It’s Sunday (κυριακή) today. I’ve been here for a week. I guess you could say I’ve fallen into a routine – get up, exercise, breakfast, beach, lunch, siesta, work (check out my new office, above), coffee break, walk, study, relax…… However, being out in the wilds of Μάνη, there’s not much to distinguish the days from the weekends.
The only thing to mark my day today was the sound of the church bells, and the wailing of the local priest at 7 in the morning. The combination of the tinny Tannoy and the unfamiliar eastern-tinged melodies sounds more like a Muslim call to prayer, than anything you’ll hear in a Christian service back in the UK.
So, apart from a slightly cloudy afternoon, Sunday passed just like the rest of the week. Only one moment of drama occurred at sunset, when a bat managed to find it’s way into my bedroom. I’m sorry, but my notions of bats are bloodsucking creatures from the pit of hell, so T was not very impressed by my valiant ( aka cowardly) efforts to shoo it back out into the twilight.
Before I give you my words of the day, I’d like to add one of my favourite colloquialisms that all Greeks use. It’s a kind of a catch all word for “oops”, “whoooahhh”, “hang on”, you get the idea. Anyway the phrase is:
- ώπα – prounounced “oopa”
- φρέσκο – fresh – (fres-ko)
- καλύτερο – better – (kal-i-tero)
- χειρότερο – worse – (he-rot-ero)
- μαγειρεύω – I cook – (mag-i-revo)
- κρέας – meat – (kray-as)
- περπατάω – I walk – (pair-pa-tao)