Well ladies and gentlemen, here is the anticipated post about my Easter Break Vacation.

I use the word “vacation” lightly, because I didn’t do much relaxing – I did a lot of moving around haha.

I left Vienna on a plane to Belgrade, Serbia at 9:30am on monday. With a 2 hour layover in Belgrade, I then flew to Athens, arriving at about 5pm Greek time. I was in Belgrade at lunch time, so I thought I would grab some lunch, hang out, everything would be cool.

Too bad I didn’t have any money!

Now, not to freak you all out, I did have money – I had euros. Serbia doesn’t use euros as currency. I didn’t even think about this, and now I was stuck at the airport with no food at lunch. I was definitely annoyed at myself that I didn’t do my research.

Finally I arrive in Athens, and I go outside to the bus terminal stop. The weather in Athens was BEAUTIFUL! It was almost 20 degrees, the sun was shining! I was so happy!!

I had to buy a bus ticket, and ride the bus for 45 minutes to the inter-city bus terminal, where I would catch a bus to Volos, about 4 hours away. The bus fair to Volos (round trip) was 52euros. That seems wildly expensive to me, considering my flights (round trip) cost 133euro. 52 euro is like $80 Canadian! I dunno, it seemed pricey to me.

I got into Volos at 10pm that night, to be greeted by my lovely friend and mentor Chara (pronounced: Ha-ra). She is the Greek YFU coordinator, in charge of all the YFU exchange students that come to Greece. YFU stands for “Youth For Understanding”, and is an exchange program that I was a part of on my previous summer exchange to Greece. Chara is very kind and fun, and really took care of me the last time I was in Greece. And so she offered to take me in this time around as well, and let me stay with her family while Ii was in town. She’s awesome – I highly reccommend any and all students take part in the program and go to Greece. It was wonderful to see Chara and Michael (her husband) again since they were a big part of my exchange 3 years ago.

On Tuesday I went with Chara and Michael around to run errands, and then they dropped me off at the bus station where I caught a bus to Stefanovikio. Stefanovikio is the village my host family lived, and where I spent nearly all of my time while on exchange.

I got off the bus and walked to my host family’s home. My host mom Vicky just had a baby boy about a month ago, so it was custom for her to stay home and not go out for 40 days after she has a child. So she and her other children moved in with her parents temporarily so she would have some help with the children and the baby.

Vicky did not know I was coming that day. She knew I was in Europe, and that I planned on coming to Greece at some point, but I did not tell her the exact date. I wanted to surprise her! I thought it would be wonderful and exciting!

In hind sight, I probably should have given her warning….. it really caught her off-guard, and with all the other things going on, I think a surprise addition to the family stressed her out a little. But, there was not much to be done about it at that point.

I spent the whole day with the family and the children, and in the evening I went to Vicky’s english school to see some of her students. Vicky runs her own english school in Stefanovikio, and so whenever I was in the village she would take me with her and I would help teach english/practice pronunciations, grammar, etc. Its super cool to do, but also a little disheartening because I quickly realize there are lots of things about MY OWN LANGUAGE that I don’t know or know properly. I don’t ever remember taking a proper grammar class in school. I don’t even know if I know the differences between adjectives and verbs and adverbs and all that crap. And these kids are half my age and know all that stuff. The only way I know if something is grammatically correct is if it sounds right. If it sounds like a weird sentence, then the grammar probably isn’t right. That’s so sad!! These 10 year old kids probably speak more correct english than I do, and I am embarrassed by that.

So I always like going to the school because I feel like I also learn a little something. The students also ask me to pronounce words to try to match it and match my accent. It’s weird to be analyzed like that – these kids ask me to speak properly so they can learn and copy how I talk. I sometimes feel the pressure of that, and so I find I pay extra close attention to the things I say and how I say them. That’s good for me too, I guess.

In the evening I went back to Volos on the bus and stayed with Chara and Michael.

The next morning Chara wanted to take me to the open market. It’s pretty much how you would imagine an outdoor market to be. There were stalls selling anything from household cleaning supplies to shoes to jewelry to home furnishings. There is no haggling or bartering or things like that, but things are so cheap you don’t need to. There will be tables of jackets or shirts or scarves, and every item costs 1 euro. I think I can afford that. Actually, when we asked a lady how much something cost, she jokingly said that “there was no way we could afford it!”

It was 2euros. I was okay haha.

In the afternoon I went back to the village to see the family. In the evening I went to the school again to help some students preparing for exams in a month or so. Afterwards I went out to the cafeteria with some of my friends. A cafeteria is pretty much like a coffee shop style, but also serves alcohol and mixed drinks, etc. I myself always order a cold/frozen chocolate. Its like chocolate milk and a chocolate frosty from Wendy’s blended together and served with ice – it’s really smooth and refreshing, and my favorite thing to get.

We sat around in the cafeteria and ate german chocolate I brought for them.

It was a little weird if Ii’m being honest. I saw these girls 3 years ago, when they were so small and young. Now they’re in high school and planning their future careers. It seemed crazy to me. A girl I knew was 10 last time I saw her, and now she’s 13 and about 3 inches taller and looks so grown up! It made me feel old, to be honest haha.

Throughout the evening the students seemed to kind of rotate, and so I ended the evening with a different group of kids than I started with. It was really nice – we had drinks, and then went for gyros (score!).

That evening I stayed in Stefanovikio with my family, which was really nice.

The next morning I woke up early and went to school with my friend Demitra or Δήμητρα (hopefully I spelled the english version right!). She’s now 15, and still in Junior High. So it was SUPER weird to go to school with her, considering the last time I was in Junior high was 6 years ago! 

But on Thursday they didn’t have regular classes. On Friday it was Greece’s Independence Day, celebrating their Independence from  Turkey. So on thursday the kids had to go to school for presentations/a celebration before Independence Day the next day. So it was a good day to go. I was introduced to yet MORE kids that I don’t remember their names (sorry!!), and met more boys than I had previously. When I was in the village 3 years ago, there weren’t any kids my age in the first place, and the girls I did hangout with were mostly 13-15 years old. The boys that age were shy or “gross”, so I never met any boys. But all my friends now are older teenagers and are boy crazy, so I met more boys on this trip.

The first thing they did was practice their parading. The next day there was going to be a big parade in the village square, and they students would carry flags and march in the parade. So they had a rehearsal the day before. I have a short clip of it that you can see here. It’s a little shaky because I didn’t want to be too obvious or make the kids uncomfortable. The girls in the very front are my friends. You can also here the boys in the back yelling and chanting and whatnot, but you don’t really see them much because they stop before they get close to me. Several of the female students I had met over the past 2 nights at Vicky’s school, so many of them said hello to me and asked how I was doing when they saw me.

It’s always funny to be in a group of people who don’t speak your language because you always can tell when they’re talking about you. First of all, my name stands out because it doesn’t sound greek AT ALL. And most of the time, me and some students will be standing around, and another student will join us, and there will be a loud conversation (often including my name) that I don’t understand, followed by a hush, and then the new student will say “Hello” or “Good morning” or “how are you” to me in english. They all seemed to like me though – throughout the whole day, I kept hearing “Emma, take a selfie with us” or “Would you like a selfie?” So there are a bunch of greek kids who I don’t really know running around with a bunch of selfies of me on their phones, and I will probably never see them. Oh well.

They really included me at school, and introduced me to all their teachers. The english teacher was the only one who seemed to refuse to talk to me, which I thought was odd. According to Vicky and the students, he’s not very nice and is condescending to the students, so they didn’t mind that we didn’t talk to him. They told me that he probably would just critic my english and tell me I wasn’t very good, so it was probably best that I didn’t talk to him – it sounds like I would have been really annoyed by him.

After parading and some other activities we went inside the school where we watched a **long** video about the greeks and the turks and the battles they fought, etc. The students also had a small choir that would sing songs throughout the video. Several of my friends were in the choir, so that was exciting to watch! The video was all in greek, so I was a little bored, but Demitra would lean over once in a while to keep me up-to-date on what was happening.

At the end they sang the Greek national anthem, which I recorded here. I wanted to record more songs, but I felt a little weird doing it. So this is the one I got.

Afterwards, nearly all of the students went into the square to the cafeteria for coffee. We sat at a really long table and chatted. Lots of the students asked me questions, to pronounce things, and help them translate words – standard foreign exchange stuff. We also took a bunch of selfies – also pretty standard stuff haha.

The afternoon I played with Vicky’s children while she attempted to rest. he evening I spent at the school/at the cafeteria with another friend I had not seen yet. Her name is Ερμιόνη – pronounced “Er-mee-own-ee”, like Hermione, but without the H and in a greek accent. She was a very good friend of mine, and her family was very kind to me while I was on exchange. 

I had to say all my goodbyes that night and took the bus to Volos to meet Chara.

In the morning I had to get on the bus for 4 hours back to Athens.

Here’s where things got… anxious?

Because the bus ride from Volos to Athens is pretty popular, you usually need to call and reserve your spot on the bus. Chara called the bus station the minute it opened on friday, but they said that the 9am bus was already fully booked. My flight was at 4:30, so I wanted to be at the airport at 2:30. The 9am bus meant I got to Athens at 1pm, leaving me time to catch the city bus (45 minutes) to the airport.If I didn’t make the 9am bus, I would be forced to take the 10:30 bus, which would mean that I would get TO Athens at 2:30. If I was lucky, I would make it to the airport at 3:30, with my plane beginning boarding at 4:00. I would need to check in, go through security, customs, etc. in 1/2 an hour. That was stressful.

So obviously I needed to be on the 9am bus – while was full.

The rules of the bus are that any reservations that are not checked-in/paid for 30 minutes before the bus leaves are cancelled, and are now available for anyone to take. So often times there is a waiting list of people who can claim the open spots. So me and Chara got to the station at 8:25 to be ready should any spaces open up.

When we got there, the man selling tickets told us we needed to wait 10 more minutes because there were 3 other people ahead of us in the waiting line.

I was terrified. I was stressed. And I was praying hard that I would make it on that bus.

Faith will always win out, and 5 minutes later the ticket man called us over and gave me my ticket for the 9:00 bus. I thought Chara was going to collapse – she was so relieved. She was just as anxious as Ii was, but she definitely held it together better than I did!

So I made it to the airport, made it to Vienna, took the train to Steyr, and made it home. I actually sat alone on both of my returning flights, and was able to get some sleep on the bus to Athens, but the minute I got home I went straight to bed.

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My whole week was just “go go go!”, and while it was really nice, it was also really short. I’m sad I missed all the Iindependence Day festivities! I’ve heard it’s quite the party! Chara really wanted me to change my flights and stay another week, which was doable for my schedule, but not my situation. Any flight changing would result in a fee, and I don’t have a working credit card right now, so I wouldn’t be able to pay the fees.

But Chara invited me to come visit in the summer, and to help with the Greece exchange students that will be there. She has plans for me to do all these presentations and meetings with teachers and international correspondents and who knows what else. In fact she was hoping to set up a presentation for me to do on the Thursday I was there, since so many schools were doing presentations before Independence Day.

So who knows?? Maybe I will.

I will say that I remembered about 90% of my Greek, which I was pretty proud of. Everyone was pretty impressed with me, and so I felt awesome.

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I was really grateful to see my family again. The last time I saw them, Vicky had an 8-month old baby girl, who hadn’t been Christened or named yet. When I got to the house there was a small, curly-haired girl named Katherine/Αικατερίνη running around, who is 3-years old!!

Anthony/Αντώνιος is now 8, and very tall! His english is pretty good – I attended his english class at the school. Katerina also likes to show off that she can count and say the english alphabet and say hello and goodbye!

My γιαγιά is still doing good, although she told me of pains she gets in her back and legs. She is not as active as she used to, but she is still so happy and kind 🙂

As for Vicky, she’s still as funny and caring as always. The funny thing about my family is that they are always very concerned about my eating habits. That’s the thing they ask me most of the time – am I hungry? They always take care of me and make sure I am well fed!

And the new baby/Μπέμπης is 1-month old! He was actually born the same day I left Canada for Austria. Coincidence??

He’s pretty content, and can sleep through just about any noise!

 

 

And my friends? They’re still my best friends. It was like I went away for a week. Well, it felt like it had been forever, but we picked up right where we left off. And I was able to make some new friends too!

 

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Final count!

• Gyros – 2
• Souvlaki – 2
• Cheese Pie – 2
• Cold Chocolate – 3

For essentially 3 days, that’s pretty good! I made the most of my time!

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Being in Greece was almost quite literally a breathe of fresh air. It was warm and clear, whereas Austria is dark and rainy. And the culture there is so loving and kind compared to anywhere else in the world that I have experienced. I think it will always be a safe haven and home for me, no matter where I might be. I definitely think I have some friends for life there, and I feel pretty lucky to have that.

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On an unrelated note, one thing that I absolutely love about many european cultures is the cheek kiss. I love that crap man. It’s a thing in Austria, but it seems like its just the older adults that do it. In Greece, I was greeted by my friends with kisses and hugs and I loved it – a literal xoxo. I think Western culture is very much based on the individual and staying somewhat distant from your neighbor. Many european cultures kiss anywhere from 1-3 times on the cheek. Greece and Austria are 2 kisses, whereas the Netherlands and Serbia (I think) is 3 kisses.

I dunno, I think that’s pretty nice, and wish it wasn’t weird to do in Canada because I would do it ALL THE TIME.

Anyways..

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I will also say that I have a new-found respect for bloggers. I always saw them as moms who didn’t have things to do when their kids were at school – how hard could it be??

It’s hard to blog. It took me 2 days to write this post, after waiting 3 days before that after I got home from Greece because I just REALLY didn’t feel like writing anything. Motivation is definitely my downfall.

Respect man. Respect.

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Okay, I’m done. Have a good week!!

 

emma.k