Jesus is among us

This is a continuation of the adventures from Day 1.

I managed to get myself to the volunteer accreditation place and get in line. Surprisingly it did take 45 minutes, but that was to get to the front of the line where you wait in line to be registered. The 45 minute wait was a crush of humanity from all over the world, desperate to get to the front of the line first. There were only a couple pockets of shade where everyone tried to bunch together, making it a suffocating, joyful experience. I would have pulled my hair back into a ponytail but I couldn't raise my arms over my head to do it. As I was scanning the crowd to see what we had there, I saw Jesus just a few people over. From the back you couldn't tell but from the side, it was definitely him. Or at least I thought it was until he started smoking a hand rolled cigarette or a doobie (I couldn't tell) and when the wave of humans started moving and he pushed me out of the way to get to the front, I was quite sure it wasn't Jesus after all. I could see him volunteering, sure, but not smoking a joint and shoving to be first. Didnt' he say the last shall be first? Well, he should have taken his own advice. So, I let Jesus get in front. I think I might have also seen Laura Dern but the guy she was with was very skanky looking so I might be wrong about that one too. In fact, at some point, I think I was so delirious, everyone looked like someone I know or saw on TV. Except THEY ALL SMOKED. All. If someone in line was not smoking it was because they either A) ran out of cigs, B) ran out of propane, C) were talking on the phone or D) were taking a few short breaths of clean air before lighting up again. In fact I'm sitting here in an internet cafe, which is very small and crowded and everyone is smoking. In fact, I'm quite sure I have the start of emphysema by now. And I haven't even been here that long.

But anyways, I digress. The whole processing took about 2 hrs including the "fitting" of the uniform which was "here, try this on. I hope it fits". It was a sample uniform that at least 50,000 other people had already tried on and let me tell you there was a powerful stink coming from that thing. I wasn't exactly fresh at that moment, having stood out in the sun with 55,000 other people, but that thing held onto odor like no fabric I have ever seen. And the changing cubicle, well, I won't even go there to tell you about that. Suffice to say, I was able to hold my breath for 3 minutes. The uniform is not as bad as I feared. It is primarily cotton, polo style with blue and orange stuff on the arms and other places. The long pants are convertible pants which zip off at the knees to convert to shorts. We got 3 tops, 2 pants, 1 jacket, 3 pairs of shocks (I am pretty sure they are just socks, but they called them shocks and I feared it was some kind of shoe/sock combo that was reminiscent of the slipper socks my dad used to wear), 1 white extremely dorky hat, which can only successfully be worn by skinny french girls or men over 70, a water bottle that holds 8 oz of water and a fanny pack that will accomodate the largest of fannies. A pretty good haul considering. Then there's the matter of the ID/pass. It is a monstrously large laminated card with a passport quality photo that hangs around your neck at all times. And you can't even turn it to the backside to hide the photo, like a lot of other ID cards because they put a picture on both sides! How wrong is that?

Well, I made it out of the center alive and then rode the train all day trying to find food and an internet cafe, which is not as easy as it sounds. I finally decided to head home around 12:30, hoping I would remember the route. The train was fine, well, sort of. I went the wrong direction and had to get off and go back the other way. A minor inconvenience as it did not involve much walking. However, I waited a very long time for the bus back to my apartment. It finally showed up and it was so dark I couldn't really figure out where I was supposed to get off. I thought I was getting near so I went to the bus driver (age approx 92) and attempted to speak to him in greek and tell him I wanted to get off at Kamatero street. He motioned in a way I took to mean next stop. Wow, that was surprisingly easy. Except the next stop was not right, THAT I knew. But HE MADE ME GET OFF. Started shouting at me, Kamatero, Kamatero, get your ass off the bus (or at least that's what I translated it to mean). So rather than try to reason with him that I didn't want to, I just got off and hoped my stop wasn't too far away. I found a young person (remember, they're the only ones who speak a word of english) and asked him where I was going. He said, only about 200 meters more, which according to my calculations to metric came to about 20 miles. But what choice did I have? Turned about to be not quite that far and I made it home about 1:30, sweating like a pig. Did I mention it's hot here and it doesn't cool off at night as one might think of a place that's surrounded by water?

So, that's my adventure from Day 1. Today I'm going to try to get tickets to the dress rehearsal of the opening ceremonies only available to volunteers and only at this little school on a side street that some Brazilian guy told me about. Which probably doubles as some kind of spy agency and the next thing you know, I"ll be Jason Bourne, running for my life but not knowing why. We'll see.