Third Morning In Athens

I had a lovely half-hour interlude with Georgia and Costa this morning; they came to see me and get some shopping done with Voula. It was really nice to see them – they're so obviously pleased to see me. I realized last night that I'm having trouble being taken care of here – I never really had grandparents; I'm not good at being babied. In Greece, where there is something like 1.5 grandchild per set of four grandparents, grandkids are made much of, apparently.

At any rate, I realized that I'm starving for some intellectual conversation – Costa and Georgia are very engaging, very educated. It's much more what I'm used to in Bosotn. The people we hang out with in Boston are typically so smart they don't even need to show it. I think I hadn't realized what an impact on our quality of life that is. It makes me think that if we live elsewhere, we should take into account education levels; I just sort of immediately perked up this morning to get to talk language, economics, stuff like that.

So they made the hard push that we should come visit them, and I think we should. To be clear, Athens is still a pit in my mind, it's truly horrible. But, I think I could understand how we'd spend a good amount of time on the island with our kids in a few years. Watching Papou makes me realize there isn't a lot of time left; I think Chelsea and I should probably decide if we're going to regularly come to Greece with our kids, or just once or twice before Papou dies.

Georgia said in Greece they call the last child the "Benjamin". I love it, it's so cute. I told her in America we say "youngest daughter." I guess "Baby" is the more common term. In any event, come on Vess Baby 3! We're waiting for you.

I got a little video with Costa and Georgia. He told me if I came for six months he would speak English perfectly. I told him my Greek would be much better as well. It's weirdly nice to be liked just because I'm family – it's never really been my situation.