Have I got a story for you!

We'll start with 7 p.m. Thursday night. Nikki and I were bored out of our minds in Olympia (because once you've seen the ruins there you've done it all and there is NOTHING else to do) so we went to the internet cafe. Well, the co-owner guy, Tassos, was talking and talking to me because he's very friendly and was probably bored out of his mind too...and he asked us to come back around 9 for a drink. He didn't speak great English, but we could sort of communicate. I speak no Greek. Anyway, we went back and had a coffee and he asked us to come celebrate his sister's "happy birthday" at his house in Lalas (10 km away) with his family. I was like, "okay we are 2 random Americans that your sister doesn't know, but you want us to come to her birthday celebration with your family?" This seemed kind of strange to Nikki and I, but he was relentless. He was begging us to come and he said there would be lots of good food and Greek music and dancing and everything. Sounded pretty fun and we had nothing else to do, so we thought, what the heck, let's go. The only problem was that he seemed to be in love with me and would occasionally touch my arm or hair. It sort of weirded me out, but whatev. He was 28 by the way and his sister was 21. Okay, we don't even leave Olympia until a little past 10 and get to Lalas around 10:30 and there's like a dozen people at this huge table eating...so we just come in and they are extremely welcoming (though no one actually speaks a word of English) and sit us right down and start piling on the food. Everything was delicious and made by his mom and sisters. We had meat and potatoes and Greek potato salad and fresh bread and tzaziki and little fried things and baklava and all sorts of yummies! And I was seated right next to his 96 year old grama, yai-yai. I loved her. She was absolutely precious. Nikki and I just could not get over her! She was the tiniest thing ever and looked like mother Theresa or something. So adorable. She kept talking to me in Greek and she would laugh and grab onto my leg and hold onto it. It was so cute. We were instant friends. I think she was telling me to marry her grandson. He kind of said that she was saying something about him needing a wife and such....scary! Throughout the rest of the night he kept trying to put the moves on me, put his arm around me a couple of times, liked to touch my hair, etc. I made Nikki stick close by though. Then Nikki and I did lots of Greek dancing with the fam. Good times. We had a really fun time but we were tired and ready to go around 1 a.m. (yai yai and the kids were still up!!) but we didn't get to leave until 2. Greek people are crazy! They are night owls. Who eats dinner at 10???? Oh, and Nikki and I told his sister happy birthday, but she told us it wasn't her birthday but her name day celebration. She didn't speak much English either. We were thinking...okay, what does that mean? Wouldn't your name day be the day you got your name, aka birthday?? Who knows. Anyway it was fun. And toward the end of the evening his 70 year old father and this other guy were singing this Greek village song together, just at the dinner table. It was so great! Very "my big fat greek wedding." I liked to dance and say "Opah!"
Went to Ancient Corinth today which was cool but there was like no information on anything so we couldn't really know what we were looking at or what significance anything had. That was unfortunate. Tomorrow we'll go to Athens and meet our cruise group in the evening and leave out the next morning for the isles. We are pumped about that! Take care!