April 28: Amorgos

It stormed all night. Strangely, I always sleep heavily in a storm. There's something profoundly, primally comforting about being tucked up snug and warm in bed while a storm batters the doors and windows.

Unfortunately, the storm continued all day. It was too windy and cold to go out, so I had a "home day". I had a leisurely brekkie at the hotel restaurant, then went back to my room and worked for a bit. I also updated this blog and read some news online.

Around 2:30pm I went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. There was another solo female guest at an adjacent table. She heard me speaking English to the server, Poppy, so she asked where I was from. When I said I was from Vancouver Island she exclaimed "I went to the University of Victoria!" It turns out Kit studied at UVic from 1992 to 1996, which overlapped with when I was there. We decided to sit together over lunch and chat. I learned that Kit had studied music at UVic and was on Amorgos to attend a 10-day "Vocal Odyssey" retreat. She was only staying at the Hotel Vigla for one night before transferring to the Aegialis Hotel and Spa, where the retreat was being held. It's a much bigger hotel just down the hill from Tholaria (and apparently more expensive). Kit now lives in the UK, and works as a clinical counsellor, but is still interested in music and performing arts.

We chatted until 4:30pm. Kit left to go explore Tholaria, while I went back to my room to attend a work meeting from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. After that I got into my jam jams and got into bed and listened to the storm raging while watching a bit of TV. The Greek channels were mostly game shows, but eventually Greek "Survivor" came on. It's a completely different format to the original American show. There are no competitions. They have a proper camp to sleep in, with what looked like camp cots with blankets. There were a lot of shots of them talking to each other, as well as private interviews with producers. There were also weird music video montages to highlight major plot twists. Basically, it was just a bunch of young people hanging out in the jungle gossiping and looking tanned and sweaty.