It's summer!

The very last part of the academic year for me was to work at the English language summer camp put on by the school’s English department.  The camp is designed for students finishing grades K-6, and our job was to work with individual classes (mine had sixteen fifth and sixth graders) on arts, crafts, science experiments, and make sure they got to daily sessions with other counselors (fitness, swimming, art, music, and dance).  A few takeaways from this:

1.  Fifth and sixth graders are the SLOWEST walkers in the history of the world.  Seriously.  My 15-month-old niece could probably move more quickly than them.

2.  Despite claiming to have common sense and the ability to use it, students of that age group should NEVER be trusted to use anything related to fire, lest they start a fire in their art class using a candle, used matches, and the paper from a crayon.

3.  Greek school lunches are far superior to any other school lunch.

4.  Primary education is not even remotely close to what I should be teaching.

Yay summer!

 Above and below:  projects the students worked on during certain parts of the camp.

Of course, no summer camp would be complete without a moose.

"It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN"

It occurs to me that I haven’t really written much about the school itself.  Well, there’s a reason for this: it’s not all that different from a U.S. school.  Now, before you start throwing stuff at me for lying to you, let me justify this argument:

SIMILARITY:  Students take the same types of classes (math, science, social studies, literature, music, English, ancient Greek and Latin.

DIFFERENCE:  Just about all of these classes are taught in Greek.  Surprise!

SIMILARITY:  Students get just excited about Christmas and Easter  breaks as we do.

DIFFERENCE:  Students dread their end-of-year tests much more than we do.

On that last point, I want to share with you a bit about why students live in terror of these tests.  You see, it’s not just a final exam like we know.  Our finals are packed in to about three days at the end of the semester; their finals are spread across a 4-week period, and the scores they receive on these tests carry the same weight for college admissions as the ACT or SAT do for us.  Talk about high stakes testing.  Students, particularly the seniors, stop showing up at school for the last three weeks or so because that time is more valuable for them to be studying independently than to be in class.  Makes for some pretty small (i.e. 0) class sizes.

During the testing period, the school is on LOCKDOWN.  Seriously… we are not allowed in a 30 meter radius of the school building, and security takes this perimeter very seriously.

"Tresspassing forbidden.  Violators will be shot"
Not really, but it's a much better sign that way.
And most of you can't call me out for a bad translation, anyway.

Now with the intensity of these exams, you’d probably expect the Greeks to have a fool-proof way to secure the integrity of the tests.  You’re right – they do.  Let me give you an example for the English exams*.  The writing prompts are decided between sundown and sunrise the morning of the test, and the questions are released to the schools about 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the school day.  It’s hard to cheat when the test writers don’t even know what the writing topic will be, eh?

Oh, Greece…

*This is based on hearsay.  I have no reason to doubt that it’s true, but don’t quote me on it.

Forensics... and not the murder mystery kind.

One of the big parts of my job this year was to work with the forensics (speech and debate) team for our school.  Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a nerd… it’s hard to break away from it all, though!  In fact, I think this year marked my 10-year anniversary of beginning speech-related activities!  Crazy.

Anyhow, the program in Greece shares many similarities to that in Minnesota.  I have never done debate, but I found some striking similarities to mock trial, so it really felt like a natural bridge to cross.  We had around 60 high school debaters that I worked with at different points throughout the year, as well as a group of 16 middle school students that I worked with for about two hours every Tuesday.  Oh yes, middle school students in a class-like setting after a full school day.  That brought back all kinds of great memories.

I also worked with the speech portion of the team, specifically with persuasive speeches.  These kids were fun to work with, taking on topics such as poverty, privacy, perfectionism, phones, and many other.  All of this culminated with the Panhellenic Forensics Association Tournament, hosted at our school for teams from 18 schools across the country.  This four-day tournament and the planning of it kept me at school late into the night in February and March, but it paid off in the end.  We won the team trophy, and we were the only school with finalists in every event!  Not too bad!

Oops.

Guess I forgot about this for a while.  My bad.  Well, you're in luck now, because I'm about to give you an UNPRECEDENTED amount of posts in a short amount of time.  Actually, that's probably not even true (see November 2010)... but the point is I'm going to create, for your reading and viewing pleasure, enough posts to give me cover for another three months.

And so it begins...

Carnival!

This past weekend, I joined with several other fellows and friends for a trip to Skyros for the Carnival weekend.  Skyros is a moderately sized island that’s known for a few things these days:

1.  The hiding place of Achilles when he was trying to avoid the Trojan war.  He dressed as a woman and was only discovered when his searchers staged an attack on the island.  Instead of running and hiding, Achilles pulled a sword out of his dress and stood to fight them.  Oops.

Nicholas Poussin's Achilles on Skyros.
Can you spot him?

2.  Skyros is one of the places with the most traditional Carnival celebrations, including (but not limited to) the yeros, or “old man.”  By one mythological account, there was a great calamity on the island, one that killed all of the goats living there.  The shepherds (yeros) came to the town to warn the people of the impending calamity, and they were ominous creatures.  Dressed in goat hair with a goat skin mask, the yeros these days prance along the streets, jangling the bells on their hips (100+ pounds of bells).  It seems like they’re usually drunk, too.  It’s hard to miss them.

Because Clean Monday is a national holiday (it’s the equivalent of Ash Wednesday), we had the opportunity to spend three days on the island.  We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring parts of the island and town, respectively, and had our fair share of delicious foods.  I tried some rooster for one of these meals, but the best dish was baked goat meat with a cheese sauce, cooked with tomatoes and peppers.  And the best part?  Our onlooker:

The nights were a different story.  Things were pretty slow on the island ‘til about midnight or so, when it seemed much of the island headed to the bars.  A funky mix of Greek pop, American pop, and Greek traditional music and dancing made for some fun, late nights.  Sunday night was capped off with some dancing in the street (I was more of an observer than a participant, although I had a great dance with a giraffe) and a bit of spanakopita.

Thanks to Christie for the picture.
I hope you don't mind...

Trust me, I have just about as much of an idea of what
I'm doing as you probably do right now.

A good time was had by all.

It's official. Monks are nuts.

About two weeks ago, I was feeling the itch to get out of Athens.  I had a long weekend coming up, and I figured it’d be good to explore some of the north a bit more.  I finished my school day around 1:15 on Friday, and I caught a 3:30 bus north to Kalambaka, or more specifically, to Meteora. 

Meteora ranks right alongside of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland in terms of strangeness.  Sheer cliffs rising up hundreds of feet from the ground are spectacular enough to see; add in the fact that there are monasteries perched on top of the cliffs makes it a remarkable place to visit. 

 vs.

I’d imagine you probably have two questions going through your mind right now:

Q:  How were the monasteries constructed so high up like that?  More specifically, how did anyone get up there to build them?

A:  There are a few theories about this one.  The first idea is that some absolutely crazy monk free-climbed the rock with a rope, then he began pulling up supplies and people.  The second is that monks flew a gigantic kite over the rocks with a rope ladder attached.  You choose.

Q:  How did YOU get up to visit them?

A:  I flew.

Q:  Okay, seriously, how DID you get up there?

A:  Fine.  I hiked the trail between the rocks, then climbed the stone stairs to the top of each monastery.  Happy?

It was a long hike, but it was well-rewarded with a delicious plate of lamb and potatoes, a side of xorta (I've seen it translated as “green stuff,” and it’s very literally green plants picked from a mountain.  It’s like eating dandelion leaves, but better), and some wine to wash it all down.  It’s a pretty routine meal in the villages – jealous?

Can Bake Sales Fix the National Deficit?

For Halloween and Thanksgiving, the school put on bake sales as fundraisers for various departments.  Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking “oh, that’s a cute way to raise a bit of money!”  Wrong.  There is nothing cute about these bake sales.  Nor is it a “bit” of money we’re talking about.  These bake sales were OBSCENELY HUGE and incredibly profitable.  The proceeds brought in from the sales of cupcakes, brownies, cookies, bars, cakes, muffins, hot dogs, and whatever else I’m forgetting are large enough to fully fund the scholarship for multiple students to attend this school, not an insignificant amount. 

I’ll never again discredit bake sales as a waste of time…