Peace treaty, if you will.

Welcome one, welcome all, back to Mount Olympus, may you catch the goats that roam freely through life’s path!

Today was a dreaded yet revered moving day, and boy oh boy, ‘twas one for the ages!

So we woke up to the morning people (insert annoyance here) being once more obnoxiously smug about being awake. So the only weapon in my arsenal against these people is to be obnoxiously smug about being asleep, something Tate and I have perfected.

So I gave half hearted thumbs up every time someone said “it’s r e a l l y time to be up!”, and stayed in bed for a good twenty minutes.

Because we had two hours to get ready. This is ages.

Indeed, after an hour, we were ready to leave, but we still had an hour left. So I downloaded some fanfics onto my kindle, my sisters listened to bopping tunes, and we did nothing until it was checkout time: 11:00.

We almost forgot our magnets, to Dad’s great almost-sadness.

But out we were, and here’s the plot twist: we had three hours until our boat arrived.

There was one obvious thing to do for half of that time.

Play giant chess in the square!

Lily and I played vs Allegra and Tate, and it was a long, evenly matched game (in that none of us really know how to play well). Lily and I were losing pieces early in, stuck on the defensive. We were getting desperate as we sent our men to the battlefield and few returned. We did my know if they lived, died, or were held captive by the enemy.

We took their queen, but lost ours in the process. We were beaten down. Weak. Near-defeated.

It was out of necessity that a plan hatched. One that told of misdirection, distraction, and subterfuge. One bishop, one castle, six moves ahead. We planned. We protected. We subtly moved closer.

We thought we had done it.

Check mate, we said. We felt glee. Hope, for our people. The ability to win the war.

It was snatched from our fingertips by a variable we hadn’t considered. Their king took our castle.

We were ruined.

It had been our last hurrah. We had nothing. A king a mind a few haphazardly strewn pawns. We had almost given up.

Their castle, bishop and horse chased our king to near exile. We were in Check every other move. I have to hand it to them; they had a strong offense.

But in a moment of luck, and blindness on their part, we managed to escape, take some pieces of theirs, and close in on their king.

It ended in a tie. A peace treaty, if you will.

Because it had been an hour and a half and mum and dad kept helping the twins and never us and it was exhausting and hot in the midday sun. And we needed lunch.

So we abandoned all animosity and made our way to a restaurant, where I had a Greek salad! Yayyyy!

The waiter forgot to bring out drinks so we only had them after the food was finished, but I can happily say that I am the owner of 29 can tabs as of today. Chainmail something, here I come!

And the time came to mosey down to the docks and wait for our boat, which was late. We could not see it on the sea, we waited in the shade.

While we waited, we saw the most adorable ginger three legged cat. It was really sooo cute, and I believe Allegra’s exact words were, “a ginger! Adopt it like you adopted me!”

(That may be on me, folks.)

But then, to everyone’s surprise, our boat came around the corner and it was quite funny because it was speeding along. That boat knew it was late. Watching it felt like a car chase in a movie m, in a way that I cannot explain.

So we did what we did best, and speed walked our way onto the boat before all the other passengers in order to secure seats, which we did with glee.

The boat ride itself was fairly chill, not as nausea-inducing as the previous one had been, and I did happily have peace and quiet since Lily had downloaded a movie in advance. No whining today!

An hour later and we were pulling into the next island: Kalymnos!

As we stepped off, I asked Dad a question, and he answered, but said he wasn’t sure, so “don’t quote me on that”. See, I was going to hilarious quote exactly what he said in the blog, and it would have been sooooo funny, and you all would have laughed because I quoted him when he asked not too…

We are all missing out on just *peak* comedy here. If only I remembered what we talked about.

But as Dad sorted out the car, and me, Leg and Lil read on a bench, Mum and Tate went to check out the sponge museum shop thing. Because apparently Kalymnos is the home of sea-sponges. And I also learned that back in the day you used to have to bring back a sponge from a dive, or literally die. “Sponge or skin” was their oath.

How oddly macabre.

But Mum and Olivia were basically given a rundown on the island by the shop owner, it was quite funny how Dad would say something and mum would go, “I know, the shop lady told me”. It had nothing to do with sponges.

Mum also bought a loofa.

On the car ride, I sacrificed myself and sat alone in the back with all the bags and no aircon, while my sisters were all in the middle. Such is the life of a middle child.

Allegra loudly professed her love for trees (she is sooo her father’s daughter; just read my blog Give Puys a Chance to understand).

And then we made it to our place, got shown around, and it is like three times as big as every other place we have stayed. Dad wittily joked that we wouldn’t see each other because we all had separate rooms.

Speaking of rooms…

There is one room that is quite small, just a double bed and a cupboard, and another room that has two sections, stairs between them, balcony access, a bigger double bed…

Of course there were other rooms but they are of no consequence in this tale.

So I bagsied the bigger room. This left mum and dad with the small room. They seemed so perplexed that I would actually say this and stand my ground. Lily tried to guilt me out of it. I held firm.

I am now the inhabiter of the big room.

And I feel vaguely terrible about it, but also happy: will this be the end of the series of unfortunate beds? Updates tomorrow!

Since the last place didn’t have a washing machine, we had to do our washing here, so Lily and I made our piles, made our way to the washing machine which is outside, but then, shock horror, as I turned, it sounded something like this;

“THE F**K???” From Lily.

“What? OH CHRIST!” From me.

For in our way, there was a big grasshopper. We could not defeat it. We resigned ourselves to our fate of being stuck with the washing machine for life.

Legend has it our souls remain there.

After a few minutes, I squared my shoulders, and took a running leap accompanied by a very undignified squeak.

The grasshopper did not move. I don’t think it wanted to attack us. This did not stop Lily from doing the same as I.

But then we chilled and it was fun and relaxing, I read a lil book with info about the Dodecanese,found out some interesting facts to randomly dispense to my family and or the blog readers during our time on this island (such as sponge or skin), but then mum and dad started arguing over little things. My sisters and I were just like “get over it, stop acting like children” because it was just the ridiculous squabbling and sulking of overtired kids, but what can you do.

They made up eventually so all was well. A peace treaty, if you will.

Tate and I stayed behind (we looked adorable, snuggling under a blanket in an armchair) as they went to the supermarket to look for food, they didn’t find much. Lily and Allegra still made a well tasty dinner including pasta, egg, and mushroom, so that was impressive. I got caught up on the news since I haven’t had my phone and I love reading the news, and also checked my messages.

At dinner time, we laughed a lot, especially at one point when we Allegra said “who lives in a pineapple under the sea” and we all chorused “SpongeBob! SquarePants!” Despite having never watched SpongeBob, or at another, when we tried to explain the Swiss Cowshark Instagram joke to mum, and Allegra said Showcark. Hihi!

We also got very perplexed over a light we could see low in the sky; Dad said “it’s an airplane”, Lily said “it’s a light on a faraway hill”, I said “it’s a bird! It’s a plane!” Tate said “it’s BlackPink!” Allegra said, “It’s my Grandma who got set on fire and flown into the air!”.

Mum rolled her eyes at our crazy.

But then the time came for writing blogs and going to bed, so here we are! Biscuit time was not had since the shop had no biscuits. What are we to do???!

And so this is where we pause our trek up Mount Olympus, folks.
Bye family!!! Czytaj więcej