Today on our fourteenth day in Kastoria, Greece we met a family from Canada. They are living the Greek dream. Maria opened a beauty salon, Yannis is a furrier, and the two daughters Dina, nine and Jenny, sixteen go to school. They have been living here for two years now; before they came here they lived and worked in Toronto, Canada. My hair was getting out of control. Before you start thinking I am some kind of beauty queen worrying about my hair on my fabulous vacation, let me explain. For the last five or six years I have kept my hair very short, shaved even. For this trip I started growing my hair out. Not a big deal, but after three weeks my neck hair was like a lions mane and my ears were covered with hair from the sides. For a Navy Man it was just UNSAT. Having noticed that there was a salon across the street, I ventured over there. I was pleasantly surprised that the family spoke English, well Canadian but that is close enough, eh? After receiving a very nice haircut I inquired for Stella if there was a time she could come over and get her hair done also. The time was set and Maria invited me to come with Stella and we would have coffee and chat a bit during the appointment. On arrival for Stella's date with hair history revisited, we were invited to sit on the couches in the corner of the salon. Maria served us some cookies and coffee (American style). We sat and got acquainted for about thirty or forty minutes, though it did not seem that long, before Stella was ushered to the chair in front of the mirror for a discussion on what she wanted to do with her hair. Before I even realized it, Stella’s hair was being dyed “blue/black”. This was the color Stella had for the first three years I knew her, then again for a few months some where in the months before we left Hawaii, and now again eight years later she has this color again. It is very becoming on her. She is absolutely gorgeous, not that she wasn’t before. We were invited back to visit before we leave in a few days. Our schedule on these last few days will be tight, but I would like to do it before we are gone. Tomorrow, Tuesday, we are renting a car and going to the village again. Then the next day we are going to go north to the Albanian border to a lake that is sure to be awesome. Then on Thursday we are going south to Meteora, a place where there is a monastery built on top of some cliffs, like a mansion placed precariously on top of a needle. Friday we have to take the car back, that night there is a concert in a classic Greek stadium; cool huh? Then on Sunday morning we are going to leave for Thessaloniki a night, and the vacation ends at 0615 Monday as we board Alitalia Flight AZ735 to Milan, change planes for flight AZ626 to come home to Chicago. It all has gone so very fast. It has been great so far.

¶ 6/05/2005 11:33:00 PM

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