Beach Time

What a day.

Greece is funny. The whole nation is in turmoil financially, their tourism is at an all time low, and they have planned daily metro, bus, and tram strikes. What strikes me as odd about the latter is that people will eventually just plan around these pre-planned strikes until they are no longer a nuisance. We as travelers however, are caught a little off guard by these demonstrations. Yesterday, we already knew we couldn't use the metro, and it wasn't a problem because we stayed close to the hostel. Today though, we wanted to head to Kalamaki beach, suggested by one of the night desk people at our hostel. It was only two Euros to ride the metro and the tram to get there, and was to take about thirty minutes.

So this morning we woke up and grabbed some bread from breakfast and headed to the metro station. According to the man at the front desk, the strike was to begin at 11am and to end at 4pm. This was fine because we figured we would get to the beach around 11am and then be the first ones on the tram at 4pm. We arrived at the very crowded beach without incident, and spent the day in the water and in the sand.

I met some kids in the water that were having a really hard time swimming. I guess its instinct from having worked as a swim instructer for so long, but I motioned them over and asked if they spoke English. In very broken replies, they said yes, and I proceeded to give them a few pointers. It turns out, they were young kids from Afgahanistan. After the mini lesson, one of them thanked me again and we began to talk about his life in Afgahanistan. He was sixteen, the oldest of three children, and had already had a tougher life than I could have ever imagined.

I don't know how they managed to travel to Greece, or why they were even there, but we started to talk about the war and about America's presence in their country. The young kid was very happy to learn that I was American, and when a helicopter flew over the water pointed and said America! America! and began to tell me a little about his life.

His mother was killed several months ago by the Taliban, and he, at sixteen, has taken over the little food shop his family owned and now runs it alone in a city called Kabul. It's amazing how I have seen and heard about the war and the Taliban and all that's going on much of my adult life, but meeting someone so innocent and sad and that he had been truly affected by everything I've grown up watching on the news really broke my heart. I was glad that he was able to have some vacation time and just enjoy being a kid.

Right at four, we caught the tram back into Athens and in a round-a-bout way after some confusion, an unannounced metro strike, and a twenty minute walk, here I am back at the Hostel, ready to relax and get some sleep.

Tomorrow we head out to Delphi for an all day tour and will be gone all day. I will be buying internet tomorrow night to update ya'll on how it went.
I miss everyone

Kate

PS. no pics today...the picture above is of me in Poros