Donkey Traffic

In the village, we don't have home mail service, but rather there is a small post office where everyone goes to get their mail. There is one employee, who opens the office from 8:30-10:30 AM (unless he's sick or on strike or something). Earlier this week, I walked to the post office along the village's Byzantine-era cobblestone paths and I passed, both coming and going, this above donkey, who was hauling manure to someone's garden.

When taking a walk with the kids earlier this week, we noticed that we could see the Monastery of Panagia Odigitria -- a dependency of Philotheou under the spiritual direction of Elder Ephraim -- as we looked northwest toward the neighboring village of Makrynitsa. If you look closely, you can make out the stone roof of the monastery's main church just right of the very center of the photo.

View Parish of the Holy Unmercenaries, Portaria in a larger map

Here's a map of our parish.

Anyway, as you can tell from the photo, the weather here went through about a wintery, rainy period of about 2 weeks. The highs have been around 60 F.