So, the settling in continues, the last of the furniture has been ordered, Greek classes are going well and I even tried driving this week. We have had a recent heat wave here which leads me to this posting. Heat waves in Tampa were bad, humid, sticky were sweaty by the time you reached the car. Heat waves here are a bit different. Apparently, the electrical grid here can’t always handle the need when it’s 97 degrees outside and so they have rolling brownouts. We had heard this was all in the past but this week we found out it is still happening. We found ourselves trapped in the elevator during one of these brownouts, with the dogs. Luckily, we got out after a few minutes when the elevator dropped a bit to a floor and opened the door. Our neighbor was not so lucky, we witnessed her having to be rescued by the local firefighters. Things like this are shocking to us but seemed to be the norm to people who have lived here all their lives.

Crete is an island of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people. They do more with less. The island isn’t all just beautiful beaches and terrain but daily challenges. When you vacation here you rarely see the of this island’s struggles. Now that we live here, some of the difficulties are becoming our reality. My sister-in-law recently told me ” Crete has a way of making one submit” I never heard a truer statement. Recently my anxiety has been lower, and my pace has slowed, but the hits keep coming. Our car was hit while parked by a truck, just a scratch, but after surveying the damage we didn’t let it ruin our day and headed to the beach. I honestly felt like it was a rite of passage. So, I have a choice- let this island break me or get back up and head to the beach. I’m learning a lot about myself and that’s why I wanted to make this move. Tampa had become easy, expected and I wanted to shake things up maybe it would have been easier to choose a place that speaks my language or wasn’t across the world, but Crete has always appealed to me when we visited so here we are.

I’m eager to see my next few months and how things go because, for the first time in my life, I have no clue what our life will look like. Below are my hopes:

• I will be tanner
• My Greek will be better- how can it get worse?
• I will have my Residency VISA taken care of, I want to see more of Europe but can’t leave Greece until I have my VISA
• I will be comfortable driving all over the island
• I will have visited more Greek Islands- Paros and Naxos are already scheduled for September
• I will be volunteering to help the animals of Crete- we have found a shelter we want to start working with soon
• I will have a good group of friends; the expats group on FB has been great and hoping to continue to meet people and find some core friends
• I hope to have more visitors- Jeff’s brother and family arrive this week and I’m super excited to see them all! Visitors booked for September, December and April- still plenty of months available- hint hint.

So let me know when I should expect you, I’m doing lots of research on food, wine, spas and beaches- it’s hard work but someone has to do it……..