MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

This is our Christmas Tree and our Santa, he actually flies but the batteries are dead so we will post a video when we get new ones. We miss and love you all and hope that you all have a great holiday.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Annie and Shawn

Olive Oil Plant Trip

Hi Everyone!
We went on a tour of an Olive Oil Plant last week and it was a lot of fun. We got to see the growers bring their olives in and then watch them go through the processing maching and come out olive oil! We even got to eat fresh olive oil on bread! It was a long day, but we got to drive up into the mountains and to a lot of places that we hadn't been before. We had a lot of fun. There are a lot of pictures so I have put them on our photobucket account so go look there for more.

THE BEACH

Yesterday we went to the beach down the road and played around. It was a little windy but overall the weather was very nice. The waves were coming in strong and they were a lot of fun to watch. This is a video that we took of them. If you look closely you can see were the coral drops off by the different colors of water. We hope that you enjoy.

This is Shawn with little kitty Diesel. Someone down at the Harbor doused this kitty in diesel fuel. Rhonda, the lady we are staying with, brought it home. We gave it a bath and we were feeding it and just trying to make it better. Shawn loved it (this is the guy that hates cats) he held it most of the time that it was with us. Sadly it died after two days. It was really sad.

Chania

We got another view of Crete yesterday when we went into downtown Chania. We live in a small town near the beach and it is relatively quite here so it was fun to get to see a large city. The drive is about 15 minutes from where we live and it was a beautiful drive along the sea. The streets are just as narrow as the small town that we live in but there is a lot more traffic!
We walked out to the Chania Lighthouse in the Harbor. It is very old and you can see the different layers from different years and rulers. There were a lot of people fishing off the old steps. Inside the Harbor there are a lot of little fishing boats, most are so small we wonder how they get out to sea.
We then walked around and looked at the shops. They have everything you could want. There is even a place call leather way with nothing but leather shops. We also went to the market were they have fresh fish of all kinds out and fresh veggies and fruits.
You will all love this, we found a 1 Euro store!! Yes you read it right a 1 Euro store. It was great, we got a lot of Christmas decorations. Shawn will soon be surrounded by Christmas! He coffee cup was even changed out to Santa and a Christmas tree!
We had a great day, filled with a lot of walking but it was worth it. All the pictures in the slide show below are from the day.

Chania Lighthouse

Lizard on the Wall

This lizard was crawling up our wall the other day, cute little guy!

Greece

So I think that it is starting to set in that we are in Greece. Even though Shawn has been here for a while he was never really got to see anything. It is weird not know the language and not being able to understand what is being said around you. I am trying to pick up a few words, not quite enough to hold any sort of converation yet.
I did drive a manual car the other day. It was not bad. I didn't stall it the first time and then Shawn said "you are the only person I've seen who didn't stall it on the first try", then what happens the second time I try to start it? I stall it! Oh well, we drove around for a little bit and I have to say that I did a very good job! I still don't want to drive out in town. The roads here are really really narrow and the people drive very fast. If you go the speed limit they will pass you where ever you are, regardless if it is on a curve or if there is another car comming down the road. It is hard to get used to driving so fast.
There are olive trees all over the place and it is time to pick them. The olive pickers ( I am not sure if that is the technical term) are out with there nets gathering their olives. They don't seem too conserened about the cars on the road because they throw their nets and branches out into the road. It is fun to see.
There are a lot of great things to see here. For example, today I saw the landlord mow the lawn in a 3 three piece suit!

THE BEACH!

Shawn and I went for a walk down to the beach, which is about a block away. The weather here is so nice, in the 60s most of the time. It does get cold at night though. The beach is great, there are fishing boats tied up on a make shift dock and even though it is cold there was a person swimming in the water (nude I might add). The dog that Shawn is petting followed us on our walk for over an hour. We named her "pup". The lady that we live with said that a lot of the houses around here are summer vacation homes and the people feed the stray dogs when they are here but then in the winter they are left on there own. The road that we live on is not very busy and there are a lot of cute houses around. We have noticed that a lot of the houses are really nice but their lawns not kept up at all. All of the house have gates, which is nice, but loud.

This is our house. It has a variety of trees in the front yard that hides the house from the busy street out on front. The little add on to the house is our room on the 2nd floor. It is nice and cozy. This house doesnt show it, but most greek houses have rebar coming from the roof so that they dont have to pay property taxes because the house is not "complete".

This is some of the Views from our house in Stavros. It is a very beautiful here. There are olive trees all over and Geep (goat/sheep mix) everywhere. There is no zoning here so commercial, residential and farming all mixed together. We are a block a way from the beach right below the mountains in the picture on the left. You would all love it here.

I AM HERE! I had a pretty good flight that lasted 31 hours. I am glad to finally be here. This is the picture of our beautiful car in front of our house. It is so cute!

Our Favorite Wedding Photo!!

We are new at this!

Hey everyone! I am headed to Crete tomorrow and I am really excited, I cannot wait to see Shawn! I will miss all of you and I know Shawn misses you all too. I will post more to this once we figure out how to work it.
Annie