two facts

fact one: i am clumsy. seriously clumsy. cant walk and chew gum at the same time clumsy. trip over air clumsy.

fact two: greeks are nosey and dramatic. they have a tendency to turn ordinary occurrences into oscar worthy dramatic performances. even when those occurrences have nothing to do with them.

add these two facts together and you have a recipe for disaster on your hands.

it was our second night in kea and we went to the hora (the main square in the village) for a dinner at rolando's. rolando's is one of our favorite places to eat, not just because of the food but because of the owner and his wife, rolando and sula. we had finished dinner and were walking back down the hill to our car. when all of a sudden i collide, no i walked right into a metal car guard. what is a car guard you might ask? it is a metal gate that comes up at night to prevent cars from driving into the square. i must add that this gate was not up when we walked up the hill to dinner. thankfully, my dad was right in front of me, he saw the guard and stepped over it, but he broke my fall when i lunged forward. the bad news was that there were a ton of people around who witnessed the incident, and were kind enough to lend music to the crashing sound of bone and metal with their collective gasp. better yet, the 5 women who were attending algaia's cooking class were also there to see my latest graceful move.

true to greek form, within minutes of my incident the entire village was alerted that the american doctor's daughter walked into the car gate and hurt her leg.

my mom kept asking me if i was okay, aside from the huge bruise and goose egg i was fine ( they are still there by the way). i did tell her that my ego hurt much worse than my leg did.

and just for the record, that gate remained down the remainder of the time we were there. i like to think that my clumsiness had something to do with it.