We’ve finished the first 5 days of classes. As someone who is not facile with languages, not to mention starting one at my age, I must say that the methods they use here really make learning Greek possible, if you work at it. The hard part is continuing it when you leave, but when you’re here, it’s pretty much an immersion experience. We have about 10 students and 2 teachers. This allows for a lot of attention and help, and also some interaction. The teachers use pictures, projects, cd’s, plays, lectures, slides, singing, dancing, cooking, conversations, and very little of any textbooks. Sandra & I have talked with the Spaniards here who’ve taken classes at other schools in Greece, and they say this is far and away the best. The other schools seem very much by-the-book operations, literally, with the result that if you don’t have that learning style, you are in trouble.

We are in class for 2.5 hours each morning, then a long break, for doing homework, shopping, and resting, till around 7, then 2.5 more hours of class. The classes are divided by level in the morning, and then we are all together in the afternoon class. Two days ago we read fairy tales in small groups, then re-told them to the class. Yesterday, we made up our own fairy tales, using small pictures of “fairy tale objects” (sword, dragon, forest, princess, witch, etc.). Each group got the same pictures, but each member had some randomly assigned, then we went around in a circle, adding a picture and continuing the story. You can see how many different things are involved here: vocabulary, comprehension of others’ speech, conversation for clarification, and speaking yourself, for starters. Way more fun and useful than reading a text and anwering written questions on a piece of paper. The school is worth the money it costs to come here, believe me.

Two nights ago we all cooked together, some Ikarian dishes and others, as our evening project, had a short dance lesson taught again by me, then sat down for another long dinner outside on the upper patio. There we had a discussion on what a “party pooper” is in 3 languages. You ought to try to explain some of these things in Greek sometime!

[Note from Sandra:

ParteePOOpears!!

There is no good , compact word in Greek for “party poopers”. When David, another student, one of our Greek teachers and I left a wedding party quite early (1:30) the Sunday we arrived, I explained to the teacher that “sta Anglikä” (English) we use the term “party poopers” to describe what we surely were just then! Evgenia, (the teacher) was really entranced with the term and repeated it many times with her unique Greek pronunciation which cracked us up completely. It ends up sounding more like one word, the way I wrote it above as a title, with slightly rolled Greek “r’s”  and the last syllable like “pears”.

“ParteePOOPears” became the favorite funny phrase of the school for the next few days.  Evgenia said that sadly, Greek did not have a such a good, colorful term to describe someone who was not that interested in remaining for an extended celebration. The night of the wedding, the four of us had definitely been the class ” POOpears”!

A few days later at the school, David and I were decifering some Greek from a CD that explained some of the traditions of Carvaval in the northern Greek town of Kastoria. We came across a lovely phase in Greek: “The city of Kastoria has its own way of bringing spring back from the heart of winter”. “Ah!” I lamented to our Greek teacher Evgenia who happened to be passing by as we GOT the translation, ‘the HEART  of winter!’! That is really beautiful!! In English we have to say, in the DEAD of winter! We really do not have an expression that is as beautifully descriptive as this!”

Eugenia thought for a moment and then said in Greek, “Yes! But you DO have ‘ParteePOOPears!’ We don’t have THAT!!

BACK TO DAVID]

Other nights we go out to dinner after the late class, arriving at the taverna around 10 or 10:30. More conversation (in Greek), more mistakes, but communication is also achieved, and the practice is what we all need. The food, especially at the taverna in Pera Arethusa, is really delicious–it’s like Greek tapas–and the prices here are not city prices at all, shockingly low for an American.

Yesterday we went to a different beach and spent the whole day there. I hardly ever do this, so it’s a treat more me, not that I get to swim (I can’t) but just to relax. We walked along the sea rocks to another, smaller beach, above which was a taverna with a terrifci view. This is common on the islands, and makes for a complete experience. After three hours of eating and talking we walked back on the high road, because the tide had come in. there we met a man born there but who had lived in Chicago. He spoke Spanish with a Mexican accent and told us about his restaurant in Chicago where he talked once with Micahel Jordan. We also spoke a little with his wife, up the road. Many Ikariotes have spent time in the United States, earning money, coming back for the summer, then moving back when they older. But we’ve also heard of people returning to build big, American-style homes completely out of place on this island. It seems that the bigger is better syndrome is not isolated to just the US.

This brings up another subject, the way the Greeks treat the environment. We met a photographer who told us about the Ikarians, throwing their old furniture, car parts, etc. right on the beach. This includes the local hospital (ewhose CEO denied it), and consists of old bedframes, needles, toxic waste, etc. There’s a lighthouse a bit of the way out whose light runs on a battery, similar to a car’s. Well, when the battery dies, the Coast Guard goes out there, replaces the battery, and throws the old one into the sea. Recreational divers near there see a sea floor littered with old batteries, which of course corrode and release toxins and metals into the water; these work their way up the food chain, etc. There’s a lot of asbestos int he buildings, and when workers are revoving it, they just tear it down and toss it. The dust gets everywhere and they don’t wear masks or protective clothing. Kids play around the work area. The photographer is having an exhibition here at the school with some of his photographs about these subjects. He lives here near Evdilos.

On a slightly lighter note, the Greek pluming system leaves much to be desired. We’ve had several installments of “The Turd That Would Not Die,” and you take a shower hoping all the water will go down the drain. On the other hand it is possible to have running water, even hot water (solar-heated), so it’s actually very convenient, and it mostly makes for a good story.

If you want to see some pictures of Ikaria that I took the last two years, go to my flickr photostream at

http://flickr.com/photos/bilidesd/sets

and click on either of the Ikaria sets. I won’t be uploading this year’s photos till I return home; the connection’s too slow.

About 8 new students arrived this morning (Sunday), from Germany, the US, Russia and Spain. They’re all worn out, but we’ll be getting together tonight for a dance lesson with me trying once again to do it in Greek. There’s a paniyiri in Arethousa tomorrow night. We can walk to it, have a very late meal, and then try not be parteePOOpears again! Talk to you in a few days…

Prior to coming to this lovely island for our third straight summer, we spent a day in Athens of the sort that you can only do when you are on vacation. That is, after leaving our hotel, we spent several hours looking for a CD with the violinist Yiannis Zevgolis. The instrument museum shop was closed, so we went to two very loud CD stores near Omonia Square, and still didn’t find it. Escaping the hellish traffic and faseria of Omonia, we ducked into a…Starbucks!, not that we would ever patronize Starbucks, but it was the nearest place that we could be quiet and not have to deal with cigarette smoke. It is ironic to me that the Greeks, who love their children dearly, are slowly killing them with secondhand smoke, when they’re not killing themselves first.

OK, then we had the rest of the day to catch our ferry. When else can I say that I’m just going to do nothing for 6 hours until I leave? From experience, we had decided that the only way to go overnight (or on any long ferry ride) was to splurge on a cabin, again because it ws quiet, and the air was pretty much smoke-free. (Although there are non-smoking sections on the boat, they are open to the other, smoking sections, so they’re pretty much useless. This is similar to the non-smoking cars on trains, which have an upper, non-smoking level on a car above a smoking level! Of course, all the smoke rises to the second level. Maybe someday this will change.

Anyway, the cabin was heaven, and the ferry ride was uneventful. If you haven’t taken a ferry boat, it is difficult to describe the feeling as one waits for the enormous cargo door to open slowly in front of you, revealing your new island destination.

Mihali, the director of the Ikarian Center where we study Greek, picked us up. We caught up on some news and quickly arrived in Arethusa. The school setting is quite beautiful, with mountains across the valley from the cabins, and the Aegean with Hios and Turkey in sight on the horizon. The cicadas produce the best white noise, and the quiet is otherwise deafening. It is difficult to imagine a better setting for studying Greek intensely. In fact, with this year’s additon of a working kitchen, many groups could use this as an ideal retreat, if the transportation could be afforded. It would probably work better for Europeans.

We were soon joined by the other students for this two-week course, some Spaniards and a fellow from France. Already here from last week were a German woman we’d met two years ago, an Austrian woman, and an American, Emily, who is going to Yale and already speaks 5 languages at the age of 20 or so. In other words, everyone wipes the floor with me in tha language department. To be fair to myself, I am definitely better than I was when I first started, and I can understand what’s going on much better as long as people pretend I’m about 4 years old. Seriously, though, I do get by.

Once we unpacked it was off to the mountains for a hike. They don’t waste time here, although they understand the meaning of taking your time. We drove to Armenistis, on the west end of the north side of the island and took about a 3-hour hike up into the mountains. Ikaria is greener than many islands, and still has running water from streams and springs at this time of year. We passed many lovely pools once we got some elevation. If I ever come here for a longer time, I would like to hike around the island. They’ve got a system of paths in place that makes it pretty easy.

We hiked back down to the beach, where some cooled off in the crystal clear and impossible blue of the Aegean. Then, we had to have our meal, of course. This consists of seemingly countless dishes of a wide variety of foods over the next several hours. There were 12 in our parea, so we had a large sampling, much drinking of excellent retsina, and a lot of fun. These kinds of meals are de rigeuer in Greece; I wish Americans would get this concept; you don’t really have to DO anything.

We drove back to Arethusa and rested for an hour. Then I taught everyone the main dance of the island, Ikariotikos, because in one hour we were going to a wedding in the next village (this is not a typical day, in case you are wondering, but as long as there are fun times to be had, we take advantage of them). I can teach no sweat in English, but it was a challenge in Greek, as I had to ask how to say “lift your heel” and other esoteric phrases sutiable for dancing and not much else. Still, everyone pretty much got it, and I was glad to contribute in this way.

Once we finally made it to the wedding, nearly two hours after it was supposed to start (this is typical), some us stayed in the plaza restaurant to watch some of the World Cup final (being as my mother’s family is from Naples, I of course was rooting for Italy, which later won, amzingly enough), and then we went to the plateia and sat down with about 400 other people (the entire village comes to these weddings), and were served food over the next several hours (don’t go to Greece if you want to lose weight).

THe band was only so-so in my opinion, but after a desultory set of bouzoukia, they finally pulled out a violin and started Ikariotikos. This got the bridal party up dancing (in all the paniyiri we ‘ve gone to here, no one starts dancing until they play this dance). Things continued with other island tunes, and when they played Ikariotikos again, my fellow students and I danced and had a good time. Sandra & I also danced a waltz and a polka. These European dances are required for any social occasion where there is dancing, and included the “Fox” and a tango. We finally left and went home around 1:30, marveling on a terrfic and very full first day.