Days in Greece

Language learning update: 

The other day I meant to ask the man at the "health food" store where his wife was. 

Instead, I asked him where MY wife was. 

He lost it. 

And here is a picture of what we are working with....

The right side is the Albanian equivalent of "woman" and "women." 

This should include the possessive English forms as well...but still...

Shoot me. 

I also went to coffee with two girls in my bible study who barely speak English. It was a great test of my Albanian speaking skills. At one point I was trying to say a word in Albanian but I said it so poorly they thought I was speaking English. When they realized what I had actually said they busted up laughing...the whole hour was pretty humbling. 

This week has been very full which is making the end of the pregnancy fly by. Saturday marked a month until Taliah's due date! 

On Wednesday Melodie and I took the babies to Greece to get their vaccinations.

Do you wish you could go to Greece for your baby's vaccinations? 

Let me enlighten you a bit...

***Let me preface this by saying that I am EXTREMELY thankful that we can go somewhere relatively close for this kind of health care, and that I realize there are many worse things than this kind of trip. I am slightly exaggerating in this account...:) 

I am not going to a Greek island. The doctor's office is not on the beach. Kastoria is not a "tourist" town. 

I wake up Shiloh early so we can get a good start. Shiloh DOES not like being woken up...don't know where she gets that :) 

It is a little over a 2 hour drive if everything goes smoothly at the border. You lose an hour because Greece is an hour behind Albania. All the little stores and offices are also closed from 1-5 pm so we have to get everything done in the morning. Greeks know how to nap! 

In the winter there are usually few problems at the border. But, we have waited there for 3+ hours more than once. 

The doctor's "office" is in the same room she sees the kids in. So there are stacks of papers and books and then a medical bed adorned with toys. I'm always wondering if a sick kid was just holding the plastic green dinosaur that Shiloh is in love with. 

The doctor is a sweet lady who speaks "ok" English. But she's not very calm...Shiloh is not highly fond of her. Especially when she rattles toys in her face and sticks the cold stethoscope on her chest. Or when she shoves one of those tongue sticks (what are those called?) in her mouth to check her teeth. 

She weighs and measures Shiloh while I try to convert the kilo's and cm into pounds and inches. I could be wrong but it seems as though Shiloh is in the 95% for both. I don't know how that happened. 

I then try to understand which shots Shiloh is supposed to get. The schedule is different than the American one, and the Greek one seems to be changing all the time. The names are different as well as the dosages. 

She gets her shots and I hold my screaming 22 lb. chunk while the doctor writes up a Greek receipt, crossing out our names 6 times trying to spell it right. 

Once the babies are all vaccinated, our trip to Kastoria has just begun. 

There are some stores there that have grocery items we can only get in Greece. 

There is basically one parking lot for the main part of town so we lug the babies around from store to store collecting random items like brown rice and yummy cheese. 

There are no drive throughs so we sit down and try to eat while Shiloh runs around dropping pita bread on the dirty floor and then picks it up and eats it before my 9 month pregnant self can stop her. 

By this time Shiloh is late for her nap and has gone into what can be called "spazz mode." 

Then we go to last store where I always get chicken and where you have to bag your own groceries. 

Shiloh has normally lost it by this point. 

This particular time I had Shiloh sitting (wailing) in the parking lot while I bagged groceries. I pulled one of the whole chickens I had bought out of the cart and realized I was actually touching the bare chicken wing. The plastic wrap had come undone. 

This is like my worst nightmare. I am deathly afraid of raw chicken.Don't ask me why. It's like a weird thing I have. 

I spray the counters and the sink down with antibacterial spray and run boiling hot water over everything every time I cook chicken. 

Cory always tells me he's never met anyone who's gotten salmonella poisoning...I tell him he should be thankful that it won't be us that gets salmonella poisoning. 

When my brother Kyle was here he ragged on me for buying chicken in Greece and told me I should adapt to the culture and start killing and plucking my own chickens. 

NOT A CHANCE. 

So I stock up every time we go to Greece. Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy because of the 40 chicken breasts I have in my cart. 

I was going to take the unpackaged chicken back in and try to get a new one but I couldn't carry Shiloh and the chicken in without touching the chicken. 

My plan was to wait until Melodie got out and then leave Shiloh in the car while I took the chicken back in. 

I set the chicken on the curb by the car and ran back to put the cart away and check for something else in the store. 

When I came out a few minutes later, there were 10 pigeons and a crow picking at the raw chicken. 

Shiloh nearly leapt out of my arms "oooooohhhhhinnngg" very loudly at her newfound friends. She's obsessed with animals of any kind. 

Now I definitely was not going to return the chicken. 

I gagged and buckled Shiloh into the car. 

I grabbed some wipes, shooed the pigeons away and carried the mutilated chicken to the trash bins. 

I'm pretty sure I accidentally dropped it in the recycling one. 

Yum. 

We then begin our drive home. 

By this time Shiloh was too tired to sleep and spent the first 30 minutes letting me know how unhappy she was about how her day had gone...poor baby. 

We get home just before dark and unload our groceries trying to keep the babies asleep as long as possible 

So, when I think of Greece, I think of shots and chicken and meltdowns in the grocery store :)