I didn’t really do much. The hotel I’m in is closer to the airport than the city. It’s a nice enough hotel, but it makes getting into town a bit of a pain. The bus ride into downtown Athens is not only 45 minutes, but it costs the equivalent of 5 bucks each way. I went down there today with some specific goals. I wanted to eat at McDonald’s, buy some books, and find some decent chocolate. Greek chocolate sucks, it’s that simple. I was really happy to find a Nestle’s crunch bar, and I don’t consider that good chocolate at all. I wanted to eat at McDonald’s because I have been craving a cheeseburger for a long time. I don’t think that McDonald’s is very good, but it was one of the better meals I’ve had here… I needed some books for not only my 8 hour layover in Istanbul, but for living in Yemen. There have been many times that I wished I had something to read other than the Arabic equivalent of “See Dick run.” People have asked me if I want them to send me some books, but I always say no. Not because I don’t want the books, but because it will be way too expensive to send them here. If books are sent through the regular mail (the only reasonable way to send anything to me), they have to go through the censor. And I do think that it is THE censor. It seems to be common knowledge that if books go to the censor, I’ll never see them. If you send them through one of the courier companies (DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc.) they don’t go through the censor, but they cost a million dollars to ship to Yemen. Anyway, for the first time in years, some fiction really appealed to me. I picked up “The Name of the Rose” by Eco, and “David Copperfield” and “Nicholas Nichalby” both by Dickens. All of them are books that I have meant to get to for a long time. I’ve always liked Dickens, the last book I read by him was “A Tale of Two Cities” back in my sophomore year of high school! Anyway, I hope that these will last me until I can get back to the states. Tomorrow I leave for Yemen. I’ll be coming back in the middle of Ramadan, should be fun…
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