Living in Greece

Friends, Food, and Spiritual Insight: A Christian Conference in Greece

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A few weeks ago, Anthi invited me to join her and some friends in going to Leutraki (near Corinth) for a weekend conference with the Free Evangelicals of Athens.  Apparently I have not been attending a Free Evangelical church, but when asked my opinion on free will vs. predestination (“I think they’re both right, but we don’t know how”) I was given clearance to come.

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I didn’t expect to learn anything, since the whole conference would be in Greek, but I was super into the location.  We stayed at a resort by the sea and paid only €105 for two nights and six buffet meals.  That would have been enough to satisfy me, but Anthi made sure to find translators for me during each presentation.

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Can we pause a second and talk about how humbling it is to not know a language?  There’s the everyday “everyone is talking about something, and I have no idea what it is!” and the similar “oh no, they are asking me to perform and all I can think of is ‘Μιλἀω ελληνικἀ λἰγα αλλἀ νομἰζω οτἰ ξεχνἀω πολὐ’ and I said that last time.”  But there’s also the next level up: being translated to while 130 people sit around you.  This is maybe an introvert-specific humiliation, since my highest aim in life is to blend in.  There’s something so humbling about letting everyone know that you’re alone in your confusion and that you need help.  This is a good thing, I think, learning to accept help….I just don’t like the process of learning it.   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #11: Shopping, HD Scheduling, and Computer Games

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This week was super weird.  I was either hard-core working or hard-core lazing around, which is, actually, my two favorite modes of existing.

On Sunday, I skipped church because my birthday weekend had depleted all of my Social Batteries.  Olga stopped by my room after her service, and we wound up talking for a couple hours about singleness and past romances and future hopes (thus proving that although five minutes of chatting puts me in a coma, I can have deep conversations for days).  She was hugely encouraging to me, especially when she said, “I’m not really interested in marriage unless I am around someone I want to marry.”  And I thought – YEAH.  Why am I letting myself get distracted by Wishes and Maybes and Daydreams?  Why am I wasting time swiping left on Tinder?  There’s no one around that I want to marry, so until there is, I’m going to focus on being awesome and working hard and creating meaningful experiences.

On Monday, I went to the mall for the first time!  It would take 13 minutes to drive there, but it took me an hour by public transportation.  I took the prostiakos for the first time (the metro, but for the suburbs), and it was very rewarding to figure out a new facet of the Athens public transit system.  The mall is like, super fancy and huge, and I was once more ashamed to realize I have very low standards for Greece.  It’s a European city!  It’s awesome!  How did I get so lucky as to stumble into a life here?   Continue reading →

Funny Moments with Greek Friends

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*discussing And Then There Were None, BBC’s newish mini-series*

Anthi:  Maybe you could stay after our meeting and we will watch that show.
Me:  Yeah!  It’s three episodes right?  Are they each one hour?
Anthi:  I think so.
Me:  Okay, so we could totally just watch them all, right?
Anthi:  *laughs loudly*  Oh Tricia, you are so funny!
Me:  …   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #10: New Friends, Clean Monday, and My 28th Birthday!

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My Greek classes downtown are over, the friends I made there have scattered to other cities and countries, and my visitors are all gone.  This week has felt a little like starting over again, settling into a life in Pikermi.  I’m making friends, but (especially at the beginning of the week) I was kind of mad about it?  Mad that I have to start over, even though everyone I’m hanging out with is lovely.  I could go into a lot of detail about the emotional side of all this, but…that would take up an entire blog post, and that’s not what A Week in Greece is for!

Last Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Argyris called and said, “This is not a drill!  I will pick you up in fifty minutes!”

“Okay??” I said, glancing down at the pajamas I had already changed into.  I hurried to look like a human being again, then met Argyris, Dina, and Mark in the parking lot.  We picked up Erik along the way, but Argyris refused to tell us where we were going, only that it was a late birthday present for Dina.  We wound up going to an old Oriental Express train that’s been converted into a restaurant.  A live band played jazz versions of old movie songs, and it was really lovely.

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On Sunday, Dina and Argyris went away, so Mark took me to church with some other girls from the school.  It was nice to get to know them a little better, and then we all went out for burgers after the service.  I shouldn’t have eaten one, because at 2:00 I went to Anthi’s house to meet her friends and eat a feast prepared by her chef mother.  Next weekend I’m going to a conference retreat with all these girls, so Anthi thought it’d be good for me to meet them before we go.

On Monday, Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #9: The Pamurthys Visit!

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I returned from Berlin (read about my hilariously mediocre weekend here) on Monday evening.  Dina and Argyris took me to the Greek Evangelical Church to give a laidback presentation to a group of 20+ college students here to work with refugees on their spring break.  College kids are great because they still have that amazingly naive and powerful belief that they can change the world.  I loved seeing them learn about sex trafficking and HD and wanting to get involved.  And while I still very much hate public speaking, I really enjoyed talking to individuals and small groups about my involvement and story.  I’m looking forward to more of this in the future!

But the real story of this week was:  the Pamurthys came to Athens!  I worked for them for three years when I lived in Dallas.  As Anju and Ketan’s nanny (read about some of my favorite memories here), I was at their house every weekday evening, so they quickly became my Dallas family.  When they told me they’d decided to make their 2016 vacation to Athens while I’m here, I was thrilled to get to hang out with them again.

Unfortunately, Ketan came down with a fever during the flight from Istanbul to Athens, so he and Chrisette stayed at the hotel.  I met up with Anju and Sanjay, though, and we did a bit of tourist-ing to Hadrian’s Arch, the Temple of Zeus, and the Olympic Stadium.  Sanjay kept saying, “This is so COOL,” which was all the encouragement I needed to unload two months of Greek language, culture, history, and mythology facts.   Continue reading →

Video Blogs of Jenna’s Visit!

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I really like editing together vlogs with varying levels of seriousness, so when Jenna said she was okay with my documenting our adventures, I had a ball!  Here are the vlogs I made of her four-day visit!

1|  Jenna arrived in the afternoon and we hurried downtown to do a little sight-seeing and a LOT of eating.

2|  We made the most of our tourist day by visiting All The Things:  the Acropolis and its super-cool new museum, the Temple of Zeus, and the 1896 Olympic Stadium, where we were big weirdos and it was so much fun.   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #8: Jenna Visits and My Greek Class Ends!

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I had SUCH a fun week!

Jenna came to visit me on Sunday.  She’s my friend Mallory’s roommate, and we met for the first time when I visited Mallory in Memphis last October.  “Can I visit you when you live in Greece?” Jenna asked as we binge-watched Jane the Virgin.  “OF COURSE!” I agreed, and five months later, here we are.

Jenna’s visit gave me a chance to be a tourist and enjoy the city in which I’m living with idiotic abandon.  I was both the expert, getting us around and suggesting foods, and the enthusiast, filming dumb videos of us “racing” in the 1896 Olympic Stadium.

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I especially appreciated Jenna’s visit because she’s familiar with Mediterranean cultures (she’s been to Turkey twice) but not with Greece specifically.  Her comments made me love my new home even more.  For instance, she was surprised by how clean and European Greece is (which, okay, Athens is NOT clean compared to the rest of Europe, but it’s not all that bad either!).  She also said that one day when she bumped into a guy she didn’t feel like she’d crossed a cultural line.  In Turkey and other more conservative places, girls get a LOT of warnings about avoiding eye contact and especially bodily contact with men.  In Greece, it’s no big deal.  I hadn’t really appreciated the difference until she pointed it out.   Continue reading →

Things I’ve Learned in Greek Class

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One of my favorite things about the seven weeks I spent learning Greek at The Athens Centre was how we learned both the language and the culture.  The Greek language is rich, and as I came to see, very logical!  Although it can be complicated, there are reasons for the grammatical rules that are often based in a decidedly Greek worldview.  I had so much fun learning from my teachers, Roza and Eleni, who instilled a little bit of Greece into my soul.

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Below are some of my favorite facts and trivia that I learned while conjugating verbs and memorizing vocabulary.   Continue reading →

Overcoming a Language Meltdown

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Last week, six weeks of daily Greek lessons finally caught up to me and melted my brain.  It was the weirdest sensation – I could “see” all the information I’d learned, but everything was behind a mental glass wall.  No matter how hard I tried to break through, the wall remained.  I am happy to report that yesterday, everything came rushing back, and I’m actually enjoying learning Greek again.  How did this happen?  Well, I can identify three possible causes:

  1. I did no homework and spoke no Greek on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
  2. I skipped class.
  3. I repeated, “I don’t care about Greek, I don’t care if I sit there and say, ‘Δεν ξἐρω’ over and over again, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”

Many, many people told me to “stop trying so hard,” and I finally understand why.  It feels counter-productive to stop doing something in order to get better at it, but….at least this time, that is exactly what worked!   Continue reading →

A Week in Greece #7: Language Meltdown but Nice Classmates

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Ahhh, this was the week I felt like I moved from “I know cool people in Athens!” to “I have friends in Athens!”  And it was the week I had a mental breakdown, but you know what?  You can’t have everything.

On Sunday, I met up with Tonya and her friend Janet.  If those names sound unfamiliar, it’s because they are pretty new me too!  Tonya was in Level 4 at the Athens Centre, and during one break when our classes were both out, we discovered we had some mutual friends because she’s from Seattle working in Athens with a ministry to refugees.  She’s been here for three years, so she took me to an Irish pub restaurant for fish and chips, then we ate gelato at an ice cream/waffle sweet shop.

When I got back to the school, I met up with Ioanna and Olympia to go out for wine at a hipster restaurant near the school.  There was a cat wandering around, and HE LET ME PET HIM, and it was the first time I’ve pet a cat since I left Rory seven weeks ago.  I guess it was also fun to talk with friends.  Hahaha, no really, it WAS fun, because Ioanna pushed me to use Greek, and when I got overwhelmed, Olympia said, “Hey, it’s okay, we’ll speak in English now.”  They’re a good pair to have around.

Speaking of Greek! Continue reading →