Language Update

Short Version:  *mouth fart*

Long Version:  I have pretty much used zero Greek this week, and I can feel the pieces that I know slipping away from easy recall.  The problem is, I want to talk to people!  The thing I bring to the world and to relationships is TALKING – having deep, long conversations about anything and everything.  That might sound like a very good reason to learn Greek, but everyone in my life speaks pretty much fluent English.  So when we’re talking, I have two options:  struggle to express 10% of my thoughts in Greek, or else express 90% of my thoughts in English.  So why did I even spend two months learning Greek?  I don’t knooooow.

(I do know.  It’s just that the gap between “enough to get by” and “fluent” is SO BIG.)

Everything Else Update

This week has been SO GREAT, for me personally and for HD generally. Let’s start with me!  The past couple weeks, there has been some mild conflict brewing between HD staff, mostly because we are all working on our own (until we have our office set up) and that is a great recipe for miscommunication.  This weekend, I started daydreaming about how I am a counselor!  And I could see how I could fix everything!!  But after slowing my brain down a little, I felt like God was telling me to step back and do nothing.  It’s not like my idea was bad (it was phenomenal, as all my ideas are), but I wanted to be the savior.  I wanted to control everything.  Story of my life!  So instead, I started praying about what my role at HD is…and it’s not to be in control.  It’s to serve, and by that I mean actually serve, not pretend like I’m serving while in reality I’m manipulating the situation so that I look good.

So on Monday Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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.

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 →