In Which I Put the Grr in Greece

Ugh, I have an interview for a fellowship today and I've been having these mini-panic attacks sporadically over the past few days where I think about the fact that I'm shortlisted for three full years of doctoral funding and a stipend, and I've somehow managed to schedule it so I'm doing a roundtable interview with eight interviewers by Skype in the lobby of a hotel on the fringes of Athens using quasi-functional wifi and my boyfriend's cell phone as a backup. This is pretty much a textbook example of how not to get a fellowship. And while I'm kind of understandably stressed about this, I didn't realize how stressed I was until Tess and David offered to go find a SIM card as I wrote my presentation last night, couldn't find a cheap one, and were afraid to come back to the hotel empty-handed. It's times like these when I actually hate myself.

Anyway, the interview is in 45 minutes, and then I can stop freaking out and let go and let Zeus or whatever. I was kind of expecting Athens to be stressful and urban and then Crete to be relaxing and low-key, but we're a little ways out of Athens and our neighborhood has been totally great. We did walk all over the city to see the Acropolis and Agora and everything yesterday, but we've also just been poking around the suburbs and getting free stuff from random and kindly people who think our cluelessness is endearing. (A couple bought us a giant bag of nuts on the street, and then we went to a bakery and they gave us a bag of free pastries and biscotti, and we were walking through the market yesterday morning and a vendor gave us a sack of blood oranges. I'm very much a fan of this place.) And once James gets into the city after the interview, we're all just trucking around until we leave for Crete on the overnight ferry tonight, and then we'll be in Hania and I won't have any bus schedules or hotel reservations or maps to manage for the rest of the trip and my blood pressure will drop so far that I might die and that is excellent.