Pre-Christmas Activities!

Oh how I love December! Who doesn't love December, right?! With Christmas lights blinking from the balconies of apartments and Christmas music playing in the stores, I was ready for operation dominate Greek Christmas to begin! So first things first...decorating our apartment! We went to our favorite store, Jumbo, and bought a few cheap decorations. I have a hard time buying things for our apartment since we will just be leaving them behind...it feels like we're just throwing away the money we spend, but Christmas decorations were a must! We didn't get much, but it definitely spruced up our apartment. And listening to Christmas music while putting up Christmas decor was just what I needed to kick off the month. I knew it would be hard getting through my first Christmas season without my family, so I was determined to do everything I could to make it like Christmas at home, which meant the next thing on our Christmas check list was sugar cookies!

        Decorating....

Our little table-top Christmas tree

Hooo, Hooo, Hooo

My plan was to make tons of sugar cookies and take a plate to everyone we know, but after making a few batches my determination started to dwindle haha.  We decorated some of the ones I had made and then set out to deliver them. We took around a tray of cookies and let our friends pick out a cookie instead of giving them a whole plate haha. We stopped by Eyenet Cafe, Proton- the grocery store across the street, the little nearby snack stand, and Village Pizza. We also gave some to a homeless man and his son, which made me want to make more and give them out to all the little gyspy kids around here, but that didn't happen either. Later that night, Olga from Eyenet gave me a bowl full of melomakarona, which are Greek Christmas cookies that we love! So we brought down more sugar cookies to Eyenet, so all of the employees could get one.

        Cookie Making...

Rusty started singing Christmas carols while decorating the cookies...

And kept singing until we left to deliver them

        Christmas Festival...(apologies in advance, there are a lot of pics!)

One day we saw all these people dressed up in Christmas costumes, including some sort of bright orange squirrel, which I am not exactly sure how it relates to Christmas, but hey, I liked it. They were advertising a Christmas Festival here in Lamia. There was even a free train that picks up in the center and drops you off at the festival. Of course Rusty and I made plans to go, despite hearing that it was for kids.

The festival was right across the street from the volleyball gym, so every time I came or left a volleyball game, I could hear Christmas music blasting. My excitement kept building and building. So a couple nights before Christmas we went up to the center looking for the little train. Luckily, there was a sign posted, which listed the pick up times. We had a kid translate the sign for us and the train happened to be coming in about 10 minutes! The train arrived so we hopped on and off we went, chugging along!

The festival far exceeded my expectations. I loved every second of it! There were vendors selling food and Christmas trinkets in miniature wood houses, the kind I picture at German Christmas markets, a carnival which had a Santa roller coaster, an ice skating rink, miniature horse rides- which actually made me gasp with excitement...what's cuter than seeing a little kid riding on a miniature horse?! We visited the different sections of the festival; the vendors, the petting zoo, the carnival,  the nativity display, two huge warehouses that were filled with more activities, and even met Santa! 

As you can tell, this donkey was not the least bit camera shy

I think part of the reason I loved the fair so much was that it was the first time it felt like Christmas. Of course not having family around is different, but I also miss snow. I miss walking out my front door and seeing beautiful snow-capped mountains...I was definitely dreaming of a white Christmas. It's funny, since I grew up in California, where it almost never snowed for Christmas, you would think I wouldn't miss it so much. But the few years my parents have been in Utah was all I needed to realize snow is meant for Christmas. I told Rusty even if we live somewhere in the future, where it doesn't snow, we will have to visit a cabin during Christmas time...but I say a lot of things about our future house/life and then I realize my Pinterest life may not be reality haha.

Does this remind you of anything.?..our wedding!

This is how he lets me know I've made him take too many pics...

Well I am glad we got our Christmas activities in because next up is Christmas! (I know, I'm a little behind, but the Christmas Day post will be coming soon!) I hope everyone had a merry Christmas!!

Thessaloniki Day 2

While in Thessaloniki I was able to meet up with my friend Melanie, who I have know since Elementary School! We went to lunch with her and and her husband Mark, who plays basketball here in Greece. We ate at TGI Fridays, which is right outside of a mall, so after lunch we window shopped for a little bit. It was great to see a familiar face and to catch up since we hadn't seen each other since high school. We said our goodbyes and then Rusty and I headed to the center. Finding the right bus to get there was a little difficult, but luckily we can always find someone who speaks English and can help us.

We walked around the main part of town for a little while. It started getting late, so we decided we better get back to Vicky's to pick up our suitcases, so we wouldn't miss the train to Lamia. We wanted to catch the 9pm train, so we wouldn't have to wait for the last one at 11pm. We were cutting it very close, but decided it was worth a try. Vicky called a taxi service, which was at the apartment within 5 minutes. We ran down, loaded up our bags, and told the driver we needed to make it to the train station before the 9 o'clock train left. I felt like I was in the movie Taxi, except our driver wasn't Queen Latifah and well, he actually didn't even drive that crazy, but still haha. We made it to the train station with a couple minutes to spare! We met up with Nikitas, who showed us to the train. 

The start of something great...Tsoureki from Terkenlis! Best bread ever!

The National Theater of Northern Greece

The train ride was 100 times better than the bus we took from Athens...I don't know why we took a bus instead of the train, but we will never make that mistake again! The train was comfortable and quiet...except for one drunk guy who actually ended up being "the nicest drunk person ever" as Rusty likes to say. He stood up, so out of it, and was trying to grab Rusty's suitcase, which was placed in the overhead shelf right above our seats. Rusty had to tell him the bag was his a few times, but when the guy finally realized, he apologized about 10 times haha. Then he proceeded to drunkinly do squats in the aisle, each time, coming dangerously close to falling on his face haha.

We made it back to Lamia where Costas, another teammate, was waiting to pick us all up. He took us to the gym, where we had left our cars. Rusty and I got in our little green Fiat Punto, tired and happy and headed home.