street from us, kicked Boobays out for like 20 minutes straight. I actually got scared the owner was going to get so mad he would hurt him, so I took a cookie, went down stairs, and tried to lure him in...but no luck! Rusty assured me he would be okay haha.  The other night, Jay, Mike from Holland, Rusty, and I went out to get some dinner. On the way back, a cute black puppy came up to us, wagging it's little tail, and followed us all the way to our apartment. It even came up the stairs. It was so sad kicking it out and then closing the door as it starred in with it's innocent little eyes. I wanted to keep it so bad, but with traveling, we can't really have a dog, plus who knows if it was even healthy. But, one day...one day.