A bit of white stuff

Well, we're still not really getting into regular updates but we have a few things to write about and here's something for starters.

Between Christmas and New year we spent a few days in the mountains of the Peloponnesos in a lovely apartment complex. Turned out that it was owned by a good friend of some of our friends from church in Athens, so it was good to make some links there. We liked the apartment and the location so much that we'll be back.

It was in a lovely gorge, not far from the main ski resort in southern Greece and part of the plan was to see some snow, which we did by driving quite high up to the ski slopes. For much of the winter the snow hangs around much lower down but there'd been a few warm days so it was really only the ski runs themselves which had snow.

Anyway, we got a toboggan for a few euros for one of the days. Joel and I headed into the mist for a bit of zooming down the hill (Hannah lasted a few minutes before getting too cold) while Dawn had to stay in the (hired) car with a sleeping Esther. We hadn't agreed where to meet up when our fun was over so Dawn texted me let me know the girls were awake and ready to head back to Kalavrita town for lunch. The only problem was I'd left my specs in the car, not wanted to crush them in any toboggan/cliff disasters that Joel and I might have had. You may know that I really need them for reading, being longsighted, and I couldn't make a single thing out on the text.

I've never been particularly bothered about the ageing process but this tickled me. My wee five year old had to read the text aloud to me. A healthy reminder of mortality.



As Joel and I were alone on the slope it was a bit tricky to get decent footage of his intrepid sledding. I considered just letting him go and filming 'til he disappeared from sight, but opted instead to get him to hold the brake until I was a bit downslope then hope he could steer straight into me. Have a look at the short clip. For a few seconds just before this was taken the fog vanished, revealed a stunning, sparkling mountainside. We'll be back, making sure we get some clear days. (The photo on our last prayer letter was of this mountain from afar).

There's other stuff to blog about that short trip which hopefully we'll get round to in the next couple of days, including a little-known but moving WW2 episode from the town of Kalabrita itself.