Touring Greece!

Sunday: What an emotional day!! Before we left Spartan, we went to the main square to look at a statue that my grandpa (my mom’s adoptive dad from Utah) sculpted. It was neat to see something my grandpa did here in Greece.

We then went to the village of where my mom grew up (Geraki) before she was adopted into the U.S. at the age of 11. So many relatives (distance and close). Many tears and many hugs & kisses!

We stayed at my mom’s cousin’s house and they walked us around town. We went to my mom’s house…

It was so neat to see where my mom lived and to hear some of the stories of her childhood. We found out that she had to sleep outside on the “deck” with her other siblings because inside was too small. We saw where my mom went to school…

After all the visiting and walking around Geraki, we headed back to Athens.

“This is from the babysitters… We ate cereal and cleaned and watched a movie and read stories and store lunch and made cupcakes (Kailey brought) for the neighbors and the girls taped LoTS of their Halloween candy on papers to give away! They did a good job helping clean, and we were thrilled to get up at 5:45am! Haha The girls painted for a while and we only had a few timeouts! We kept the cat out most of the time…their grandma came about 2 and we are all leaving now! Have fun in Greece! (We played frozen matching game lots too and also my 3rd wet the bed so we cleaned her mattress and washed her sheets and all).”

Monday: I woke up at 6 a.m. to go out for a 10 mile run. It was still so dark. I decided to run on the wonderful treadmill here in Greece… I really am a chicken when it comes to running by myself in a place I don’t know. So I ran 60 minutes on the treadmill (which it shows that I ran 13.3 miles in that time:) )… Then I went outside for 11 minutes as a cool down. It was actually a pretty good run. Total time was 1:11.11… And I have no clue how far I went…

We took the metro into the middle of the city to go see some ruins, to shop and of course… To eat!

We went to the Acropolis to see the ruins… Very beautiful and so much fun. It was also fun watching all the marathoners hiking up the trail… They looked sore. It was fun talking with many of them and hearing how they did! I found out today that the Athens marathon was yesterday. It was bitter/sweet finding out that I was here in Greece and I missed running the marathon. 1st it was on a Sunday and 2nd, my race is in 4 weeks. As we were standing in line waiting to buy tickets for the acropolis a few older gentlemen from Holland asked us why we didn’t run the race… We told them we didn’t know about it, we were in a different city and that it was on a Sunday (and I have never ran on a Sunday)… One asked jokingly, “Are you Mormon?”… I laughed and said why yes we are. 🙂 Anyway… We had fun sightseeing!

We walked up and down the streets with many food vendors, shops neighborhoods (with lots of graffiti & squatter houses).

We are traveling back on the metro… I’m tired and I’m ready to come home. I miss my kids and Corom. I was able to talk with them earlier and it was great. My sisters (well 2) have been making fun of me for blogging on my way back but I don’t care… My kids and Corom like reading this! 😉 I’ve only been able to talk with them once since I’ve been in Greece because of the difficulty of cell phone issues. But as we were sitting on the metro, We realized we missed our stop… 3 stops after. Well it was more walking for us! 🙂
Pictures I forgot to post… Our great grandpa and grandma & our great great grandparents… Many other relatives…