The "I suck at this" moment.

Lately, I suck at running.
My next race is on Sunday, during the Athens Classic Marathon and I'm slower than ever. I don't think my time will be better than my first 10K in Chios, the 1:04... A strained left ankle and a piece of marble I dropped on my foot (don't ask...) kept me off training for about a month.
It will probably be cold and windy and it might be raining as well...

There is one great thing about this race, though; the experience of finishing the race in a stadium full of people...





A few hours ago the latest and the hardest austerity measures where voted in the parliament.
Having read The Shock Doctrine right before the crisis hit the country, I know that what's about to come is worse than most people can imagine. I've started thinking about leaving again, although the idea of starting all over is really scary...

When I first moved to another country I thought that the toughest part of "integrating" is to start feeling this other country as your own. When this started happening, I realized that the most difficult part is to feel that the people of this country think of you as part of it, as well... You cannot really know what racism is all about unless you've felt it. You can be educated, intelligent, hard working, but if you're skin is too dark, or your eyes too Asian, or you look different, you're suspicious, you're lazy, you're dirty, you're inferior.

On the other hand, it's hard to think that some other language sounds bad if you've loved a person speaking it, it's hard to think that some people are weird when you've been to they're homes and had their food and see they are not much different than you. In fact, you might even love their differences. The "exotic" eyes of a loved one, the different food, the music, the culture.

Pão de queijo, Nazim Hikmet, alfajores, mole, Till Eulenspiegel, smacznego, eid mubarak, te echo de menos, tatli rüyalar, boa noite meu bem...
How weird must all this sound...