You asked for Go Girl Post- Here's One Better

Be forewarned, this is not going to be my most ladylike blog post. But this is life in Greece. Sorry! :)

When I first mentioned this blog on my Facebook, a few of you asked for a post dedicated solely to the "Go Girl" Yiayia bought me for the trip. For those of you who don't know what a Go Girl is, here: http://www.go-girl.com/ Educate yourself. Pretty funny, yeah? Well it's infinitely more embarrassing (but maybe somewhat comical to the outside observer) to get caught without it in one of those non-existent bathroom situations that we don't have to deal with in America, but is apparently not that uncommon in rural Greece.

One of Yiayia's somehow relatives drove us to Makrakomi yesterday, and from there we all took a trip up to Rendina. The trip up the mountain that Yiayia's cousin (?) said should take an hour definitely took at least two. We stopped about ten times on the way up so Yiayia could umm... "take in the scenery" (aka she has a bit of motion sickness and those winding mountain roads did nothing good for her) By the time we FINALLY made it to Rendina, I'd had to pee for approximately the entire two hour trip.

Since Rendina is way up in the mountains, the townspeople really only live there during the summer months, and when winter draws closer they flee to Athens and other larger cities and towns. So we arrived in an almost completely abandoned town, and guess what? No townspeople means no accessible bathrooms. Awesome. Since I don't speak much Greek, I informed Yiayia of my situation and she relayed it to one of her barely English-speaking cousins, who dug in her purse and came up with a folded tissue. She handed it to me and gestured vaguely some wide concrete steps leading down to a little stream, not even thirty feet from where my grandmother's cousin and his wife stood by the car. Um...what? I looked at her, befuddled, until she told me to follow her down there. So I did. Apparently Greeks are not as "pee shy" as Americans, because she just pulls her pants down and squats and you know...starts to go. She told me to do the same, but I just stood there shocked and frozen in place. All I could think of as I looked at the back of the house that we were clearly visible from, was to hope the family who lived in that house had indeed left for the winter. Obviously I couldn't do anything in front of her, but after she went back up to the car zZzZzZzZz...

Oh, sorry. Must have dozed off. Where was I? Oh that's right, I was at the part where I absolutely didn't use the restroom outside in the beautiful little mountain town my great-grandfather came from. Anyways. Of course by the time my grandmother had to use the restroom, we'd found the one open business in the whole dang town, which of course had an inside toilet. Experiences, experiences..

Anyways, it's much colder here than I thought it would be. I'm ashamed to say that my mom WAS right and despite insisting to her that it wasn't going to be that cold and I wouldn't need a heavy jacket, I'm really wishing I had one right now! But that's a good excuse to go shopping! :) Speaking of, probably time to do a little bit of that. Later gators.

-Aliki