Hey y'all!

I haven't written in so long and I feel so discombobulated. Where to begin?? I guess for starters, I'm back in California after a whirlwind trip across the world. I left carolyn and the jenkins at 8am british time and got to LA 7pm California time. Sooo 19 hours total? something like that. Whatever the case, my mumsie picked me up, got me dinner from chronic tacos, and drove me to the oceanside beach house to see jason, my dad, and jose :) it was so good to see everyone! Right now everything feels like a dream. Everything... from london to greece, back to london and then home again. It's like i got in a time capsule when i boarded the plane 6 weeks ago. Suddenly i've been whipped halfway across the world and back again in a time warp boomerang. thank goodness for pictures; i need proof it wasn't all just a dream. the truth is, I absolutely feel sick today. I can't find my footing and I'm dizzy as hell. I guess that's jet lag for ya.

Looking past my jello-ness, I'll try and report about my last week and a half in europe. After my last moody post we had a really interesting time in Volos, a city on the east coast of mainland greece abut halfway between Athens and Thessaloniki. The best night for me was when a few of us girls saw the local football team, olympiakos volos, play fk rad Belgrade. it was absolutely surreal to be in europe watching a soccer game with a zillion die-hard fans chanting and cheering. Other than that, Volos was a school trip designated to learning about greece's industrialization. Aka old rusty trains and brick museums. But the waterfront was gorgeous, and gab and I got to try a ton of cool sea food with the local drink, tsipouro. Strong stuff, but it made the brick museum a lot of fun!

After volos, we came back to athens and had a week until our final exam on thursday. Basically we all had to cram 200 years of greek history into our vacationed-out pea brains; not exactly what i had pictured. But it needed to be done, and the final proved to be toothless. That night we all went to Gazi, the major nightclub area where we danced our little hearts out until the metro opened again at 5.30am. the next day we dragged our hung-over carcasses out of bed and went into town to do some last-minute shopping and saw our goodbyes to athens. that night we all went to an incredible restaurant in Plaka that had a view of the acropolis all lit up. The food was amazing and the company was even better. I have to say, that night was bitter sweet. We were still feeling the high from the last few weeks but dreading the next day when we had to leave. So later that night I finally got to bed around 3.30am and the bus came to pick us up at 5am. it was awesome. Gab and I got on the plane, slept, and got to london. She had some issues with the next flight that finally got sorted out, and I met up with carolyn who took me to the jenkins' house.

It was SO awesome staying with the jenkins. They really feel like family to me. I stayed there for three-ish days but it felt like half a day. They took really good care of me... feeding me delicious food and lending me a big fluffy bed to rest in. The weather was beautiful.. so nice we went in the pool every day. They're all coming out to california in a couple of weeks. I'm so excited to see them again!

So now i'm sitting here at the beach, scraping my brain for remnants of what I used to know, of what used to come naturally. My fingers feel clumsy when i text and it feels foreign putting toilet paper down the toilet. But these are all little insignificant accents to the big story of it all. I can't say i'm the same person i was 6 weeks ago, and i'm glad about that.

Oh, and if you're wondering, I stopped looking for a face to label greece a few days after i wrote that last post. Getting stuck in the past blinded me to the living, breathing city that was right in front of my nose. Read into that last post a little more, and you'll see that I, Allison Van Vooren, am Greece. Straight up.

Thanks everyone for following me on this adventure around the world. I hope you've enjoyed my brambling, and I'll catch you all when I make my next journey.

Much love, Allison.