Tanks or Sheep?

Well, Tuesday was St. Demetrius Day, and Friday was Oxi day (Oxi is pronounced "Ohi," and it's the Greek word for "No." The Greek word for "Yes" is pronounced "Ne," which can be confusing as hell.). Saint Demetrius, you see, is the patron saint of Thessaloniki, and so his day is a local holiday. Oxi day is a celebration of the day when Metaxas, the Greek dictator, said "Oxi" to the Italians who wanted to invade Greece.
As a result of these two consecutive holidays, the school is closed, the dorms are closed, and the kids went home. Brad and I wanted to go somewhere for a few days, but we waited a little too long to find a hotel- everything seemed to be booked. I guess holiday weekends are a hectic time to travel, even if it's not tourist season. I did have a memorable conversation with a hotel owner in Meteora, though, when I asked her "Do you have any rooms available yesterday?" It took me a little while to figure out why she was laughing. I need to review the different between "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow."
That's OK, though; we had fun without a long trip. On Friday we went to the Oxi day parade, which is kind of like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, except that the weather is not freezing cold, people don't show up three hours ahead of time to find places to sit (Greeks are infinitely more relaxed than New Yorkers. I find this simultaneously great and mystifying. ), and instead of big balloons in the shape of cartoon characters, there are tanks and people in traditional dress from all different regions of Greece. Okay, so it's nothing like the Thanksgiving Day parade, although it does have marching bands.
You know, when I studied abroad in England, I did a lot of travelling, and took a fair number of pictures of sheep. After I got home, I spent a lot of time wondering why on earth I had taken so many pictures of sheep. Well, I had a similar experience after I got home from the parade; I looked at my camera, and wondered why I had taken so many pictures of tanks. I don't particularly like tanks, and I certainly don't expect that I'll ever be sitting around the house one day and think "Wow, you know, right now I really feel like looking at pictures of tanks." I just don't ever do that. I'd be more likely to look at the sheep, which are at least attractive in a pastoral sort of white fluffy way, whereas tanks are just sort of menacing.
But I do have pictures of tanks; lots of different kinds of tanks. Maybe I'll even post some for you.
Anyway, after the parade, Brad and I went out to visit the grandparents of our friend Christos. They spend April-October in a house on the beach, and since it was about 90 degrees out (Lately Greek weather has been even weirder than Iowan weather; it was 45 last week) we went for a swim. The water was a little chilly, but still significantly warmer than the water in Maine. It felt pretty nice. I haven't been swimming in a while. After that, we went to a taverna by the beach and ate so much delicious food- shrimp and these little fish that are fried whole and fresh. The owner actually apologized to us because some of the seafood had been brought to him by the fisherman the evening before and not on the same day.
Afterwards, we sat around in the garden of the beachouse and talked. It was a lovely, relaxing way to spend an afternoon, especially one of the last very warm afternoons of the season. I contemplated taking pictures of flowers to balance out all of my pictures of tanks, but never got around to it. However, I was given a pomegranate, which was exciting. I've never had a pomegranate picked right off a tree before.
Yesterday was rainy and cold and I could not believe that it had been 90 degrees the day before. Brad and I decided to take a trip to Pella, which is an ancient city only a short bus ride away. Unfortunately, our bus ride was a little bit longer than we intended, and we somehow ended up an extra few miles down the road in Giannanitsa. Luckily, a friendly bus driver there picked us up, explained to us (In English) that he was headed to Pella, and stopped the bus and waited for us while we bought tickets from a periptera. Yes, you read that right; he stopped the bus, I got off, bought the tickets and got back on. I won't even bother to describe what would happen if I asked a New York City bus driver to stop the bus and wait while I bought a metrocard.
Anyway, we made it back to Pella, and saw the ruins of an ancient city there, which were quite interesting, and also saw some nice artifacts and mosaics inside the Pella museum. Pella, you see, used to be the head of the Macedonian kingdom before everyone decided to mysteriously leave in the first century BC.
Anyway, Happy Halloween to everyone in the US. Greece doesn't seem to celebrate Halloween nearly as much as the US does. I've practically forgotten about it. I'll have to come up with a costume. Maybe I'll be a high school student- everyone has been mistaking me for one lately, so it wouldn't be very hard to do.

Oh, and here's a tank:


And here's a crown that's much prettier than the tank:

Miss Emily, Bearer of Maple Syrup

Well, another portion of my job began this week; I substitute taught five classes for an English teacher that was out of town. That's right; five classes in three days, with no prior teaching experience. But it wasn't nearly as harrowing as I expected it to be.
Well, OK, subbing ninth-graders (third formers) during the last period class on Friday was somewhat harrowing, particularly during the last fifteen minutes of class. I was trying to come up with an activity that was more enjoyable than simple vocab exercises, but the only activity that he kids appeared to be interested in was shrieking, gossiping and causing increasing amounts of mayhem as the final bell of the day approached.
However, I also subbed three class periods for a group of seventh graders who were a whole lot of fun. On the first day we read "I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman. I was of course very excited to be teaching Whitman, even on a very basic level. We went through the poem very slowly, going over vocabularly words like "varied", "carols", "mason", "blithe", etc. I just wanted them to understand the poem in a very literal sense, but one girl made me extremely hapy by raising her hand and explaining in very good English that "It's not about real singing, it's about all of the sounds of America together combining into a sort of beautiful sound, and the poet thinks it's kind of like a song." Of course, being a seventh grader, she had to add "and I like the part about mothers and women singing, because I think girls sing better than boys." This lead to a heated debate about the comparable musical abilities of each gender, and at the end of class I let anyone who wanted to come up and sing for the class. We had two musical numbers: a boy who imitated an Opera singer, and a group of girls who sang something from the Phantom of the Opera, but substituted 'La La La' for all the words they did not know, which were most of the words.
On Friday we had a double period together, and the lesson was about the first Thanksgiving. I realized pretty quickly that Greek kids really don't know anything about Thanksgiving at all; I explained that "it's a holiday celebrating the pilgrims and how they made it through the first winter," and the kids all looked confused and asked "what's a pilgrim?"
As a matter of fact, the two class periods devoted to the Thanksgiving lesson were filled with questions that I found completely adorable. "Miss, what is Mass...a...Shoo...Setts?" "What is a Conn-Eck-Ti-Kut?" "What is Pumpkin?" I showed them all a map of New England and drew a picture of a Jack-O-Lantern on the board, and they seemed to recognize that.
They were a pretty sharp bunch of kids, as evidenced by their reaction to a picture of the Mayflower in their readers. "Look at this boat!" One of them said. "It's old. But look at the boat behind it.That's not right" I looked, and sure enough, in the picture, there appeared to be a speedboat behind the Mayflower. I laughed, and explained that it was probably a picture of the Mayflower's modern day replica, not the Mayflower itself.
My favorite questions, though, had to do with maple syrup. The lesson explained how Squanto and Samoset taught the pilgrims to tap maple trees for sap, a fact which was somewhat complicated to explain to kids that aren't really familiar with maple syrup. "They drilled holes in trees," I said, "and they took the sticky stuff out, that's the sap. And then they boiled it somehow, and it became a syrup, a little bit like honey."
This explanation was met with a lot of puzzled expressions. "Like Resin?" asked one girl. "I put resin on my violin, and it comes from a tree."
"Eww!" shrieked her neighbor, "But you don't eat the stuff on your violin."
"But you can make retsina with it!" one kid piped up.
"Exactly!" I said. "Retsina comes from trees, too."
However, one kid still was not satisfied. "Miss Emily?" he asked, "Who had the idea to make sap into syrup?"
"The Native Americans did." I said. "They taught the pilgrims how to do it."
"But how did the Native Americans get the idea?"
"I don't know. I guess they were experimenting, and they found it it tasted good."
He looked doubtful. "Someone just said 'OK, I will take this sticky stuff from a tree and boil it and eat it?"
I had to admit, the kid had a point.
"Well, " I finally managed, "Whose idea was it to take stuff from pine trees and make wine from it?"
That seemed to stump them. However, we didn't pursue the topic, because the bell rang for break, and I went back to my apartment and dug out the container of maple syrup that my sister sent me from Vermont a few weeks back. I also bought a few kuluri (sesame seed covered dough sticks) and cut them into pieces, and brought the whole mess back to the classroom, where I informed the kids that they could try some maple syrup when we finished the lesson. This caused a general wave of excitement to spread across the room, because of course, there's nothing that gets the attention of kids more than food, especially sugary food.
"Hey!" I shouted, trying to get their attention, "settle down, please!" there was no reponse. "Hey!" I tried again, louder. Still nothing.
"Alright!" I called, one last time, "You can try the maple syrup, but first you have to settle down. Endaxi?"
The kids shut up immediately and stared at me. I could see them all thinking the same thing: "She speaks Greek?" It's amazing the effect that one simple word like Endaxi ("all right") can have.
While we finished the last few paragraphs about Thanksgiving, I passed around the maple syrup bottle, which featured pictures of people taking sap from trees. After a few more minutes of reading, including a tough time wading through a 17th century quote from William Bradford ("Miss, what does "hath" mean? What is this "unto"?) I finally poured some maple syrup onto a plate and let them dip the pieces of kuluri in to sample it. It was an interesting combination. They seemed to like the maple syrup pretty well. Unfortunately, I had to rush to clean up the sticky disaster that was left behind from having twenty seventh graders rushing to have the first taste. As I said good bye, one of the kids asked "When will you teach us again? So we can have some more of this?"
I guess it's a universal rule; food will always win affection.

Where are the Americans?

For the past few months I haven't seen a whole lot of Americans. I mean, there are Americans at Anatolia of course (it is the "American College"), but there aren't too many of us walking around downtown.

However, I've finally figured out how to find Americans in Thessaloniki. The other day I was in Ladidaka, which is one of the city' historic areas, and famous for its restaurants. It was about 7pm, and I was just strolling along and taking in the atmosphere. Ladidaka is picturesque, with cobblestone streets and old buildings. It was also largely deserted so early in the evening.
However, as I walked past restaurants, I couldn't help but notice a trend. There were a few people sitting inside and eating dinner- and they were quite definitely all American. I'm not sure how I knew that they were American; maybe it was the fact that they didn't physically look Greek, maybe it was the fact that they weren't wearing trendy European clothes, maybe it was the fact that many of them were eating at the one steakhouse with a sign in English. However, they definitely looked like people I would expect to see on the other side of the Atlantic. Greeks just don't eat dinner at 7pm. Most restuarants don't open until 8pm, and if they are open early, people spend several hours sipping coffee or wine before they actually order food.

It was very funny. I don't think I've seen so many Americans in one place in a while.

OK, I've got to go. It's my turn to take the kids out. But before I go, here are some more nice pictures from Olympus.

Setting Free the Bears and More Food

In Grinnell, this past Saturday was 10/10, a massive, obnoxious, raucous annual party at which many people consume enough alcohol to render themselves either comatose or nauseous for the remainder of the weekend.
In Greece, they don't have 10/10, but that doesn't mean you can't overindulge in various pleasures. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. However, instead of drinking horrendous cheap wine in the pursuit of oblivion, Brad, our new friend Christos and I managed to become blissfully oblivious through the liberal consumption of cheap good wine and some of the most spectacular food I have eaten in my entire life.
For example: Crisp fresh cucumbers and juicy tomatoes with creamy salty feta cheese. Red peppers in olive oil still warm from being roasted. Crunchy cabbage in vinegar. Pork sausage with mustard (yes, I actually ate pork). A spicy feta cheese dip called tirosalata. Creamy tzatziki. Incredibly fresh cooked greens with lemon and salt. Chicken gastra, (a special local dish cooked at a low temperature for a number of hours) with plums, so tender you barely even have to chew it. Light sponge cake soaked in honey. Chocolate biscuit cake topped with whipped cream. Oh, and for breakfast, tiropita (like spanikopita without the spanaki, ie, spinach) bread, fresh honey and jam from fruit that tasted like it was wonderful and fresh.
Oh yeah- and good wine, of course. I don't actually know anything about wine, so I can't give you some impressive description like "an earthy fruity red with nuances of fig, peach blossom and tree nut" or "full bodied white with scents of pine nut and wheatgrass." I can't actually really distinguish between zinfandel or merlot or rose. But it was wine, and it came out of a barrel, which was pretty cool. And it tasted good.
All of this hedonism took place in Nympheo, a tiny village quite close to the border. What border, you ask? The border of a country known to some as Macedonia, to some as FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and to some as Scopia. I'm not going to get into the political implications of which name is the official one, but basically, you shouldn't say "Macedonia" to a Greek unless you want to start an argument. See, the northern part of Greece is also considered Macedonia, and there are some disputes over who has the right to consider themselves a citizen of Macedonia.
Anyway, Nympheo is high in the mountains and quite beautiful. It was abandoned sometime in the early twentieth century, but in the 1980s some people came along and decided to restore it, and it's all cobblestone streets and picturesque houses. I didn't take good enough pictures, but here's a glance at it, anyway:





The other really cool thing about Nympheo is that they have a bear sanctuary, started by a rich wine-maker to save former dancing bears from the abuse they experienced in captivity. The sanctuary, called Arcturus, has seven former dancing bears, some former zoo bears, and some bears orphaned in the wild. They are mostly European Brown Bears, but there's on American Black Bear from the Belgrade Zoo. I took some pictures of the bears, and they didn't turn out so well, but I am going to post one anyway. I'm afraid that if I don't, you are all going to think I've just been reading too many John Irving novels and dreamed up the entire thing. See, here's a bear:



Anyway, the people at Arcturus seem to be doing really great work. Apparently there are now laws in Greece against forcing bears to perform, and two more bear sanctuaries are opening in Eastern Europe soon.

The other major event of the weekend was the Greece-Denmark football game. (And here I am obviously referring to European football, aka soccer.) It determined who goes to the World Cup, and it was not a good moment for Greece. So there are a lot of depressed Greek football fans right now. I guess I didn't escape sports-related misery when I left the US. But at least the Yankees lost yesterday.

Olympus

I hurt all over. I can't go up or down steps without wincing. My leg muscles have gone from feeling great to feeling gelatinous to feeling like someone attacked them with a baseball bat. But I did climb Mount Olympus.
When it comes to field trips, I think Zeus hates me, because it rained at the beach last weekend, and it rained on Saturday, starting at about 3am, when I was awakened by a torrential rainstorm and had to run and close my windows. It died down in the morning as were boarding the buses for Olympus, but by the time we reached Prionia, it was pouring again, and my backpack was soaked before we even set foot on the trail. I was thanking every deity in the Pantheon that I had borrowed a windbreaker at the last minute; I had been planning to bring just a heavy sweatshirt, but Teresa, the assistant director of the dorms, came along just in time to talk some sense into me. (I did attend the information session, but it was largely in Greek, and although I did have translation for most of it, there may have been some parts I missed. I did understand lots of words like "shoes","very cold","shirts","flowers", etc. However, I only understand when people talk very, very slowly, so at a normal Greek pace, (ie, at the speed of light with no discernable pauses between words) I have hard time telling "Bring extra shirts and don't pick the flowers" from "Bring extra shirts and make sure they have floral patterns on them.")
Anyway, Prionia was the start of our trek. In case you are picturing some sort of town or village, I should explain that Prionia is Greek for "Parking Lot with Drinking Water, Mule Pen and Locked Bathrooms." Why were the bathrooms locked? I don't know. There were definitely quite a few people who wanted to use them. However, I am starting to learn that in Greece, you can never count on things being open when you would like them to be open, so I was not terribly surprised to find them closed.
So we started up the path, through the raininess and mud. It wasn't a tough hike at the beginning; one of our guides had told me to expect something akin to hiking in Maine, and in some ways it did remind me of Maine,(evergreen trees, etc) though it was a bit steeper than the hikes I've taken there. Here's a picture taken on the lower part of the mountain, between Prionia and the Refuge:


Apparently, it usually takes hikers between one and a half to four hours to get to the refuge in nice weather. In the rain, we all somehow made it in under three. When I say "we all", I'm referring to Brad and I, several Anatolia teachers and alums who were acting as guides and chaperones, and about sixty-five high school seniors. It wasn't pouring all the way up there, luckily, though it was definitely damp, and did get a bit chilly. We were below the tree line (the refuge is just about at the point where the trees stop) so we were somewhat protected from the weather, and there was the psychological advantage of knowing that something was there to catch you if you happened to topple off the path, not that anyone did. Actually, I have to say that I was just thrilled about the cold, at lest for a little while. Remember, I've spent the past month in the Greek sun, which is a little more intense than I'm used to, especially in September. My internal seasonal clock has spent the past few weeks shrieking "Why the hell is it so damn hot outside?" I definitely spent some time hiking through the 50 degree drizzle in a t-shirt, and it felt so wonderful. I was ecstatic. I think some of the Greeks might have thought I was completely crazy.

(Random Weather-and-Dampness-Related Digression: Speaking of cold and damp, I've noticed that Greeks react in horror whenever they see me walking around with wet hair. Since I've never actually used a hairdryer, I am used to American people admonishing me about my frozen hair in the winter. However, lately, whenever I wash my hair I'll have someone Greek ask "Aren't you afraid, walking around with wet hair?" My answer is usually a confused "Afraid of what? It's seventy-five degrees outside...")

Anyway, we reached the refuge at about a quarter to five. The refuge is a sort of hostel type place for hikers to stay on their way up the mountain. They have food, wine, lots of tea, coffee and hot chocolate, beds, snacks, drinking water and toilets. Of course, the toilets are Turkish-style; for those of you unfamiliar with that term "Turkish Toilet", it's basically a euphemism for "hole in the floor." However, a hole in the floor is way better than a hole in the woods if you ask me, so I was not complaining.

The Refuge was packed. There were even people sleeping in the dining room, because who wants to camp in the rain? We all ate lots of dinner, drank lots of tea and some wine, and went to bed at 1O pm. It was a cold night. I slept in sweatpants and a longsleeved shirt, with two blankets on top of me, and I was still a bit chilly. The novelty of the cold was definitely starting to wear off. We were told that the nighttime temperature was below zero degrees Celsius, which means it was somewhere in the twenties. (I am completely incapable of converting Celsius into Fahrenheit and vice versa. I spent an entire semester in London making inaccurate guesses about the weather and I will likely spend a year in Greece doing the same because I just cannot seem to get the conversion information through my utterly unmathematical brain.) Getting up in the dark at 6am is not easy in that sort of weather, but we did it. Its a good thing the lodge had coffee. I briefly wondered if my normal two cups of coffee was bad idea on this particular day; would it be worse to climb Olympus while caffeine deprived, or to climb Olympus while needing to pee? Caffeine deprivation won out in the end but luckily neither was a problem.

By the way, here is a picture of the view from the lodge:



We started climbing again at around 745 on Sunday morning. After an hour or so, we were well above the trees, and the farther we climbed, the more snow there was on the ground. It was foggy, and so there was not much of a view. It started to look something like this:





I confess that at this point, I was starting to get scared. The path was getting increasingly slippery, and I was afraid that coming down was going to be unpleasant, especially since I was not the only one wearing running shoes and not hiking boots. (They would have taken up half my suitcase!) The large amounts of fog (or should I say cloud) made it seem unlikely that we would see much at the top, and I was really enthusiastic about certain portions of the trail that seemed to go awfully close to huge menacing precipices. In fact, the first time I came close enough to see over the edge of the huge cliff we were on, I found myself shaking a bit, quite literally. Shaking is not a helpful climbing technique.

It occurred to me that perhaps Olympus was the home of immortal beings for a reason, namely the fact that has a way of claiming the lives of those who are not immortal. I decided that if I were a god, I would certainly make Olympus my home, and maybe equip it with a supernatural flying chariot system, public restrooms and an Indian restaurant. However, being mortal, I decided that avoiding an early death might be a good idea. Actually, our guide seemed to agree with me on this, and I found that heartening...until he explained that he was still recieving orders to go ahead through the snow. "Come on!" Our other guide tried to encourage me and the others who were scared. "Dont you want to be able to tell your grandchildren you saw Skolio?" I tried to explain that I wasnt going to have the opportunity to have grandchildren if I died within the next few hours, but nonetheless, we plunged ahead.

We reached Skala a few minutes later. Skala is Greek for "Ice encrusted sign pointing the way to Skolio" Here is Skala:



Skolio, our destination, is the second highest peak on on Olympus, only seven metres shorter than Mitykas, which is the mythical home of the Gods. It was a very short walk from Skala, and it was quite beautiful. It was at Skala that I decided that the climb had not been such a bad idea after all. We all got some rest, took lovely pictures, and marveled at the German hikers who were drinking beer on the mountaintop. It was still cold, foggy and snowy, but the view was pretty nice anyway. Here are some pictures. Im even in one of them, just so you all know that I am not just posting postcard images and making stuff up. I really did make it all the way up there, see:



I confess that I was still terrified of the trip back. However, once we got going, the clouds parted, the snow and ice melted, and the fog lifted. The view was absolutely unbelievable. I'll show you pictures, but I dont think they can do it justice. I felt kind of like I was inside an issue of National Geographic. Even the heights stopped bothering me. I tried to compare the Olympus precipice to a New York subway platform; in each case, one step over the edge could certainly cause death, but that just means you just damn well better not take that step over the edge.

Anyway, once the clouds lifted, the entire trip became more than worth it. It was even worth all of the pain that I'm in right now as I limp around the dorm. It is one of the most exciting things I've done in quite some time.

The trip back was easier in most ways, and a whole lot quicker. We stopped at the lodge for lunch, a little bit more wine, and some rest, then finished the last leg of the trip by 4:30pm or so. I think the bus ride home took about two hours, but it only felt like half an hour or son, because I was in a daze of exhaustion.

Anyway, here are some more pictures, and trust me, I've got lots more to show you...but right now I'm going to sit down and stretch for a little while longer.