Cretan Storms A'brewin

Stormy seas in Hania for the last week

the view from our balcony

the morning after

locked up in our cave,
waiting out the storm

cold, jobless and happy

.

We woke up yesterday to snow. The heater in our room has been waging a valiant but loosing battle against the cold for the last few days. Greece was supposed to be warm. We are freezing. There is an upside though...We live right on the sea inside an old Venician fort and as we look out we can see the waves pounding the harbor and the coastline. When I came to Greece last time I only saw the Mediterranean in a calm and placid state. The stories of ship wrecks and violent storms in the Bible, like the type that shipwrecked Paul, seemed pretty unimaginable. I can see now why the sailors should have listened to Paul (Acts 27:21).

The TEFL course ended about a week ago. Laura and I have not found jobs yet. It has been impossible finding work in Greece at this time of year without the EU paperwork. We do have some solid leads elsewhere though. There is an American school in Florence, Italy, that hires Americans. We will be interviewing with them this week. They are looking for two teachers to fill six month positions. It would be a good situation for us as we could get our EU work permits there and then try to return to Greece with the right paperwork and some experience in time for the main hiring season. We are also looking in other parts of the world. We have job offers in Taiwan and some contacts in Korea. There are a lot of opportunities out there... though unfortunately none of them are in Greece.

On a different note, Laura and I have now been married for exactly one year... Its been a great year.

On one of our daily walks we stumbled upon
a secret open door that led into the heart of the
fortress.. we walked in and here is what we found...

The fort (built in the 1200's) was used
by the Nazis to house Cretan prisoners
(including our landlord's father) during
world war two. This is a picture of one of
the many holding cells. The door led
directly into the back of one of these cells.

A night out

Our TEFL course finished last Thursday. Since then it's been raining and storming in Hania. Laura and I have been cooped up in our little cave driving each other nuts. Our only friend left for good this morning with her boyfriend Niko. Last night we all went out to a restaurant on the harbor. It was dark and storming. We enjoyed watching the violently churning harbor and the spray of the waves that crashed against the sea wall as we sat on a covered patio eating our dinner about ten feet away. Halfway through dinner, the sea vomited up a dead chicken and deposited it about five feet away from us. At least that's what Niko and I thought. Laura and Despina thought it was a kitten carcass. It was hard to tell on such a dark and rainy night. Either way we were all disgusted (Niko almost threw up) and nobody touched their food for the next fifteen minuets until the wind proved us all wrong. It was a cleverly disguised plastic bag. With much relief we returned to our dinner of grilled octopus and calamari, sprinkled with olive oil, parsley and lemon.

overlooking Xania at night

Despina and Niko

Laura, Jon, Despina, Niko

Despina and Laura
dancing in a local taverna