Snow in Athens

Late Friday night (well, early Saturday morning), I was out with some of the fellows in "Gazi" (sort of like a theme park full of bars in downtown Athens). As we walked from "Soho" to "Tora" (means now in Greek, not a jewish bar), it began to snow. It came like a light rain at first, and all the flakes melted as soon as they hit the concrete. The snow continued all day yesterday, in fluffier, chunkier flakes, and now the mountain I look towards out my window is white. :)

 (There's no snow on the ground in Halandri though, because we're at a lower elevation.)

Rather than play outside in the snow, I went out to lunch with Laura, one of the teachers in my department. We had originally planned to just get coffee, and ended up getting Margaritas and Burritos instead. The whole setting kinda cracked me up: Here I am in Athens Greece, getting tipsy at 3 pm on a Saturday with my colleague, sitting in a Mexican restaurant decked out in Christmas lights, and watching the snow fall.

Laura's husband is Greek, and this got me thinking about romantic relationships between people who don't have a common mother tongue. Because his first language is Greek, I imagine that when Laura's husband thinks, he thinks in Greek first. It's well known that there are certain words or expressions that just can't be translated from language to language - (did you know there's no Greek word for Hangover?) - and I wonder how this applies to matters of the heart. Whether certain things are different in such couples, what's lost and what's gained.

(Just a thought).

The snow came quite abruptly - up until a few days ago, the weather was still in the 70s, and I was beginning to think winter in Greece didn't really exist. Last Monday I walked to work in a sleeveless dress. And then suddenly, within two days, the temperature dropped 30 degrees.

The cold and the sight of (though fleeting) snow has made me VERY excited to go home for Christmas. These last few weeks have just felt like a push til the end. I can't wait to go home, sleep, speak English without having to politely ask whether the person I'm speaking to speaks English as well, see my family and new dog, and eat home cooked North American food. I don't mean to diss Greece, but right now I'm ready to get the hell out. The inefficiencies are driving me nuts - for example, the reason I did the nearly hour long walk to school last week was due to a transport strike, which happened again today, and will happen again on Wednesday as well.

I've also realized that making Greek "friends" is not only difficult, but sometimes not much fun, either. I've met plenty of Greek people, and they've been very kind to me on the whole, but they're usually also:
a) much older than me, so I don't feel like we have much common ground
b) male, and not really that interested in just being my friend
c) not native English speakers, so I can't understand everything they're saying and they can't undesrstand me either. This totally kills the humor part, which is all I really want anyways.
d) Eager to tell me all the best things about Greece, which I've heard over and over again from all the other Greeks I've met.

So! Feeling a little dejected about making new Greek friends. I do really love my colleagues though, and am feeling closer and closer with some of the other teaching fellows.

I feel like my Greek is improving, and I'm still really enjoying learning it. Every time I sit down for a few hours and really study it I feel like I make huge progress. So I need to do more of that. Hopefully by the time I leave I'll really be able to speak it. The problem now is that because everyone speaks English, I hardly ever get to practise my Greek.

Last weekend Mandee and I went to ancient Corinth and saw the castle there. That was pretty damn cool. Inspired me to keep exploring greater Greece when I get back after Christmas.

Brussels

Because Canadian and American Thanksgivings fall on different dates, I've felt a bit out of touch with Thanksgiving since I started living in the USA, six years ago. My parents, in Toronto, celebrated it in October, and when Alex and I came home in November, we'd often end up having chicken instead of Turkey.

This year I strayed even farther from the holy Turkey dinner - I rang in Thanksgiving in Brussels, with chocolate, french fries, and beer. While my American travel companions (2 guys, 2 girls) complained of missing a proper Thanksgiving meal, I was quite content.

Belgian chocolate, in my opinion, really IS that good. I bought an embarassing amount, and have finished all of it which I didn't immediately give to my coworkers. Sorry Mom, but none of it will be making its way home for Christmas.

I fell in love with this little sweetshop, "La Cure Gourmande"(it's a chain), where I bought three cookie tins and an excessive amount of chocolate. I filled one tin with cookies, but the other two I bought simply because the boxes were so pretty.

Cookie Tins

Beer: both nights we went to a bar called Delirium, which has over 2000 beers on tap. It was a riot. Three floors, jam packed with people (who were dancing! Greeks don't dance), loud classic rock.

Belgians are notorious for being the most boring people in Europe. I'd like to say "I couldn't disagree more," but the truth is, I didn't meet many Belgians in Belgium. I did have a lovely time with the French and the Brits, though.

The second night, I struck up a conversation with two French guys dressed in drag (one as some kind of red mixed religion drag queen). I thought maybe there was an occasion, but when asked why they were dressed up, they responded, "Why not?"

"Why not?"

We also met a group of British blokes and ended up chatting and dancing with them until 4 am, when Delirium finally closed. Some of them had such thick cockney accents that I couldn't understand half of what they were saying, so having a language in common wasn't such a wonderful thing after all.

*When I say we, I mean, me plus the two other female teaching fellows who went on the trip. We somehow managed to spend almost no time with the boys.


What I loved most about Brussels was that it put me in the Christmas spirit. Although Athens is doing its darndest to be jolly (there are TONS of Christmas shops), the still seventy-five degree weather somehow makes it quite difficult to get into the cheer. Brussels, on the other hand, was f-ing freezing. It was a major shock to the system to walk out of the airport into such frigid air. But it was invigorating.

The Grand Place

There was a fantastic "light show" in the "Grand Place," Brussels' main square. This square has some magnificent architecture, and the light show mimicked the building whose facade it played onto exactly. Thus it looked as though the building were lighting up from the inside... err, kindof hard to describe. Maybe you had to be there.

I loved speaking French again in Brussels. It reminded me how little Greek I know, which is funny, because in Budapest, hearing hungarian reminded me how MUCH Greek I know. I do think French is a beautiful language and I'm thankful I studied it all through gradeschool and highschool. Id like to go back to it at some point.

Manneken Pis

In terms of sight seeing, we went to the Magritte museum, which was nice because Magritte is pretty weird and out there, but I find his work easy enough to understand. After one museum, we were museumed out, and spent most of the time walking around and eating. Of course we saw, "Manneken Pis," which is very, very small. It was rather underwhelming. 

Part of me felt like I should've taken advantage of my time there and gone to as many tourist destinations and museums as possible, but a larger part of me felt like the best way to see and enjoy a city is to just walk around. And eat waffles. 

Now, back in Athens, back to reality: I had my first full week of school in over a month this past week, and I'm exhausted!!! And I have three more full weeks to go before Christmas break. Aye aye aye. 

Sick and Stationary

You may be wondering why I've skipped a whole week in blogland. I wish I could say, "I was in Crete!" and tell you all about it, but the real reason is simply that my life of late has been pretty dull. Not because Greece is a dull place to live, but because I've been sick as a dog. A stray Athenian dog, with diseases you can't even imagine.

A rather healthy Athenian Stray

Actually, just a regular old sinus infection, but it wiped me out. I've spent a lot of time these past two weeks laying in bed. On Sunday mornings, I've listened to what sounds an awful lot like the call to prayer but is actually just Athenians driving around with loudspeakers asking people to give them their old TVs and junk. I've read a good chunk of the Odyssey, which I'm quite enjoying. It's fun to read about places I've been to or will go to soon, and about people who half of my students are named after.





By half, I mean the female students; there are plenty of Aphrodites, Artemises, and Calliopes in my classes. But almost all Greek boys have one of about five different names: Dimitris (Jim), Konstantinos, Giannis (John), Gorgos (George), and Nikolas (Nick).

Anyways, being sick put me into a pretty bad slump. Or should I say, aggravated the slump - A lot of the fellows have been feeling a little down lately, myself included. It's helpful and interesting to think about this in a broader context, because according to "The Phases of Culture Shock," the three month point is about exactly when shit is supposed to be shittiest:

"After some time (usually three months but it may be sooner or later depending on the individual), differences between the old and new culture become apparent and may create anxiety. That sense of excitement will eventually give way to new and unpleasant feelings of frustration and anger as you continue to have unfavorable encounters that strike you as strange, offensive, and unacceptable. These reactions [...] are typically centered on the formidable language barrier as well as stark differences in: public hygiene; traffic safety; the type and quality of the food..."

Word. Good to know.

For me, it's important to remember how much my physical state effects my mental state. For example:
Last wednesday we had another day off (not really sure why), and I went to the hospital (different one) to get some antibiotics. When asked if I had insurance, I tried to explain that I had some insurance through my job at Athens College. One of the secretaries then took my medical form and began making all these phone calls to the American College in Greece and put me on the phone with the director of that program, and while trying to explain to this stranger on the other end of the line and this secretary who didn't speak very good English that I had no connection with the American College in Greece I almost burst into tears. I was sick, tired, and utterly confused. The language barrier never gets any easier.

By the time I had regained physical strength, school was back in session. It felt great to be around other humans and not in bed by myself all day. And I'm really enjoying teaching, so it was nice to be back in the classroom with the kids. Although ideally my next step in life would be to become a singer on a cruise ship, it's good to know that I could be happy teaching as well.

In my eleventh grade class, we are reading "Macbeth." A little while ago I met a Greek actor who is acting in a Greek version of "Macbett" (Eugene Ionesco's "theatre absurd" interpretation of the original play). He told me to come check it out, so this weekend, looking for something different, Mandee and I went to see some Greek theatre.

I figured that since I'm reading "Macbeth" in class, I'd be able to understand what was going on in the play, even though it was in Greek. Not at all the case. Ionesco's script is pretty cracked out, and the six actor ensemble (who played the thirty something characters) went totally crazy with costumes and props and choreography, so I couldn't understand a bloody thing. However, this show was VERY entertaining. There were sequins and dance numbers and women in bikinis and people dying left and right and yelling and running around and women dressed as men and men wrapped in sheets dressed as Mother Theresa, and even though I had no idea what was going on, I loved it. So - if you ever want to see a piece of theatre in a language you don't understand, I highly recommend seeing something in "the Theatre of the absurd" genre. The visuals will keep you engaged.

My Greek is improving, though slowly. When I was sick I had some time to really sit down and study it, and just a few hours made a big difference. I need to get into the habit of just studying. The problem is that I almost never get a chance to actually practice saying anything, because everyone speaks English anyways. However, it is fun to learn a new language. It's like a puzzle, and I'm enjoying using my brain in a new way.


For "Study Time," I've discovered a lovely little cafe in Halandri: Le Petit Fleur. It's quite small and often hard to get a table, but well worth the wait. It serves the most incredible hot chocolate - it's so thick that it's more like chocolate soup than a chocolate drink. There are many flavors - my favourite so far is brandy, orange and cinnamon. The cafe is delightfully decorated (hot pink motif), serves delicious carrot cake and other pastries, and very pleasant to just sit in. They play old French records (Edith Piaf etc).

Finally, I should mention that being stationary these past two weeks has gotten me pretty stressed about not taking advantage of my time here. However, its important to keep in mind that I'm here for another EIGHT MONTHS. I guess I should allow myself to just kick back and enjoy Halandri and its amazing chocolate soup. Nai.

New Staple Food

Budapest

Here is how I'd imagined Hungary: very poor, lots of farms and farm animals, strange old women in clogs who want to bring you into their small houses with low roofs (really what I'm getting at here is the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and her house, if it weren't made of candy. I realize this is a German folktale, but for some reason in my mind it screams Hungary), highly caloric food (lots of bread), folk dancing involving a lot of strange little hops, ugly language. For some reason I'd lumped Hungary with Poland, though they're nowhere near each other on the map. But both have that harsh sounding language with a lot of "ch"s and both are small countries in Europe that I know almost nothing about. The only Hungarian person I knew was the evil cleaning lady "Ilona" on my painting program in Italy, summer 2008. She was fired half way through the program for being so rude to both students and faculty on the trip.

Anyways - Hansel, Gretel, and Ilona aside, Budapest is in fact stunning. It's the most underrated city I've ever been to - no one told me it was like a smaller, cheaper, funkier Paris - and I want to spread the word.

Train Station

Last Friday, Lizzie and I woke up at 5 am to make our 8:30 flight. We met Mandee at the airport. Two flights and a metro ride later, we arrived, exhausted, in downtown Pest. By then it was about three o'clock. After checking into our hostel, we decided to walk around and get our bearings. By about 4:30 the sky was pitch black, and I think we all shared the same odd feeling of not really knowing where we were or who we were or what time it was. Stumbling around Hungary under a black sky, feeling drunk with exhaustion, it was all very twilight zone.

But even in the dark, the architecture in Budapest is spectacular. It reminded me in many ways of Paris, because every building is its own brand of beautiful. There's a lot of art nouveau influence, which I was excited to recognize from my Modern Architecture class at Brown.

On Saturday, we headed to Margaret Island, a 2.5 km island, smack in the middle of the Danube River, which separates Buda from Pest. Budapest became a single city, occupying both banks of the river, in 1873.

The Danube

The island is like a little forest oasis in the middle of an otherwise fairly cosmopolitan city. It was lovely to see some flaming fall foliage - there's none of that in Greece. (It's also seventy five degrees here in Greece, which feels a little strange). The smell of fall reminded me of North America and got me pretty excited about going home for christmas.

Last year at Brown, I auditioned and was called back for a play called "The Danube," by Maria Irene Forbes. I didn't end up getting the part, but through auditions and callbacks I had to do a pretty thorough reading of the script. The play starts out as a fairly realistic love story, apart from the repetition of many lines in Hungarian. Gradually it becomes more hallucinatory as Budapest is overwhelmed by war, which goes unmentioned in the actual script. There's a whole lot of coughing and bleeding, and it's pretty damn depressing, not to mention weird. This play is what I thought of when I heard the name "Danube", and I'm glad I was able to replace that image with one of a river reflecting sunlight.

On Margaret Island

View of the city from Fisherman's Bastion

Fisherman's Bastion

We then made our way over to the Buda side of the river, and walked up "Castle Hill" to the Fisherman's Bastion.  It reminded me of the castle from Beauty and The Beast, and for a minute I convinced myself that Beauty and the Beast must have been set in Hungary. Then Mandee pointed out that the opening song in the movie begins with "Bonjour!" 

Saturday night we went to a lovely orchestra concert in St. Stephan's cathedral, which puts some of those grand old cathedrals I saw in Italy to shame.

Sunday, Mandee and I went to the baths. Actually, we went to the largest medicinal bath in Europe, Szechenyi. That was relaxing but also just weird. The building was impressive, yes, but so are all of the other buildings in Budapest. Szechenyi's beauty did not make up for the horrible smells inside. We opted for the standard bath: it was basically just ten different public pools, each of a slightly different temperature, that we went and soaked in with a bunch of old Hungarian people (thankfully this was not a nude bath).

Buda Castle

Then to the national gallery, which is housed in Buda Castle (the first Hungarian royal residence). There was a lot of cool art - I especially liked the room with poster prints.

Poster I was diggin at the National Gallery

Sunday night we went to a Hungarian opera called "Bank Ban." We got the 2 Euro seats so couldn't see anything, which was fine because it was a concert version of the opera anyway. It was nice music, but I must confess- as much as i love music and singing, operas bore me to death. When my brother Alex was a young and budding opera star and performed in "Tosca," I think I fell asleep. That was about twelve years ago, and things haven't changed. However, it was worth it just to see the building - the Hungarian Opera house is pretty spectacular.

Inside the opera house

Opera House Ceiling 

I guess I caught the travel bug, while there. This past Tuesday, I booked a flight to Berlin for this coming weekend, because (surprise suprirse) we have another long weekend. But then Wednesday I woke up feeling pretty sick, and today cancelled my flight.  :(

I guess you could say I'm hitting a bit of a "slump" in the program, and maybe my desire to get out of here, and my sickness, reflects that. It's nice to have all this time off, but I  feel pretty tuned out when it comes to work, and have no routine at the moment. I'm also feeling pretty lonely. Please come visit me!

Hearing Hungarian and not understanding a single word made me realize that I actually DO know some greek, so that was satisfying. I would find myself trying to speak Greek in Hungarian restaurants and museums.




More pretty stuff:

A painting I like

Dudes on Unicycles (there were lots of these)

Proof of Life in the Danube

This house reminds me of a cake

Budapest at Night

Over and out!

Hospital

This week the teaching fellows were given another two days off of school (Tuesday and Thursday) to finally obtain chest x-rays and tuberculosis tests. A clean bill of health is needed to acquire a Greek residence permit.

One of the teachers I work with emailed me and said, "Have fun on your field trip, Claire," when I told her I wouldn't be coming to class Tuesday.

And a field trip it was! The hospital, near the city center, has a beautiful exterior. 

The inside wasn't so nice, but I guess most hospitals aren't exactly places you want to hang out in.

Strange Woman who called herself a Surgeon

The paint on the off-white walls was peeling, you could see the concrete through some of the beige linoleum floor, fluorescent lights flickered. I sat in a tacky orange chair, in a row like those you find in airports, and attempted to get some reading done. 

In my grade ten class, we're reading "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. In the first chapter we meet Ashima, an Indian woman who has moved with her husband (by arranged marriage) to Cambridge, Mass., where he will pursue his career as a Professor. Ashima is pregnant. When she is rushed to the hospital to give birth, Lahiri describes Ashima's view of hospitals. "Ashima thinks it's strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter either to suffer or to die," (4).

Not that I was about to give birth this week, but looking around the νοσοκομείο, (Noso-comeo- this explains why infections you get from the hospital are called "nosocomial infections,") I too felt how death pervades hospitals. Besides the teaching fellows, everyone in the hospital was so old.  I saw quite a few people, rolled by on gurneys, with tubes attached to clear bags of liquid sticking into various parts of their bodies. They looked like they weren't going to be around for much longer. We don't see this in our everyday, which makes it all the more sad when we do.

People kept giving us Americans funny looks because we were all so young and vibrant and LOUD. Once again, we were out of place. Ashima also says, of being a foreigner, that it's a little like being pregnant: "For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continous feeling out of sorts." (49). Word. I'm two months in to life in Greece, and although I'm getting to know my way around, I feel totally pregnant.... I mean, foreign. And this feeling can really weigh down on me, at times. I'm trying to learn the language, but right now I'm still at the point where I can't make out anything anyone says to me but for a single word here and there. I always end up stammering, "Sig noh mee, Milate Agglika?" (Excuse me, do you speak English). And I feel defeated whenever I do. 

Because my last name comes first alphabetically in the teaching fellows group, I was first up for the chest x-ray. It went like this:

A sexy blonde nurse in knee high black boots calls out my name and brings me into a large room, shutting the dungeon-like blue door behind her."Take off your clothes," she barks at me. I'm confused - this is an x-ray, which penetrates through my skin, so shouldn't it penetrate through cotton as well? Also, I don't know which clothes she's talking about. She motions to my shirt, so I unbutton my sweater and lift my T-shirt over my head. I ask if I should also take off my bra. 

Yup.

I'm not particularly modest about my body - I go to the pool two or three times a week and shower completely naked with a bunch of old Greek women. But this was unexpected. No gown, no nothing. Now, completely topless, I have to walk a good fifteen feet across the room over to a strange silver machine. Luckily at this point the only other person in the room is the female nurse. Two of the other female fellows had three male doctors hangin out just lookin at charts while they had to strut their stuff on over to the x-ray. 

Doctor in Greek is γιατρός.

There was no heavy, lead coat to protect the body from the x-ray's harmful radiation. Just me and the cold metal machine. I was told to press my body into it and wait. It made a strange, spaceshippy noise, and then the nurse told me I was done. I walked back across the room and clothed.

Then we made our way over to the TB test:

A young male nurse asks me a bunch of questions and tells me to sit on the bench. A very fat old doctor comes in. They get the needle but realize there isn't enough liquid, so the older doctor goes to get more liquid while the young nurse interrogates me about what I'm doing in Greece while rubbing alcohol all over my forearm. The fat doctor returns, needle in hand. I look away.

The second time I got Gardisil (HPV vaccine, incredibly painful shot), I complained to the nurse about how it was going to hurt. She told me the best thing to do to beat the pain was to take a really deep breath and just breath it out hard and steady as the needle goes in so that your muscles dont tense up. I've been using this trick for all vaccinations since. Not in Greece, though. They tell you to take shallow breaths - to pant, essentially. 

So the needle goes in, and it's fine, like a little pinch.......... until ten seconds later, when the needle's still in, and the nurse is wiggling the needle around in my arm. I'm not sure why he did this. It was pretty freakin unpleasant. By fifteen seconds I was practically yelling at him to take it out.

However, apparently this experience was a vast improvement from two years ago, when Whitney (one of the fellows) was studying abroad here. When she came to get her TB test, the doctor was, yes, smoking, as he administered the shot.

Speaking of smoking, when we went to a second set of doctors to have our chest x-rays approved, the doctors asked me if I smoked. I replied no, believing this was a standard question. But then I discovered that none of the other fellows had been asked if they smoked. I asked the doctor if my x-ray looks as if I smoked, and he nodded. When I persisted that I didn't smoke, (those of you who know me, which is probably anyone reading this blog, know that I don't smoke), he smiled and kinda laughed. "You're young," he said. "There's plenty of time to quit."

Fun facts:
The most important figure in Ancient Greek medicine, Hippocrates (the "Father of Medicine") did a lot of important work regarding the thoracic cavity. He was the first documented chest surgeon, and his findings are still valid. He also brought the categorization of illness into acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic about. He developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still in use today, an oath taken by doctors who swear to practice medicine ethically.
NOTE* Hippocrates is not the same as

hyp·o·crite,  

a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religiousbeliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actuallypossess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.

This word comes from the ancient Greek hypokrites  "stage actor, pretender, dissembler."

We also have the day off tomorrow and next Monday for elections, so I'm headed to Budapest tomorrow morning. Reports to come soon.

Melodrama

In Greece, when you ask someone how they are, they'll usually reply "kala" (good), or  "poli kala" (very good), or "etsi kai etsi" (so and so). If they aren't doing so good, they'll tell you "Eimai halia," which roughly translates to "I'm f*cking terrible." People have been describing the weather as "halia" too, because lately there's been some rain and the sky is grey. (The temperature is still in the high sixties.)

Greeks like to exaggerate.

A few days ago, in the little grocery store near my apartment, I witnessed what would've resembled a stickup if the word for "umbrella" in Greek didn't sound exactly as it does in English.

While I was standing at the checkout counter, a tall Greek man dressed in black walked into the store and began yelling in Greek. My cashier immediately put down the cherry tomatoes I was purchasing, walked around to the front of the store, and began speaking with the tall man in a calm voice, as if trying to settle him down. Soon I recognized, "Brella," and realized what was going on, but as the look on the cashier's face began to match the tall man's look of grave concern, I wondered if I was missing something. The cashier's voice escalated. Both mens' gesticulating hands moved like orchestra conductors', and I wondered if someone would throw a punch. The short, fat woman who weighed the fruits and vegetables rushed over to the two men and began yelling as well, as if to break up the fight. The tall man pointed in my direction. "Seriously?" I thought, "How am I involved in this?" The three of them walked towards me, and I got ready to run. Screw the cherry tomatoes. But they ignored me - the man wanted to look behind the checkout counter to see if his umbrella was there. A line began to form behind me. Another employee, a Greek man in his sixties, rushed up from the back of the store, flailing his arms and yelling "Brella." I began taking deep breaths, wanting to just pay and get the hell out.

I'm not sure if that man ever found his umbrella. But I doubt it mattered to him half as much as the operatic display in the store would have any observer believe - that's just the Greek way of expressing things. Like Italian, the Greek language transforms even the most mundane subject matter into what sounds to a foreigner like the recent birth of triplets or someone getting hit by a bus. It's all very escalated.

Speaking of drama, part of my job is to help out with "forensics." No, I'm not lifting any fingerprints or fishing for blood samples. "Forensics" is what the Greeks call the very popular, very competitive debate and public speaking club in high schools. The word forensics comes from "forens," which means belonging to the public/forum - so it actually makes sense why the word has taken on two so very separate meanings. Soon I will begin coaching a few students in oral interpretation (where they sit on a stool and read a piece of literature aloud) and duet acting. I'm looking forward to it. :)  Also speaking of drama, teaching is all about acting and stage presence. I like teaching a lot more than I thought I would. Being in front of a class was scary at first, but now I just find it fun. Hooray!

I didn't have school yesterday or today, and won't have it tomorrow either. Yest

erday was the "name day" for "Dimitris" - name days are sort of like Birthdays, here. According to Greek Orthodox tradition, every day of the year is dedicated to a Christian saint or martyr. Because Dimitris is considered the protector of the area where the school is, we got the day off. Usually for name days, kids bring sweets to school for their friends and their friends tell them "hronia polla," meaning many years - a wish for good health and prosperity. 

I'm not sure why we get a day off today. We seem to get a whole bunch of random days off between now and Christmas. Tomorrow (October 28th) is "Oxi Day," a national holiday. It is remembered for General Ioannis Metaxas' strong reply of "OXI" (no) to Mussolini's request to allow Italian troops into Greece at the beginning of WWII.

House in Halandri I like

Park where I ran today

So, three days off. I'm trying to maximize my travelling, and had originally planned to go to Thessaloniki (second largest city in Greece, in the North) with some of the other teaching fellows. But for a number of reasons I decided to stay put.

Lizzie is in Paris until Sunday, so I've had the apartment to myself now for two days. As a teacher, you're talking to people and at people all day, and alone time is rare. Right now I'm feeling a bit like Emily Dickinson and I'm actually really enjoying it. I haven't spoken to anyone (face to face) today except my landlord, for all of five seconds, when he knocked on my door to give me some mail. (Allie, I got your package!)  I finished a book today, cleaned my room, spent no euros, went for a run, began some paintings, wrote a song, and have had time to write this blog. Although I wish I could've gone somewhere and used the break, I think this was a necessary "break" for myself. Not that my job is stressing me out, but it feels so good to finish off all the "to-dos" on my list. I know its autumn, but being alone is like spring cleaning for the soul. And we all need that every season.

Pythia Says:

Last weekend, feeling lost at sea, I took a trip to Delphi to consult the oracle. Delphi is both a town and an archeological site, set in the mountains and bordered by the ocean. It's a three hour bus ride northwest of Athens.

The word "Delphi" derives from the same roots as the word "delphys," meaning womb. In ancient Greece, this site was considered the center of the earth, where the earth's "navel" (omphalos) was situated. The greek words for brother, sister, and cousin also include "delphi" - (Adelphos, Adelphi, and Xadelphos/phi).

If you've heard of Delphi, it's probably been in relation to the oracle. (That's all I'd heard about it, at least). But everything at the site, oracle included, stems from the God Apollo.

Apollo was God of light and sun and a whole slew of other things, too - I'm a little baffled as to how one God got to reign over both "medicine," for example, and "the sun." Couldn't they have divvied up responsibilities a little better?

Anyways. Originally, the site was named "Pytho," because this horrible dragon (Python) lived there and protected the Earth's precious belly button. Apollo arrived by sea in the shape of a dolphin, carrying Cretan priests on his back, and slayed the Python. The site was then dedicated to the worship of Apollo, and the oracle delivered prophecies she received from the sun god.



Mythology/etymology overload. Sorry.

Why would I need to consult the oracle?
I guess I've been feeling pretty up and down.
Ups:
At my core (navel), I'm really happy to be here. I'm very proud of myself for having come. It was a big risk to take, and because things have turned out remarkably well, I feel encouraged to take more big risks in life (not like trying heroin for kicks, I mean intelligent, worthwhile risks, like perhaps living in a foreign country again). Coming here has given me a huge confidence boost - I carry a feeling or pride in my decision with me throughout the day. So rah rah!

I've begun taking voice lessons and private Greek lessons, which has been pretty cool, yet also a huge drain on my already low income.

I don't miss Brown nearly as much as I thought I would. Being busy certainly helps. I quite like not having school work hanging over my head at all times. This is a pleasant surprise, because I thought I'd be wishing I was back at Brown all the time. I think this job is just about the best "transition" job anyone could ask for.

The "slow pace of life" in Greece has led me to feel pretty relaxed, overall.  I'm sleeping very well.

Downs:
I won't get into it in too much detail right now, because it merits its own post, but there are some maddening aspects of Greek life. Things are just so freakin inefficient. The "slow pace of life" is definitely a double edged sword. Sometimes at school I feel like I'm going to scream. A lot of time gets wasted.
To give you an example of how the "relaxed lifestyle" permeates every aspect of Greek culture, consider  this: one of the very first verbs they teach you (after to be and to want) is the verb "perimenos" - to wait.

Hanging out with the same nine other Americans is getting frustrating, too. I like them, but the purpose of my being here is to experience Greek culture, and that can be difficult when I hang out with the same English speakers 24/7. Making Greek friends has proven rather difficult - sure, there are some older Greek men who seem pretty keen to hang out, but I'd love to meet someone sub-30. Someone who actually just wants to hang out. Period.

So I went to ask the oracle for advice. Unfortunately, she's no longer in business. Actually, I went to Delphi with four other female teaching fellows to get out of the Athenian smog and away from the boys in the group, who have been real assholes of late.

In some strange "grasping for similarities" way, Delphi reminded me a bit of Mount Desert Island, in Maine. I suppose it's just because both have mountains and sea. Odd things in Greece remind me of home - the smallest similarities are amplified, because overall the spaces are so different.

If I had come here in 393 AD, when the last recorded prophecy was given, here's what would have happened. A young girl (probably in her early teens) who had assumed the title "Pythia"(High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo) would sit inside the temple and place her hands on the "navel," a chasm in the rock from which trance inducing vapours emerged. These got her pretty high, and she began to speak gibberish. Priests would then take her words and reshape them into incredibly enigmatic prophecies, which invariably came true because they were so vague. The young girl usually wouldn't live for very long, because the gasses she inhaled were rather poisonous.

I learned all of this from an English speaking tour guide who was touring a group of elderly Californians around the site. They were happy to let us join in the group. One woman kept asking us about the Greek men.

Still making lots of feline friends.

Language, Part 1

During my first month in Greece, lack of understanding (of Greek) led me to zone out all the time. My brain just started ignoring everything, assuming it wouldn't know what it meant. I'd find myself in outerspace even when speaking with English speakers, like my roommate, Lizzie. Greek class has finally begun, and I'm feeling a little more in tune. I latch onto key words here and there and pat myself for understanding them.

Greek class: Seven of us meet twice a week for an hour and a half with Angeliki, a spunky, beautiful Greek woman in her thirties. I adore her. She brings a very relaxed and fun vibe to the class, while pushing us enough so that we're progressing.

Before class began, I was feeling a little apathetic about learning Greek. Why? Because after this year, I will probably never hear, let alone need to speak Greek again. So it's easy to feel like putting effort into learning Greek is a waste of time. However, the language class has re-sparked my interest. Now that I have a teeny tiny grasp of the language, I want to learn more and more.

On day 1 (we've had four classes thus far) Angeliki zoomed through the alphabet and began writing in Greek immediately.  "Woah lady, slow down" was my initial reaction, and I felt quite frustrated. But this has forced me to learn the alphabet, and now I feel like I've almost got it down. I don't know exactly what goes on in the brain when humans learn new alphabets, but I'd love to find out. It's gotta be good for you. It's exciting to walk around and look at signs and decipher what the words on them sound like. What they mean, well, that's a whole other story.

What they mean is fascinating. Roots of English words are everywhere you look, so it's exciting to study the language from an etymological perspective, even if I won't converse in it much post 2011. There's something extremely satisfying about making connections between English words and their Greek roots: For example, the word for children in Greek is pedi. Like pediatrician!

Other fun connecty words:

Catharsis -to purge

Schizo - to split

Anthras - man 

Xenothoxio-  hotel- place where foreigners (xeno) stay

I could keep going, but English derives around 50,000 words in its lexicon from Greek, and I don't want to get carried away..

I've been listening to "Language Addicts: Greek" (from itunes) while I walk to work (when I'm not crossing at busy intersections and worrying about how not to get killed). I've learned a lot of basic adjectives and nouns this way, although they're kinda random. (Oseedaxeeooho. The pensioner, male.)

Greek has 34 centuries of written records. It may not be popular, but it has some serious staying power. It came much before our Latin alphabet, which came from IT. I must remember, when I get frustrated that the Greek letter for the r sound (ro) looks like what we call P, that this is how it was first. This fact also makes the Greek alphabet quite interesting - it's about a third the same letters we use for the same sounds, a third letters we use for totally different sounds, and a third totally different letters, (and for some totally different sounds, such as "gh" sound or "x" sound - h.) And they dont have a letter for b sound. Or j. James is pronounced Tzames.

Not knowing the language is a pretty serious handicap, even when almost everyone can speak English. I can't begin to imagine how frustrating it must be to only speak a language that isn't commonly known. Not knowing depletes your confidence and you just can't do the things you normally would. Shopping becomes this strange tango of hoping people will not approach you and speak and psyching yourself up to go ask for what you need. I've begun to rely on "Ummmmm," which Greeks don't use as a staller. Instead they say, "eennnhhh" or "ahhh" to fill the space between words.

I've been in touch with a private tutor and am going to try and set up a lesson for this coming week.
Should be fluent soon.