Don't Put Your Laptop in the Freezer (And Other Lessons From Abroad)

Remember Simbelmyne, our Sparkler who nearly drowned in her own bathroom in Greece? Here she is again, with a summary of her travels! —SparkNotes Editors

Shopping

This is our third day in Preveza (a pretty coastal area, with oodles and oodles of beach), and I must say, I may have single-handedly boosted the local economy by a significant amount. Gift shop owners positively faint with happiness when I walk in the door, and I’m pretty sure I’ve helped put a few of their children through college by now. I most likely have an evil eye necklace for every day of the year.

Foreign Power Sources

I recently had a bit of an adventure into the wonderful world of electrocution. Since the electrical voltage here in Europe is not the same as it is in America, we have to use a power converter to charge anything that we brought with us from the States. Anyway, I was downstairs typing on my laptop, when I happen to notice that it wasn't charging despite being plugged in. I reach down to make sure it’s fully in the socket, and receive a shock that made my fingers twitch spasmodically for 20 minutes. It was both terrifying and strangely marvelous. I figured that it may have overheated, so I took the next logical step to fixing the problem…I put it in the freezer.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a brilliant solution, but it turns out it didn’t matter anyway. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the side had been completely melted, and that the socket smelled faintly of burnt vegetables.

I commenced panicking. Luckily, I just bought a new converter and all is well, but I decided to include this little cautionary tale as a warning: Don’t store your vegetables in a power converter, unless you like them blackened.

Food

My body mass is now 3o percent baklava. I firmly believe they put some kind of addicting drug in that stuff. There’s a clandestine ring of drug lords/bakers running through this country, getting us hooked before we have a chance to put the fork down. But who’s complaining? Nobody but my waistline.

Beaches

The beaches in Greece are very hot. And beautiful of course, but let me emphasize the hot part once more: HOT.

Usually, my relationship to sunscreen falls somewhere between best friend and freakish addiction, which normally results in my brother coming back to the States looking as if he’d spent most of the vacation roasting on a spit and me looking as if I got on the wrong plane and ended up spending a month in a cave in Greenland. Where it rained everyday. And the sun fell out of the sky.

On the plus side, I never had to worry about tan lines. I just sort of lingered between corpse-white and death-bed pale.

This year, however, I’ve been somewhat slacking in the way of sun protection. While this means I now have a delicious tan and am no longer so pale I glow in the dark, it also means I squirm with guilt every time I go to the beach, as I can just feel the skin cancer festering below my newly acquired deep-fried hide. It’s really quite the conundrum, and I've created this list of tanning alternative to spur me in a healthier direction:

• Play hide and seek. Hide in the oven. Convince myself it was an accident.

• Paint myself brown. Pretend nobody notices.

• Wear a beige unitard under my clothing at all times. (Bonus: unexpectedly rip off random articles of clothing in public, observing peoples’ horrified reactions before they realize I’m not actually naked.)

• Make everyone around me wear dark sunglasses. That way I’ll only look slightly albino.

• Move to Ireland. I imagine I’ll look positively bronze by comparison.

• Join a neo-Victorian cult. My milky complexion will be appreciated there.

Most amazing moment thus far:
Discovering the snail-shaped cookie jar in the apartment my best friend Tory and I are sharing, which has some sort of strange, ladybug shaped lump for a head.

Most depressing moment so far:
Discovering there were no cookies.

Kisses,
-Simbelmyne