I must share my fabulous finds: Friday market clementines, seedless and juicy, freshly picked with their leaves and branches still attached — only one euro for a great bunch of the sweet fruit. There were also olives, apples, golden currant, vegetables of all sorts.

But a girl cannot live on plant matter alone, so I set out to find a bakery, and succeeded thanks one of my many flatmates. Most bakeries in Athens have every pastry you can imagine — with chocolate a mere alias for Nutella — but no basic bread. Yet on Aubrey’s suggestion, I walked through the narrow streets in Pangrati, arranged like pick-up sticks, to a small bakery with fresh-baked bread. I bought a delicious wholemeal loaf with sesame seeds on top for only 80 lepta (compared to 2.50 euro at the supermarket).

These transactions occurred entirely in Greek, albeit exhausting my knowledge of the language in the process. Still I feel proud.

In addition to food, I have found friends. I met one group on the Saturday hike, which was more of a walk around a hill while being blasted by wind. I joined them in the evening for dinner and a climb to a little church on a hill, with an amazing view of Athens lit up below, an exaggeration of the sparse stars above.

Greeks live most of their lives between sundown and sunup, using the afternoon siesta to catch up on sleep. My flatmates join the party around the time I go to bed, and wake up when I have already finished the day’s adventures. This is what happened yesterday, when the second group of… is it too early to call them friends? joined me in the morning for a walk to the Monastiraki flea market and through the National Gardens, taking a break for crepes in between.

So I am getting along, with those I live with, those I am learning from, those I have found, and those I am trying to understand.