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Year 2 | A Week in Greece #11: BIRTHDAY PT. 2 and WORK BURDENS

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On Sunday, I skipped church to meet up with Rosie and cheer on Kendra as she finished the Athens half-marathon.  Sometimes I feel the urge to want to want to be a runner, but that’s only ever as far as it goes.  I was much more excited about the second part, which was when we got lunch at Avocado, a vegan restaurant in the city center.  I was spoiled with pretentious food in Dallas, and I’ve missed it!  Yay for niche markets!

Monday was a loooong day.  After a full work day, I had two hours of Greek lessons, and then I had a Skype meeting with our supervisors/bosses in Vancouver.  I’m starting 12 Steps with them, and it is SO GOOD.  By which I mean, SO HARD, because pretty immediately he got to my core issues “You fear losing your purpose and your safety, and when people threaten those things, you react by either controlling them or more likely, by withdrawing from them.  Why are these coping strategies doing for you?  In what ways are they failing?”  I was left making faces at my webcam, desperately unhappy that I couldn’t come up with pre-packaged answers.  But I think that is exactly why it will be so good for me.

On Tuesday, I had my second birthday party!  Luciana was out of town over the weekend for Beauty and the Beast/food, so she and Giorgos threw me a littler party at their apartment.  My two gifts were champagne and lemoncello, and combined with ordered pizza and homemade tiramisu, we had QUITE the extravagant evening.  Especially when they revealed their Super Mario World setup and we played video games to celebrate my birth.  Perfect!

On Wednesday, I did some hard work things, and then crashed at our weekly K-Drama Club.  I’m so happy that this is actually a consistent thing!  I’m realizing more and more why k-dramas are so wonderful for me at this time of life in particular.  I’m pretty stressed most of the time, so watching a show in a foreign language with silly or emotionally heightened plots is just the sort of disconnect from reality that I need.

Let’s talk about that stress, yeah?  So on Friday, Anthi and I had a meeting with a woman who wants to attend our Day Program.  We talked before and were prepared to tell her no, we can’t really offer that to her now, but after she shared her story, we both were just heart puddles.  We wound up offering a week trial so we can see how seriously she will commit to the program, but here’s the thing.  THIS IS TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY.

Last year, when people asked if working with women who had been trafficked was difficult, the true answer was, “Not really.”  Life sucks, and I was content to sit with people in their suckiness.  But now that I’m the Program Coordinator, I’m making decisions.  I’m not just sitting with people…I’m telling people where they can sit and for how long.  Is that metaphor falling apart?  What I mean practically is, the stakes are too high!  Should I enforce punctuality rules, even if that annoys women so much that they leave the program?  How can I be the one to decide whether or not a woman can join our recovery program or not??  I’m just a baby!  Why is everyone treating me like an adult?

I’m looking forward to returning to America for training/visa renewal.  I’m starting to feel the burden of the job too much, and I think it will be very good for me to see that HD will continue just fine without me.  I’m useful and necessary, but I’m not God.

In that same vein, I was purposefully as lazy as possible today (Saturday).  It’s the only day all month that I had zero plans, and the eagerness with which I anticipated staying in my pajamas was honestly ridiculous.  But it was SO GOOD.  I finished a book, I played through an entire computer game (The Silent Age – a really creative puzzle game!), and I had a deep conversation with my roommate over food that we ordered online so that we could avoid a phone conversation.  Now I’m blogging with a cat on my lap!  Self-Care Complete.

 

Year 2| A Week in Greece #10: I TURNED 29!

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I had a pretty amazing week, mostly because I gave myself a lot of downtime to socially recover.  I mean, I think I did, but when I look back on my calendar, I realize that I had a GEM work dinner on Monday, Greek lessons and K-Drama Club on Tuesday, and went to Cap Cap with Ellen, Olga, and Luciana on Wednesday.  Honestly, I think the biggest rejuvenator was Thursday, which was one of the BEST days I’ve had at HD yet.  All of our participants were present, plus two interpreters, and I used my (failed) argument with my landlord over an electricity bill to be the example for my anger management class.  We acted out the scenario according to various ways NOT to handle conflict, and we were cracking up with laughter throughout most of the lesson.  It was such a great way to see our individual anger issues with grace and humor while also seeing how counterproductive they are (“How did you feel when she interrupted you?” “Like I wasn’t ever going to help her with her bill, and maybe I was going to kick her out of her apartment too.”  “So interrupting…?” “Does NOT work.”)

But the real highlight of the week was my birthday on Saturday!

Ellen and I were going to start the day by getting manicures, but since we hadn’t thought to make an appointment, we wound up getting tea instead, discussing effective activism and the benefits and costs of labeling mental disorders.  Real light birthday fare!  My serious side was satisfied, which meant it was time to go to the movie theater to see Beauty and the Beast.

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Short story:  it was SO GOOD.  This movie created all of the feelings that Disney inspires at its best.  It made me believe that with courage and sacrifice, a world of magical adventures is possible, and that with love, the ugly and the ordinary can be transformed.

Long story:  it was SO GOOD.  I giggled througout scenes, I gasped in delight at the slight changes (“G-A-S-T…I think there’s another T…I’m just realizing I’m illiterate and have never spelled it out loud before…”), and I watched with tears in my eyes as the story I know so well was played out in front of my eyes exactly as I remembered it…only bigger and bolder and NEW.  Disney was cashing in on nostalgia, and I don’t care.  They can take all my money.

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After the lights came up, I clapped out “It. Was. So. Good.” multiple times at my friends, and yay!  I now have friends in Greece who are familiar enough with my obsessiveness that they allowed me to spend most of our mall wanderings elucidating my theory that Gaston is a perfect character for young girls to see…because he is the embodiment of toxic masculinity that initially looks charming and buffoonish but, when its pride is struck, quickly turns violently aggressive.  More light birthday fare!

We headed downtown for dinner on a rooftop garden.  Several more people joined us, and we got meat platters and salads and wine to pass around, all while sitting beneath the lighted Acropolis.  After we ate too much food, the introverts scattered, leaving me and the extroverts to head through Monastiraki to Da Vinci, my favorite ice cream shop in Athens. We ate and talked until late, at which point I headed home to enjoy the USian well-wishes on Facebook.

This was everything I love in a birthday – I forced friends from different parts of my life to hang out together, I had profound and silly conversations, I ate a lot of good things, and I felt…at home.  These friends are real friends.  I feel comfortable with them, and that oft-repeated refrain this time last year (“No one really knows me – I have to hide the silliest parts of myself!”) is now officially retired.

That said:  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST WAS SO GOOD.  Go watch it!

Year 2 | A Week in Greece #9: K-DRAMA CLUB and HD WEEKEND RETREAT

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I am only JUST feeling human again after cuddling with my cat for the past couple hours.  It has been such a crazy couple weeks, especially because my (very fun) trip to Thessaloniki last weekend gave me no time to rest before another crazy week.

The hardest part about being the Program Coordinator at HD is that now all the conflict comes to me.  I’m the one making decisions for the Day Program now, which means that those who don’t like my decisions come to tell me so.  Which, like, for a healthy human, is no big deal.  But I have a little baby heart that assumes everyone is just waiting to hate me, so when three different people came to tell me “we need to talk,” I almost died.  Well, what I really did was whine and complain to a dear friend “why can’t everyone be happy with everything I do always so I can be secure in their love and admiration???”, and then I sucked it up and kept going.

It really wasn’t even a big deal.  I am privileged to work with wonderful people who preface their complaints with “I might be blowing this out of proportion because I am stressed, but…” and coworkers who defend me and seek to understand me.  But still, I’m physically repulsed by conflict, and it’s hard going.  I’m glad for it – I want to get more comfortable with conflict – but knowing it will be better in the future doesn’t fully take away the sting of fear in the present.

I’m so glad I have this job only this year, after I built up friends and a support system.  On Tuesday night I went to Rosie’s for our first K-Drama club…four people in attendance to watch a new series together!  Nerds unite!  And on Thursday, after a stressful and long day at work, Luciana made us soup and then we watched the final episode of Coffee Prince!  I love that she wound up loving the show, and I love even more that it inspired her to research the current political climate of North and South Korea.  I have the coolest friends.

On Friday, we didn’t have classes so that we could prepare for a baby shower we threw for two of our participants who are due to give birth within the next month.  It was a really sweet time, though sad in a way.  Baby showers are meant to be shared with family, and these women have only known us for two months.  But that’s kind of what we’re about at HD:  taking ugly situations and making something beautiful anyway.

I came home to a party at my house, and I sat and kind of participated for as long as I deemed socially acceptable.  But it didn’t help my introvert batteries when I woke up early on Saturday to join the other HD staff on our first weekend retreat.  I took three naps throughout the day (always a good sign that my body is craving the sweet release of…no people) and avoided group activities in favor of staying in my room to read.

By Sunday, though, I was feeling more sociable, and the sunny weather highlighting some really stunning scenery only helped.  We all went to a cave of lakes, strolled through gnarly trees and saw sheep and dogs and swans.  We ate fresh trout (it was delicious despite having a head) and drank coffee and did things together that wasn’t work.  It was a really nice time, but I was still very excited to get home to my bed and my cat.  Here’s hoping six hours of introvert time will get me through the next week!

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Year 2 | A Week in Greece #8: A LOT OF LUCIANA and THESSALONIKI

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This week was EXHAUSTING.  By the end of the week I felt like I’d worked double, which is weird because the week actually started with a holiday!

Clean Monday is the Greek start of Lent.  My roommates and I got the traditional bread and halva to eat for breakfast, and then we went out to the fancy park coffee shop because our stolen wifi isn’t working.  It was a lovely lazy day, and the end of my peace.

The reason work was so crazy was because of a really good thing:  we’re all finally officially moved into the new offices.  This means there are people around all the time, which is SO GREAT, but it also means there are people around to give you more tasks to complete.  We had a staff meeting on Wednesday that went on forever – tensions were high and there were five million things to address because we’ve been in separate places for so long.  Plus I’m feeling stressed because it’s only one month until I have to leave Athens (no visa progress) and I’m trying to prepare the Day Program for every eventuality.

I got through the week by hanging out with Luciana literally every day.  On Tuesday, we took a long late lunch, then got sweets at a bakery.  While sitting outside, a man next to us said, “Is that an American accent?  Do you mind if I ask how you feel about your recent election?”  He was a (married) Welsh guy who’d lived in the States for a bit, and we three had a half hour long conversation about politics.  Flash forward to my weekend with a Greek and an Englishwoman where we also talked about politics.  I really like living in Europe.  The US is so geographically isolated that it’s easy to selfishly think only of ourselves.  But living here in a jumble of neighboring countries, people are so politically aware of not only their own country’s positions, but of others’.  I like it a lot.

Back to Luciana.  On Wednesday we stayed super late at work, then finally went back to my place where I cut her hair and we watched another episode of Coffee Prince (NOPE, I’m still not done talking about this Korean drama).

On Thursday, we had our Graduation Ceremony at HD.  I’m in charge of them now, so I was Happy and Excited and Welcoming of All Our Guests!  I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it, and I didn’t want to go home because one of my roommates was hosting a Bible study and I didn’t want to say hello to any more strangers.  Luciana invited me to her place, and Giorgos immediately said, “What’s wrong with you?” when he saw me.  “I’m introverted out,” I said, and he nodded in understanding and fed me an omelette.  “I know you will understand this as a compliment,” I told them both, “but I feel alone with you guys.  Thank you!”  Luciana then suggested we start watching another episode of Coffee Prince, half to see some emotion in my eyes, and half because she was starting to fall in love with it.

On Friday, we had a big HD board meeting that went on forever, and afterwards Giorgos had to stay in the office working on techie stuff, so Luciana and I watched another two episodes of Coffee Prince until 11:30 p.m.  I am so happy that she is as big a nerd as I am.

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On Saturday morning, Anthi and Rosie and I fled to Thessaloniki!  We spent the whole weekend walking in the sunshine by the sea and eating bougatsa and souvlaki.  We all were similarly interested in being lazy, so we only went to one (very nice) museum in the White Tower.  Otherwise we just wandered and ate!

Rosie imposed a really great rule that if we talked about work-related topics for more than five minutes, she would cut us off and ask us a random question.  These ranged from “If you could introduce any animal into Athens, what would it be?” (Answers:  panda bears, koalas, and lemurs) to “If you had to kill off 90% of the world’s population, how would you choose who to kill?” (Rosie:  You’re really into the dark questions, Tricia.)

I had a wonderful time with them both, and almost as soon as we got there, we were planning our next trip.  But not seriously, because I’m leaving soon, and I don’t know when I’ll get to come back!  *weeping*

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Year 2 | A Week in Greece #7: COFFEE PRINCE, WEEKLY GOALS, and A LOT OF FOOD

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Well, the gig is up.  I couldn’t last more than two seconds in Monday’s temperature check (the first half hour of HD’s Day Program during which time we share what we’ve been doing and feeling) before I blurted out, “I’ve been watching a k-drama nonstop and it’s SOOOO GOOOD” while flinging my face into my hands.  “What’s a k-drama?” everyone asked.  “A TV show made in Korea.”  Everyone stared at me, so I repeated the part about it being SOOOO GOOOD.  “You’re quite strange,” one of them said.  “Ugh, I know,” I replied.

Honestly, Coffee Prince DID eat up a big part of my week, and I would hurry home from work to watch as many new episodes as possible while texting Rosie dramatic reactions to the show’s events.  My roommates would delicately put their heads into my bedroom.  “Are you still watching your favorite show?”  I would look up from my nest of blankets with rabid eyes and hiss, “Yesssss.”  They usually fled before I could update them on the plot development.

One bright spot was Luciana, who was so enthralled by my never-ending passion that she agreed to watch the first episode with me.  “I don’t really like it yet, but it must be good because you won’t shut up about it.”  In return, she insisted I start watching Arrow, but I don’t think it’s quite fair for her to hold me to five seasons when I’m only asking her to watch seventeen episodes.

Guys, it’s so good.  I’m done now, and I tried watching some other shows, but I stopped them all after a couple minutes because nothing in the world was appealing anymore.  Luckily, Rosie found two other people who like k-dramas, and we are going to try to start a weekly k-drama watching club!  (At church today, I ran up to her and said, “Rosiiiie” and gripped her arm as I jumped up and down in excess of emotion.  She laughed in what I think was delight and not fear.)

Four paragraphs later…

Work was pretty normal this week.  We’re settling into a routine, which means our four participants (not on maternity leave) are showing up sometimes on time, and as the Program Coordinator, it is now my job to enforce tardy rules, and I haaaate it.  But on the other hand, I got to start doing Weekly Goal Setting with each participant individually on Friday, and that is the part of the job that was so enticing that I agreed to take the whole thing.

Most of the women know their goals:  stay in Greece, get a good job, support family members in their home country.  With them, all I have to do is help them break those goals into smaller, weekly attainable goals, like learning Greek, figuring out what paperwork is necessary, pursuing new job skills.  One participant is SUPER averse to the very idea of setting goals, because anything in the future terrifies her.  That was my favorite session, because it required dusting off my jujitsu counseling moves.  (Her:  I don’t need to plan.  I trust God every day.  Me:  That’s so great!  I really look forward to seeing you grow to the point where you can trust God not just with your day, but also the coming week, and the coming month, and the coming year!)  It’s fun to help them take control of their lives, to risk wanting something, and the stand beside them as they work toward it.

Pretty much as soon as work ended on Friday, a weekend of FOOD began.  Four of us coworkers went to Cap Cap on Friday afternoon, a coffee shop that has bimonthly themes.  Because of the forthcoming movie, they are now Beauty and the Beast, which meant I drank a Ballroom and ate a Bookworm.  It was nice to hang out with my coworkers outside of work, and that only continued on Saturday.

There was a team of USian men who painted the outside of HD this week (the house, not the office where I was), so Dina and Argyris invited all of us plus them to a fancy restaurant in Rafina.  Whenever US teams come to Greece, I either find myself super proud to be an American or super ashamed.  This group started out embarrassing when their pastor stood up to pray over our food for at least five minutes, and everyone else in the restaurant stopped talking and also the staff turned off the music.  But then they were the best kind of Americans, loud and happy and generous and sharing funny stories.  It immediately felt like we were all old friends.  Because they were from Memphis, I had a lot to talk about, and when they left, Dina assured me that next time they would invite a team of single men.

That segues right into…on Saturday, my new roommate’s mom came to visit.  There was a conference in Athens, and she came to our house afterwards.  While Ellen unpacked her new goodies, her mom and I got into a super serious conversation about singleness.  She said a speaker at the conference had talked about how painful it was to go to dinner parties and see husbands and wives paired across from each other, leaving her with the “extra” seat at the end.  Ellen’s mom said it made her pause, and she was now determined to make sure she mixed up the seating at every party she every throws.  It was all I could do to keep myself from throwing myself at her and hugging her in grateful joy.

On Sunday, I met up with Kendra for coffee to hear about her weeklong adventure in Italy with her fiancée.  We accidentally talked for too long, so we were late to church.  Afterwards I met Haley, Dina, Argyris, and Mark for an extremely fancy work lunch (Haley works with SP).  After far too much food, we took her to see the new offices that SP had financed.  I got home around 5:00 and took a late nap.

It’s nice to be so social.  When I think back to this time last year, I was in the midst of my language-learning mental breakdown.  I was developing social anxiety at the Bible school, hiding in my bed so I could pretend to be asleep if someone were to stop by and invite me to the cafeteria for lunch.  HD was still being renovated, and I was wondering what the hell I was doing living in Greece.  This year?  This year is so much better.

Overcoming Doubt with Vulnerability

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I’m on Step 5 of the 12 Steps, which says we “admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  This step is about confession, obviously, but its also about the connections we form with people when we are vulnerable.  Keeping secrets is isolating, and it heightens our shame and our loneliness.  The scariest thing – revealing the worst of ourselves to another person – is our only hope.  If we risk trusting a safe person with our secrets and they still love us, well.  That is simply the best feeling in the world.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I’ve been going through a faith crisis.  This isn’t new; I’m a doubter by nature, and every couple years I start thinking, “Am I wrong about everything?  Is there a purpose to life, is God good or even real, can anything ever change for the better?”  This time, my faith crisis began with the election of Donald Trump.

It has been so confusing for me to see Christians support a man who is explicitly racist, sexist, and xenophobic.  When people who taught me the Bible as a small child defend his actions and even give Christian defenses of his “safety” measures that seem hateful and fear-mongering to me, I just…I wonder why our beliefs are so different.  The God I believe in is more loving and grace-giving and patient than our wildest dreams.  If other people believe in a God that calls us to hunker down and keep people out in order to stay safe, who’s to say whose God is the real one?

It hasn’t helped that I am reading through the Bible chronologically, and I’m currently wading through the Exodus/Leviticus laws.  It’s a crime to kill a fellow Israelite, but if you beat your slave so badly that he or she dies, you simply have to pay a fine.  That is…God’s law?  That is not something I can stomach, and it’s been eating me inside out that some of these verses seem to support the hateful, elitist God of Trump’s “Christianity.”

I used to be able to see how the God of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament went together, but right now, in the midst of confusion, anger, and sadness, I can’t see it anymore.

All of this felt immense.  I worried that I was losing my faith and that I was hating God (I am, a little).  It was suffocating me.  But then I studied Step 5, and during lunch last week, I poured everything out in front of Luciana.  She tried to encourage me, but I told her, “I’m sorry, but right now nothing you say is going to make me feel better.”  She assured me that she shared my belief in a loving God, and I said, “Maybe you’re a heathen like me.”  Finally, she suggested we share dessert and said, “It’s good to doubt.  It makes our beliefs stronger, even though it’s painful.  You’re in a really good place right now.”

I didn’t believe her, but talking to her DID make the weight on my chest ease up.  I’d told someone that I kinda sorta hated God, and she had shared dark chocolate mochi with me.  So a few days later, during a dinner to get to know my new roommate, I casually mentioned that I was going through a faith crisis.  Two days later, we went out for coffee, and she carefully said, “You know how you said you were going through a faith crisis?  I am too.”  My vulnerability had opened a door that allowed us to complain to and encourage each other.  We might have sat in adjacent bedrooms for months, not knowing that the person next door was also feeling confused and betrayed and scared for the very same reason.

Nothing is necessarily figured out for me, faith-wise.  I’m still in the middle of a period of doubt, but it no longer scares me.  I even believe that God timed things so that I would study Step 5 just when I needed it, that he isn’t annoyed by my “hating” him because he is excited for the moment when I see HIM, the real him, again, and love him even more than before.

Our fears and doubts are scary, but we make them bigger than they need to be when we keep them to ourselves.  Finding the courage to share them with others can bring relief to yourself, and sometimes, for other people who need to know that they are not alone in their own fears and doubts.

We’re not meant to live alone.  It’s only in a community of honesty and acceptance that we can grow and thrive and change, and I’m so glad that I was able to live that this past week.

Year 2 | A Week in Greece #6: NERDY FRIENDS, HD PHOTO SHOOT, and NEW ROOMMATE

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Progress at the new offices continued to happen slower than expected, so we decided to have a “Program Lite” week at the house.  This worked out pretty well, since we have a new woman (from Nigeria, 8 months pregnant, our house is now FULL and we’ve already had to turn down someone who wanted to join the program, ack), and it gave her time to adjust.  But this meant coming up with plans last minute and never feeling quite settled, which makes me stressed.  Luckily, I had some really fun friend moments this week, and that helped me survive.

Nerdy Friends

One of the strangest and most wonderful things about my friends in Athens is that they usually share in one of my “shameful obsessions.”  I have cat friends here!  And video game fanatics!  And Korean drama enthusiasts!  The things that used to be “oh, Tricia is the cat/video game/anime friend” has now become “we like this thing.”  It’s so much fun to have people to share these obsessions with.

On Sunday, the Four Cat Ladies went to Danielle’s apartment after church for her birthday celebration choice: a cat movie marathon.  We ordered food and watched a documentary called The Lion in Your Living Room and exclaimed over the cute kittens and said things like, “Oh, that’s why Oscar/Louis/Pepperina/Hans Harrison” does that!”  Then we watched a movie called A Street Cat Named Bob, a true story about a stray cat that saved the life of a drug addict.  Cats are amazing, I truly don’t understand haters.

On Wednesday after 12 Steps, I went out for sushi with Luciana.  I’ve been having a bit of a faith crisis post-US-election, and I opened up to her about it all.  “You know what you need?” she asked.  “WHAT?” I asked desperately.  “Dessert!”  So we got dark chocolate mochi, then walked back to her apartment.  Giorgos was there, so the three of us played Zelda until 11:00 p.m.  It was true gaming joy, with agonizingly frustrating puzzles that had people screaming and then cheering when they finally succeeded.

And on Saturday, I went to Rosie’s apartment to watch Coffee Prince, a Korean comedy about a girl who is mistaken for a boy and winds up working at a coffee shop intentionally run by hot guys.  I LOVE these kinds of ridiculous shows, and found myself saying, “Oh, so he is going to fall in love with her knowing she’s a girl, and HE is going to fall in love with her thinking she’s a boy, right?”  Rosie would respond, “The plot is incredibly obvious, but it is so much fun to see it play out.”  That’s what I love so much about anime and Korean comedies.  The characters are stereotypes (the Arrogant Rich Guy, the Edgy Foreigner, the Dumb Sweet Guy, the Delicate Wallflower, the Guns Blazing Girl) the actions are repeated (“he did the thing where he puts his hand on the wall over her head!!!”) and the plots are incredibly familiar.  But there’s something so pleasing about knowing what’s going to happen and then laughing hysterically when yes, she DID have to hide in the men’s locker room while they were changing because she has to hide the fact that she’s actually a woman.

I realize this is a pretty specific media interest (in the Western world, I would fit right in in the East), which is exactly why it feels so amazing to have Rosie as a friend.  And Luciana and Giorgos as my video games partners.  And Kendra, Rosie, and Danielle as my fellow Cat Moms.  There are few things as comforting as finding people who like the same weird things you do.

HD Photo Shoot

We did a lot of random stuff this week with our participants, but my favorite was on Friday.  My friend Damaris came over to take professional pictures of each of the women.  I knew this was going to be a success when we went upstairs and saw each of the women in their best clothes, makeup on and hair done ON TIME.  We took photos on the roof and in the garden, and it was such a joy to see them open up and show off how amazing they are.

Maybe it seems silly to place value on taking someone’s picture, but these women so rarely get to dress up and feel beautiful while also being safe.  They were getting fancy for themselves.  Damaris is going to print the pictures and give them copies, and nothing is going to us to be used for promotional or fundraising purposes.  This is all for them.

At the end, we were all in the garden, and while one woman was posing extravagantly against a tree and the rest of us were giggling, I put my arm around one woman’s shoulders, and she put her arms around my waist.  It was such a touching moment, and it made me realize how every little moment is a healing opportunity – safe touch, laughter, freedom to choose how sexy or silly you want to pose – and I was overwhelmed by how much I love my job.

Bringing it down a bit, but that day was also a lesson in A Man Ruins Everything by Thinking He’s Funny but is Actually a Jerk.  While taking pictures on the roof, a guy from the building next door called from his balcony, “Which one is the prettiest?”  Luckily, the woman getting her picture taken only spoke Greek and didn’t understand, but I was ENRAGED.  This is patriarchal idiocy at it’s core: the idea that women being pretty and happy is for a man’s enjoyment.  He took a beautiful, fun thing and made it a dirty competition.  UGH.  Less of this in the world, please!!

New Roommate

On Friday, Ellen from Canada moved into my apartment!  She and Olga are sharing a room,  and so far, I think it’s going to be a good household.  I really like having people around, and I love seeing other people’s things filling spaces in the bathroom.  But this only works for me with certain people, and both Olga and Ellen are independent, friendly, introverted women.  I don’t feel the need to care of them (thank God), and I know I can peace out and go to my room and they will understand.

It’s nice to have another American in the house, though I’m very jealous that Justin Trudeau is her leader and not mine.  Already Ellen and I have had some great conversations about being outsiders in Greece (she lived here for a year a couple years ago), and she’s a life coach who is going to work with an anti-trafficking organization, so we will have plenty in common to talk about.

A Greek, a USian, a Canadian, and a cat share an apartment in Athens.  We could star in a sitcom, though it would mostly show us reading books and talking about how we want to change the world.

Everything Ends

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The other day I listened to a playlist for the first time in two years.  It’s the playlist I made when I nannied Anju and Ketan, full of songs we would sing to while driving to all of their extracurricular events.

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Some are obvious kid’s songs, like all of my favorite Disney ballads.  But our real favorites were pop songs that were current at the time, especially Imagine Dragons and Bastille.  I still remember turning around in my seat to high-five Ketan when he mastered singing “Flaws” with a British accent.

One of the songs that came up was “Everything Ends” from A Very Potter Senior Year, because yes, I did introduce my pre-teen charges to the amazing world of the sometimes inappropriate, always hilarious college production of Harry Potter musicals.  This particular song is from the end of their third musical, and it’s doubly upsetting because it’s about Harry using the resurrection stone to see his dead friends and family one last time AND it’s about the cast acknowledging that Darren Criss’s life has taken him away from Starkid.  I’ll put the video here if you want to cry a little.

[Start at 6:08 for the song]

The lyrics hit me, listening to a playlist from my past, thinking about my Dallas life and all the people I’ve said goodbye to, and hello to, in just two years.

Harry:  How do I make things go back to how they used to be?
Snape:  That’s just it, Harry.  You can’t.

Group Singing:  You can’t hold on to what’s gone.
Don’t try to fix it, just move on.
Only then, you’ll see the world all brand new.

And I felt…really great.  I tend to cling to the past, to hoard memories and wish for things to be as they were.  But there’s something so peaceful about saying, “Yes, the past WAS great, but so is the present, and so will the future be.”  I don’t get to sing with Anju and Ketan in the car anymore.  But this week I got to paint fingernails and watch Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights with women who have been trafficked.

Life isn’t about holding onto things or trying to recapture experiences.  You’ve got to move on, and see the world all brand new.

Year 2 | A Week in Greece #5: WORK WEIRDNESSES

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After an exciting but restful weekend in Bucharest, I came back to a chaotic week in Athens.

On Monday, we tried to begin having Day Program classes at our new offices.  This meant starting with a couple hours of new rules and a lot of questions about the rules.  Mostly we talked about tardiness and absences, and this is still a topic I feel conflicted about.

Our program is meant to model a school or work environment, and we want to hold participants to similar standards so that when they seek employment elsewhere, they will be used to the routine of being on time for things.  But we have participants from diverse cultures, and I think this is at least partially responsible for the serial tardiness of some of the women.  I don’t know how much my desire to enforce timeliness is for their benefit or if it is for my own cultural comfort.

But other than that, it was really nice having classes in a new space!  Or at least, it was on Monday and Tuesday.  By the end of Tuesday, more and more workers were arriving to finish air conditioning installations, wall dividers, etc, and it was becoming increasingly ridiculous to try to be vulnerable or thoughtful with all the chaos around us.  We cancelled classes for the rest of the week, but planned a special event on Friday.

It was almost disastrous, and I was SO pissed, because I told the women a fake time to show up, knowing that they would be late.  Still, I wound up standing at the metro station for half an hour, at which point I decided to go on without them.  I met up with the two people who were meeting us downtown and found out that THEN, the women were leaving the house.  They met us one hour and fifteen minutes after our scheduled appointment time, and as I mentioned, I was PISSED.  I am generally a pretty laid back person, but apparently time issues have their claws sunk deep in me.

But then they showed up, and…they were all dressed up!  They’d done their hair and put on makeup.  They were wearing nice clothes and jewelry.  The baby was outfitted with everything he could possibly need.  And I realized – this was a really special event for them.  It was a chance to get out of the house, to explore the city while feeling safe, to be TOURISTS and just enjoy life for a while.  My annoyance drifted away as I became consumed with love for them, which is like, the whole point of everything.

We spent a couple hours at the Acropolis Museum.  Two of the women only speak Spanish, so we mostly pointed at statues and imitated their poses, laughed at each other, and then got told off by tour guides.  We had to stop a lot because two of the women are pregnant, and the new mother got increasingly terrified because she kept static shocking people and she thought she would hurt her baby.  A quick phone call to our Spanish interpreter prevented her from going home early, and I just kind of…loved my job?  The weird things that happen!  Never a dull moment!

We got coffee and sat around in the sun together for awhile before heading home.  On the metro, I was acutely aware of the fact that I, a white person, was hanging out with three black women.  There aren’t a lot of black people in Athens, and I wondered how people saw me, and then I thought, oh God, this is only a tiny taste of what they must think and feel at all times.  How exhausting to be a minority, always conscious of being “other” and wondering if that will cause you trouble or harm.

That was a lot of work stuff, but I did manage to have some fun this week too.  I went out with Olga and Haley (an American who works with Samaritan’s Purse) to Little Kook on Monday.  Olga and I had some prime roommate bonding, such as one Complaining Night and another Wine and Cheese and Jane Austen Movie Night.  And on Friday, three women from the Bible School came over for, well, another Wine and Cheese Night.  Today is Saturday, and I’ve been lazy while waiting for laundry to finish.  Tonight I’m going out to an Iranian restaurant for Danielle’s birthday, and the celebrations will continue tomorrow after church when we all watch a bunch of cat movies to celebrate the thing that bonds us all together (besides being ex-pats in Greece).

My Visa Problems are Annoying but Not Life-Threatening

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I am still working on getting the paperwork necessary to apply for a two-year visa in Greece.  I have been working on this since November, and we are still pretty much in step 1 (ask the Greek ministry to approve my organization as one that can request a volunteer).  That is a LONG time to be waiting, and as my 90-day tourist visa gets ever closer to finishing, my stress level increases and I am ever more likely to go on barely comprehensible rants.

But my perspective has shifted recently.

The thing is, if I’m not allowed to return to Athens in April, what will happen?

  • HD will have to find someone to cover all the work that I do.
  • I will have to find someone to take care of my Greek cat for an indefinite amount of time.
  • I will have to figure out what to do with rent and roommates and all my possessions.
  • I will have to explain to my donors why I have had to pause the work that they are paying me to do.
  • I will be sad about leaving the life and work that I love.

But also?  I have family and friends all across the United States who I know will take me into their homes.  I know I could find a job in the States as a librarian or nanny if the waiting goes on for a month or more.

The women at HD do not have that option.

We currently have three (soon to be four) women in our program who are refugees in Greece.  They are each pregnant, or newly a mother, and they all want to stay in Greece with the longterm goal of finding a job and making enough money that they can send it home to family or even better, finding a way to bring their family here.

They are also in the middle of a legal headache, trying to get paperwork approved so that they can continue to live in this country.  We are the same…except that if they never get a visa, then they face the possibility of being sent back to a homeland of poverty and in one woman’s case, an abusive family.  They risk re-entering the desperate world of trafficking if they trust the wrong person.  They are confronted with the reality that in order to feed their soon-to-be-born child, one of the most feasible options available to them is voluntary prostitution.

Their lives are so limited, and in comparison, mine is limitless.

I’m grateful for all of my privilege.  I wouldn’t give it up, even if I could.  But now that I am more aware of this new aspect of my white, American, educated, middle-class privilege, I’m going to try to stop complaining quite so much.  I mean, I still will sometimes, because I’m selfish and anxious.

But I have a new awareness that the worst of my problems essentially amounts to a vacation that I didn’t ask for.  So for today, I’m grateful that my problems are only an annoyance, and not something life-threatening.