A White Christmas

When I found out that I received a Fulbright grant to Greece, I think most of my friends and colleagues thought that I would be basking on a beach on some Greek island while they were freezing back in the U.S. at this time of year.  Believe it or not, it does snow in Greece.  I awoke last Thursday to approximately four inches of snow on the ground in Ioannina.  A few days prior to that the mountains surrounding Ioannina took on a decidedly white tone.  This was the first time that students from Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, and Egypt saw snow.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to see their reaction. I left early that morning for Athens where the weather while not exactly balmy was quite pleasant for December at least in comparison to Philadelphia.

Last Wednesday evening the Stavros Niarchos staff hosted a Christmas party for the students and they extended an invitation to me, too.  The evening consisted of students performing Christmas songs or dances typical of their countries:  Dominica and Margarita (Domenica is dressed up as an angel) sang a Polish Christmas song;  the students from Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia performed a skit featuring a sheepherder and his(or in this case her) entourage;   Peter from Macedonia along with students from several countries performed a Greek Christmas carol; and Olga, Anna, and Anastasia performed a dance from Kazakhstan.  Afterwards, we got to enjoy a lovely dinner and were entertained by a high school saxophone quartet that performed traditional Christmas songs;  they were excellent.

I have spotted Santa Claus around the campus and in Ioannina.  In one photograph, you can see Santa up on the roof of the student center.  In another, you can see him ascending a ladder of a gift shop next to one of my favorite restaurants.  In addition, someone placed Christmas ornaments on the bush outside of Stavros Niarchos. 

Several of the students from Stavros Niarchos have already left to go home.  Some others will be spending the holidays with the families of classmates.  For example, Tomoko from Japan will be spending Christmas with Maria and her family in Macedonia.  Some, like me, will remain here for the break.  I am glad that I will have some company.  However, I am afraid that I will experience "empty nest" syndrome until the rest of the students come back the second week of January.  In the meantime, I received an invitation from a doctoral student, Eugenia, to spend Christmas Eve with her husband and son at their home in Metsovo, which is a mountain village about an hour outside of Ioannina.  That will be great.  On Christmas day, another doctoral student, Dmitris, invited me to spend the day with his wife, Maria, and their 15-month old son, Immanuel.  It will be fun to hear a toddler starting to say his first words in Greek.  Of course, it will be great to see the look in his eyes when he opens his presents.

It looks like Santa is going to be busy in my part of the world.  I am pretty sure that he is going to check up on the students from Stavros Niarchos and their respective families, which means he has about 21 countries to visit before getting on his way to the U.S.  However, there is a seven hour time difference so I think he will make it.  Whatever language you speak, I hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

These Are The People In My Neighborhood

In tribute to Mr. Rogers, I would like to tell you about the people in my neighborhood.  I live in the Stavros Niarchos dorm on the campus of the University of Ioannina.  The dorm is filled mostly with students who are here to study Greek language and culture.  They hail from 20 countries, mostly European, but a few from Africa, Asia and South America.  Even though I am not here to study Greek language and culture, they have embraced me.  Altogether there are 55 students in this program so a posting cannot do justice to all of them.  However, I will tell you about the students in these photographs and, hopefully, this will give you a good idea of the wonderful neighborhood that I inhabit.

The students at Stavros Niarchos love to celebrate birthdays.  We had eight in November!  Pictured in the first photograph is Aleksandra.  She turned 23 years old on December 10th.  She is from Romania.  The second photograph is from a birthday party in November.  It features Anastasia and Anna who are from Ukraine and sitting between them is Maged, who is from Egypt.

In the third photo, are the students in the program from Egypt.  In the back row from left to right: Farouk, Romali, and Maged.  In the front row, from left to right: Hassan, Mina, and Roida.  Farouk was one of the first students that I met when I arrived and I talk with him almost everyday.  Hassan and Mina love to play soccer and I enjoy watching their fancy footwork.  Romali, Meget, and Roida, tend to be more introspective, but they will always talk to me.

The next photo was taken on the steps of a monastery that is above the campus.  I shared pictures of it in one of my earlier postings.  The countries represented include Egypt, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Japan, Romania, Chile, and Ukraine.

An amphitheater from the B.C. era in the area of Dodoni is the scene for the next photo.  Benjamin from Thailand and Peter from Macedonia are featured.

Next up is Farouk whom I mentioned earlier from Egypt and Zorca who is from Montenegro and whom I mentioned in an earlier posting.  There are so many of these students that I enjoy, but these are two of my favorites.

The last photo features three students from Armenia: Aleksandra, Arthur, and Latef.  Arthur was also one of the first students that I met when I arrived.  He knows six languages and never ceases to amaze me as he switches from one to another effortlessly.

These are just a few of the students that I see on almost a daily basis.  I feel so blessed that I am living in Stavros Niarchos.  These students have enriched my life and I hope that I have done the same for them.  There is much that I will miss about Greece when I return to the U.S., but I will them most of all.  There are many times when I worry about the state of the world, but these students give me hope that the world will be fine after all.

Hey Jude

There are many challenges that one confronts when living overseas for an extended period of time, most notably a language that is "foreign" to your ears.  While Greece has many culinary delights to offer, I do find that from time to time I "hunger" for more American fare.  However, my most quixotic task since my arrival in Ioannina was finding "food" for my soul, in other words, books written in English.  There is a bookstore in downtown Ioannina.  Upon discovering it, I was initially optimistic that I might find a few New York Times bestsellers and, indeed, I did find them.  However, they were in Greek (I must admit that it was entertaining to see Stephanie Meyer's books in Greek).  When I asked a salesperson if there were any books in English, she directed me to a modest shelf that contained mostly classics with an occasional romance novel or murder mystery in the mix.  I hoped that my disappointment was not too discernible and I thanked her and proceeded to take a closer look.  As I was standing there I remembered thinking, "Who wants to read classics?  I have probably read them all."  Yet, as I cocked my head sideways to read the titles, it became apparent to me that I had not read most of them.  I found this a little embarrassing.  I have always believed that I received a first-rate education through the Lincoln, Nebraska Public Schools (LPS), but before I even got to Henry James (the titles were in alphabetical order) I was already concocting a letter in my mind to the Superintendent of LPS asking why I was never required to read Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte?  Was LPS discriminating against women writers at the time?  Was there a problem with Dostoyevsky?  Of course, I realized that LPS and my teachers exposed me to some fine works.  Furthermore, I realized that there was no way an English curriculum could expose you to every important work.  Still, I found it ironic that I was on a Fulbright grant trying to learn about a foreign country, when knowledge of my own country, specifically its writers, was not too impressive and my knowledge of British and Russian novelists was even worse.

After standing for a long time, I eventually got over my disappointment of having only classics to choose from and my embarrassment that I had not read many of them.  I boldly chose a couple of titles.  When I was sophomore at the University of Nebraska, I decided to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.  I am not sure what prompted me to buy it, but that book affected me like few others.  To this day I still feel badly for Tess.  Oddly enough in the intervening thirty years or so I never read another book by Hardy.  Therefore, I decided to pick up Jude the Obscure.  I couldn't walk out of the bookstore with just one book, so I also picked up The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.  As I read the foreword while I was debating whether to buy it, I learned that Cooper's contemporaries, such as Mark Twain, viewed him as a hack writer.  I thought to myself, "Cooper may not be the best writer, but how many novelists from the 19th century can say that their book was turned into a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis?"  With that I checked to see if I had enough Euros to pay for my purchases and I was on my way.

As a postscript I found Jude the Obscure as sad and as tragic as Tess.  Hardy used many words that I had to look up, which I loved doing.  Cooper wasn't a stellar writer, but I enjoyed The Last of the Mohicans, especially his style of writing which was probably typical of the early 19th century.

So have you read any classics lately?  If so, I would appreciate your suggestions and I will see if I can find them at my bookstore in Ioannina.