Sunday, July 31, 2011 I’m at my grandmas village. No internet in a radius of 200 meters at least. But I just gotta blog today, I’ll post it later.
Today as you noticed is Sunday, and for everyone in this village Sunday means one thing: church. For the past years I have never spent more than a week each time I visited my grandma. When it came to Sunday I would just sleep late and not wake up on time for church. This time however, I decided it would be nice to accompany my grandma to the church for once, just like I would when I was tiny little me –of course back then I had no choice.
Grandma seemed very pleased with my choice and suggested that we go at nine instead of at seven that she usually went. Of course she asked me if I had a dress. (one time I had managed to skip church by only bringing pants with me) Yes I had a decent dress. Or so I thought.
Morning comes. I put a lot of effort in waking up and a lot of mental effort to prevent myself from pretending to sleep. I get dressed and meet my grandma outside the house: ready for church!
This is when the grandma monologue starts.
-Andriana your dress is very short! –It’s the longest I got grandmaaaaa-
-Andriana why did you color your nails so many colors? –Duhh plain pink is boringgg-
-Andrianaaa your bra shows with this dress!!! –Hello??! That’s why I chose my lightest pink bra-
-Andrianaaa this. Andriana thaaaat.
What does it matter anyways? I’m going to church to pray to god and god wouldn’t judge me by my appearance. Am I right?
After a while it switches from Andriana to Jesus. (Jesus said this. Jesus said that.) I have to say, the Jesus version is more fun cause I can at least try to argue. (How the h*** did Jesus say we can’t wear short dresses? They didn’t exist when he lived!!!)
Anyhow, soon, we reached the church and I realized how tiny I must have been last time I had been there. In my memory, the church was a huge building with an enormous playground. Inside there were hundreds of chairs, high ceiling, big chandeliers and gigantic temple. Now what I saw was a normal size church, with a small yard, small chandeliers and a few chairs. The temple however had remained pretty impressive. In fact, it had become golden. I swear it used to be black. Yes, it was black, I learned the story later. In order to hide it from the Turks, like 200 years ago, they painted it black to hide the gold underneath. Recently they remembered to uncover it again. It’s beautiful.
I had always found the service quite boring. Unlike catholic churches, we don’t have neither music nor a choir… It also requires a lot of focus in order to understand what the priest is saying. I was wondering why they don’t make it into moderns Greek. Although way better than Latin, Ancient Greek is still hard to understand. I couldn’t tell when we were supposed to stand up, sit down or do the cross thingy so I just copied the others. I don’t really care though since we only go to church about 5 or 6 times a years.
Towards the end of the mass the fun started. We were standing up and listening to one of Jesus’ adventures when I started feeling a little sick. At first I thought I was just tired but soon the feeling became more familiar. My vision became very blurry and my legs felt weak. Shit, I was getting dizzy and it was the second time it happened this summer. I turn and tell my grandma “I’m dizzy” and try to reach for the exit. How idiotic I must have looked unable to walk straight… Several minutes later I found myself throwing up in the church’s backyard.
Later an on I heard this epic line coming from a church lady: It was Satan who tried to make you leave church and not want to come back!
Maybe it was… although I’m pretty sure my lack of proper nutrition recently had also been involved.
