Stop the Sandwich

I'm a little sleepy still and I was sick of serious titles, so I decided to use my Santorini catch phrase for the name of this one.

Basically, Andreas, the front desk guy at the hostel I'm staying at was speaking to me in 5 or 6 of the different languages he's picked up (he's Albanian by descent, but has been a Greek citizen for 17 years) and one mixed phrase he used sounds exactly like "Stop" in French and "The Sandwich" in Spanish. I'm sure that's not what he meant but I laugh at him all the time, since those are 2 words I HAVE picked up on this trip (when you don't eat shellfish or fish, Bocadillas/Sandwiches are one of the safest bets in Spain).

In any case, my past few days in a nutshell:

Checked out of the cute room Sunday morning after 12 glorious hours of straight sleep. I fell asleep to "The Bachelor" with Chris O'Donnell (amazingly, I had never seen it, and was not surprised why I hadn't, since it's not the greatest movie I've ever seen) and woke up to some strange guy frozen on my screen.

Woke up to church bells (oh no! Biassa, Italy all over again!), and decided it was time to move on to someplace a little more, uhh, social, so I walked over to a hostel nearby and got a room there.

Unfortunately, only in Santorini is a hostel actually more expensive than a small private room, but I get breakfast, a pool and conversation out of the deal so I can't really fault it.

Met a few girls that were staying in my room -- 2 from Australia, 1 from Calgary (Bula) and one from Chicago (Cara), and went out for breakfast with them.

Afterwards, my 2 fellow North Americans and I went for frappes (yeah, I do drink coffee now and again, again. Most notably super potent espressos before the club.) and then I came back to the hostel to hang out with Andreas and Angela (the Bulgarian chambermaid).

Made myself a Calimocho from the cheap red from Fira's major supermarket (would have made Jasper's main supermarket crack up into hysterics) and the Coke Zero the girls in the room left for me and headed to Kamari Beach with Andreas and Angela for a late afternoon swim. Grabbed some gyros and caught the bus back to Fira, where I met up with Bula and Cara again, where we chatted and I discovered Cara has, literally, the coolest job ever.

She is the American contestant on an online reality TV show called "The Gap Year" where 6 young people from the 5 English speaking areas of the world (Canada, Ireland, USA, New Zealand, Australia and the UK) travel around the world for 6 months competing in challenges and seeing places they'd formerly only dreamed of seeing. From what I can gather, they don't really win anything at the end (although sponsorship deals seem to score them some pretty sweet SWAG), but what an experience.

I have decided I must become the most interesting person possible in the next year in the off chance that this show becomes a HUGE HIT and I can be the Canadian representative next year.

Went out clubbing with Andreas on Sunday night, which was probably ill-advised since I had been up since 6 that morning and he's really into giving neck rubs when you look sad. That left me in an almost comatose state, slumped over my Malibu and Pineapple Juice, and we left shortly before 3 in the morning (a short night when you only leave at 1).

Yesterday I had a pretty relaxed day in. Went swimming in the pool, sunbathed, read my book, picked up more booze, played with Andreas' kitten (cutest kitten in the world, FYI) and then went with Andreas and an Australian girl named Siobhan to Kamari again for the afternoon.

Went out for dinner, had some AWESOME moussaka and retsina and have made plans to go horseback riding today with Siobhan.

I'm going to miss Santorini like crazy. If you ever have the opportunity to come here, please do. If you have the opportunity to move here and work for the summer, I will literally kill you if you turn it down. Seriously. My envy would asphyxiate you.